Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: House Education, February 10. Having a committee discussion to get some feedback on what we have had presented both last week with the map and some language attached to it, as well as a little bit of that we've had today and last week. What I really like to do is kind of go around the table not looking necessarily at this first round to talk about the map specifics, but really to talk about what are people's concerns about what has been presented, What are people's questions that they'd like to get answered? And what might be people's requests for testimony? Can't necessarily honor it all, but anyway, we have upcoming superintendents coming in, school board association coming in to provide some feedback. I think we probably will need to get more than just that. So anyway, kind of put a lot on the table last week, but I think it's what we need to have go forward. You've all had time to think about it. I just will reiterate for all of I created that map. There are areas that I know are I've already got a question like, why is Mountain View's School District Supervisory Union left alone? Because I didn't really have an easy solution to it given geography and all of that. There's a couple of others where I just sort of said, well, I don't have an easy solution to that right now. And that maybe with the input of those outside the room and inside the room, we can refine. The language that I presented with it, I actually spent some time with Ledge Council today to further refine that basic concept is sort of the same. But it speaks to both the challenge of coming up with criteria and the roles and responsibilities of school boards. So when that's refined, I'll bring it up as well. But I'm also absolutely looking for input. That's really what this is for. And feel free to just make this a conversation and whatnot. So so who wants to go first? We got to volunteer.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: So myself, Laren? So I don't want to necessarily talk about the map itself. I want to talk about maybe the policy behind the map and some of the harder decision points that I know are going

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: to come up. And one

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: of them is the SUSD model. We're already seeing some definite lines drawn on certain individuals. Absolutely want to keep the SU model available. Some want to go straight to the SD model. And I've already proposed this to some members just in conversation. But the idea of continuing to have supervisory unions available, but within those unions, consolidating like districts, operating districts within those unions. So you still have the consolidation there, you're keeping the SU model. I just wanted to kind of throw that out as a

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Could you provide a for instance?

[Emily Long (Member)]: Do

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: you have a for instance?

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: For instance, it might be North Country. It has 15 districts within North Country Supervisory Union, and many have the same operating structure. They could consolidate, just as an example, that's in my region.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: Are you saying, let's say there's four districts within NSU and two are operating K-eight and the other two are K-twelve, the two K-twelve will become one K-twelve, two K-eight will become one K-eight. So down two. Four to to to

[Emily Long (Member)]: this is can I ask a question? Because I'm trying to understand it.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: And this isn't fully like

[Emily Long (Member)]: No, no, totally get that. I do. But I'm going to present my multiple changes to my area of multiple operating structures. So your suggestion is to merge like operating structures within an SU. So if a district doesn't have any other like in the area they would stay, it's a single district. Is that correct? Is that what you're saying? I mean, obviously,

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: we think this through more, that would be one of those questions that we would have to kind of

[Emily Long (Member)]: Well, I mean, I'm asking because I represent people that are and and and what you're suggesting would mean, I can think of two towns that would have to stay separate because they don't have the same no one

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: would see an operating structure.

[Emily Long (Member)]: And so I don't This is why I was trying to Was that the intent? Because it would still do what you're saying. Yeah. Think it

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: would be the intent. Think we were going to, again, discuss this further, I think we would obviously have to take testimony. I don't know who we would take testimony. Somebody who is much more, understands SUs much better than I do and the concept of them and why they feel they're needed so badly.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I would say that the conundrum here is we've got SUs where you could say, oh, like North Country, everybody is part of North Country. They all operate the same grades and then send their kids to the same. They don't, I don't think. That's why it's an SU.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: Well, they don't all operate the same either. Some are non operating. They don't have any True. Some have KA, and then there's the middle school and the high school. I also had that similar point, and I'm stepping out to go to transportation to talk about the Linden Airport. Yeah. So

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: the conundrum we always have with SUs versus SDs, they've almost I wonder if you would describe them as already fully involved, like where I have to look at the map, but where they're now broken down by different operating structures. That would be hard to put under one. In other words, if you've got an SU and you got, so we could take White River Valley Supervisory, which is big and it's got every configuration you can imagine. So, Hancock and Grand Isle a part of that, don't operate any grades. Know, under the sort of the way we understand the law now, you couldn't combine them with nearby Rochester because Rochester is K-six and then not operation. So that's sort of the challenge. So that's something I want to be already fully evolved to SUs to the point where you can't necessarily combine further.

[Emily Long (Member)]: What you're describing is compliance

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: itself. Merged where we could, the operating structure. But what I hear you saying about this, given the feedback we've got, is there a compromise Absolutely. To be able to continue

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: to move this conversation forward in a way where we might be able

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: to move it forward, I

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: think we need that being the amount of feedback that I've received on this already is something that I'm willing to look at. And I

[Robert Hunter (Member)]: would say not just my own district, many of them. And I think that maybe we're smart enough to come up with a hybrid model that works, somehow, as you've suggested, SU can be configured a little bit differently. And again, that's in all due respect to the superintendents and everybody else's. I keep having this Apollo thirteen moment here. When their oxygen tanks rupture and in the mission control, everybody's telling Jean France what isn't working, right? Everybody's stuck on what isn't working. Like alarms are going off and they're bleeding oxygen in space. And Jean Krantz says, I don't want

[Leland Morgan (Member)]: to hear anymore about what doesn't work. I want to

[Robert Hunter (Member)]: hear what works. And I feel like we a lot of schools at scale, we have places that really, really work, right? So I'm glad that we get the back builder thing out. I'm glad that we're talking about this because I think that if things work, should let them keep working and focus in places where we really need to help. So that's my Apollo 13 moment.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Right, and at some point you're gonna need to take those abstract Apollo 13 moments and say exactly what you're talking about. Whether it works. So, like, example,

[Robert Hunter (Member)]: I think that we have a lot of schools at scale that work, CDU, whatever, all these places.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think the four historical

[Robert Hunter (Member)]: academies, they work for the kids. They're doing a yeoman's task. And I think too, if we're talking about these academies, and again, they've been here for a long time, serving a lot of kids, a couple of them even have CTEs, and of the $6,000,000,000 of deferred maintenance, about a penny goes to those schools. So I feel like the things that are working, the systems that are working, great, let them keep working, Let them keep working for us. In our portfolio of schools in Vermont, those are our schools, right? And I think that if we're rearranging districts in such a way that squeezes them or diminishes them, we'll only hurt ourselves. Like, these are our schools, these are our Vermont schools. So that's what I'm saying. If it works, let them keep working.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, the challenge will be defining what's working. People will say, my community school of under 50 kids is working.

[Robert Hunter (Member)]: Of course.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Or my district that spends well above the statewide average is working. Right, thank you.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Yeah, just to follow-up on that, I think actually, Peter, just to echo what you just said, when we talk about what's working, what isn't working, it's sort of like where are, Sometimes at what expense to the whole system. Was looking past Peter's head to that phrase I wrote on the board, the inescapable network of mutuality from the very beginning of the session. If we're all in this together as one Vermont educational ecosystem, in what places are some resources being allocated at a rate that is not necessarily fair to the whole system.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: So to me, listening to Rob, that brings me to section two, the designation and contract. To me, that speaks to what he's saying about why are we going after something that's working very well. This feels like something that goes after the independent schools and the tuitioning and the designation that we already currently do and have been doing for, what I understand, over one hundred and fifty years has been working fantastic. It feels like it's just yet another thing to try and put pressure on them. And I don't know that we've already been through this last year with FactSeventy three. I feel like we should be focusing more towards all the other parts of the structure first.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So, the conversation continues to return to the same topic that we have trouble getting behind. But the problem is, is you can't have a state where you say, if we want a statewide education system, this is my opinion, you can't say these folks get something different than these folks, and especially within an SD. And so in my language proposal, again, it's getting refined. The idea is not to squeeze the historic academies or the elementary schools that we rely on up in the Northeast Kingdom, but instead just to move to recognizing that they are essentially operating in place of a public high school in four areas of our state. That's not changing. So let's recognize that and say kids can continue to attend them. What it does move away from, and I'd be perfectly proud of this, is choice and saying you can take your state dollars and go wherever you like. It's saying school boards are in charge of educating students. School boards decide where students go. And if they decide that they need to go here for largely geographic reasons or whatever, whatever, maybe we say school boards decide what those reasons are.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: So I think we're, keep, I'm actually having an issue with this, we all get a metric crap ton of emails regarding this. I've yet to get one email that says reduce the amount of choice that we currently have, go to no choice. I get to please leave that alone, please keep tuition the way it is, please keep supervisory unions. I don't see anybody saying, No, we need to dump supervisory unions. And even from areas that are not my area, the only other question, the other reason is don't do anything. Those are, you know, keep us used, keep choices we have or don't do anything. I hear some of what I see, I don't hear any conversation around that from anybody. So just trying to keep that in mind when I'm thinking of this, right? Because I see all sides.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Honestly, I would say the Friends of Public Education could activate an email dump on us as well. And so, it wouldn't take much to hear the other side. So that's why I sort of say, to the best of our ability, maybe we can recognize people are commenting, people commented to the professional and future public education, to the other one, the test registry task force, can't ignore it. But we also at a certain point have to make hard decisions.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: I guess for me, like you were asking what we wanna see, like, I would like to see that section to remove. And I would like to see, as representative Taylor would call it, a hybrid SUSD model. Because I do think that that in some way, shape or form, whether it's what he proposed to think of or some other variation thereof, I think that is something that's important to our communities.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So, I don't want to make a lot of work for legislative council, but legislative council is open to all of us. Some of these could get into legal issues. And so, I would recommend that members of the committee, if you need time with legislative counsel, say, hey, here's a concept that doesn't work given Supreme Court decisions about state statute, education rules and procedures, all of that.

[Emily Long (Member)]: So I am going to share a word of caution as we're having this conversation, sort of going back to what you just said. What's working and what's not working is a very tough place for a rural school district like I represent to be in, to be pointed at and said, you're not working. So don't want us going

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: in that direction.

[Emily Long (Member)]: What I want us to talk about is why is a rural area unable to have the same successes of all the ones you just named? And we're in rural areas and we don't have a number of students, so we need to be able to understand the cost drivers and all of the challenges that we're having instead of just simply saying, you're not working, we need to be fixed. That's where it becomes very, very challenging for those of us in rural areas. We're really hard working, really hard to find a way through it. And merging, I can't tell my rural area that merging into a larger SU or SD is going to solve the problems that they're dealing with. And that's where Han will run into challenges with all of this. So that's just a very high level perspective that I'm feeling very strongly about.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So I appreciate the concerns. Are there and when I used be talking about requests, it wasn't necessarily talking about language out, but that's fine. More more like requests of information that we need to have in. And I realize there are voices we have not heard from yet, that we still need to hear from, and that will happen.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: I mean, schools, visa, both of them would be good to hear from. I mean, we've heard from the VPA. I don't think we've heard from the superintendents on your or on the map currently. They're scheduled. Both of those two, Raleigh Not and headed yet. About their independent schools too. Okay.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Leland, wanna chime in?

[Leland Morgan (Member)]: I'd like to, but I'm not sure where I would begin. I liked representative Taylor's comments about unions. I think in my area, supervisory unions are what are popular and what they want to see. Forced mergers are something that I think we see all the time. People don't want to be forced to merge voluntarily. They would like the ability to do that if they want to, or if they feel that they need to, a voluntary merger. School choice, and I'm just speaking from the area that I know, for them is almost it it it is a necessity that they have choice that they want and not being told what their choice is. It's a long narrow strip. It's quite unique compared to the rest of the state of Vermont. There are only four ways to get off from the islands and the peninsula. One of them is Canada. One of them is New York. And then there are just two other routes to get off from the islands, Swanton area and Chittenden County, Franklin and Chittenden County. There are many people. Most many of the people that live there don't work there. They go to one of those places. And along with them, as the kids leave the school, leave the elementary schools, and there are four of them there. One has already closed, so there's only four. A lot of those people well, a lot of those students just get in the car with their folks, and they work in Swanton. They work in South Burlington. Kids dropped off and stuff. And they wanna keep that ability to have that choice. They have very negative feelings, many of them do, about certain schools. Some don't want their kids to go to Milton or Colchester for whatever reasons. And I think we have to keep that in mind. I think that what the people of the state of Vermont want, I think is more important than most anything else. It's what the residents in the state want, the residents in my area, what they want. And what they want is what they need.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I actually point out that the vast, vast majority of students in the state don't have sort of the right of choice.

[Emily Long (Member)]: That's correct.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: What about if we meet public school choice universal throughout the state?

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: That is such a thought idea.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: No, no, I'm

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: not trying to spark anything. What did say I didn't hear you. What about like, you know, so most people are gonna stay in the areas where, or with inter district choice or inter SU choice, like just where you can choose to go to the public schools within your region.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I would say, much of this falls on the power of the school board to decide how they want to operate their school district, whether they want inter district choice. Like that's intra

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: district I always ask. But just, I mean, again, it's it it it or not, it's part of the conversation that our communities are having. So we should be have we should be having that conversation whether we don't like it or not.

[Emily Long (Member)]: If every child would have access to the same choice, it would be one thing. But choice is a wonderful concept, but not everyone is able to access choice.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: Correct. That's where I In my lifetime, Chelsea, we don't

[Emily Long (Member)]: I don't want to talk about this specific-

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: I'm just saying

[Robert Hunter (Member)]: in general.

[Emily Long (Member)]: I'm talking in general, not everyone has access to choice, even when it's available to them.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: I'm just thinking of ways to open up more opportunity instead of limiting opportunity.

[Emily Long (Member)]: And who does it who is the opportunity opened up for? That's what I'm trying to point out. It will open up more opportunity for certain families or kids, but it won't open up opportunities for them.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: And how do we figure

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: out ways to continue to

[Emily Long (Member)]: agree We opportunities build

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: for

[Emily Long (Member)]: as Franklin, our public education system. That's what we do.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So full state choice was not on the table for this discussion.

[Emily Long (Member)]: Well, are all in a committed discussion we should be able to. Leanne?

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: First of all, I'm sorry that I react. Was so reactive when you

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: said that. Don't take your personal. I don't take your personal.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Okay. My concerns and questions and requests. So first of all, I think that there was a huge misunderstanding, at least to the people that reached out to me that believe that we are about to vote on a new district map of 27. One of my concerns is just making sure we get that message out there. But, you know, I was kind of trying to think about how to explain it, like in a way, it's almost like being asked to make a meal. At this point, we're just flipping through the cookbook looking at recipes, right?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Good analogy.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: So, we're definitely not there. We are not voting on a map of 27 districts. That's not even something we're considering. And so I'm trying to get that out

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: of there. That doesn't mean we are not.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: What I mean is that's not something we're considering today. That's not where we're at in this process. Yes, that may be the map someone votes on at some point. That's not what I meant. So I think that there's been a huge misunderstanding and we need to do better public outreach about how this process works. As far as it goes, like this particular week, the message that I'm hearing from everyone that has been writing to me is that they are really not in favor of forced mergers or the loss of SUs in favor of SDs. So, I'm interested in those hybrid models that may allow some of our more rural areas to be still in SKUs. People are really concerned that as we do use local control, people are going to make decisions for their towns that are not as right for their town, like shutting down their schools. As far as the maps go, I guess one of my requests would be that we have some kind of a rubric for evaluating them in the same way that the task force did so that we're not just discussing them around the table, but that we're using actual metrics. But I think overall, I think one of the things I'm wondering is, are we definitely going with merged districts versus the CSAS? Because I don't really feel like we've ever gotten to a point where we voted that that's the lane that we're choosing. And so I'm wondering what about the task force ideas about incentivized mergers for CISAs? What if we did that instead? Is that something that's still on the table? Because that's another thing that I'm hearing a lot of feedback from people that write to me is like, can a map like that or some other version of the map be actually a map for CISAs instead of districts and then keeping that as the model. So that's kind of what people are asking me to fight for right now. Another thing that's been said that I am concerned about is that we're defining what's working and thinking about schools under 50 kids are automatically not working. I don't think that everyone in the world agrees with that. And so, like, gets to decide sort of what is the, picture of success, because maybe they're educated in a different way with different outcomes than sort of the ways that those larger schools are. And so where is there room for that in that conversation? But they don't want to play them out. They still want to be small. I mean, Vermont is small and we have people that have actively chosen to live in these smaller districts. I get sort of the other side of that conversation that because we pay for education as a state, it falls on everything, everyone. And so like, are some smaller schools taking more resources? But sort of the flip side of that is that when you look at who has access to the most resources, well, a school itself is a resource. So if they're all consolidated away from our rural areas, then that's also not fair, if that makes any sense. So I think that right now my big takeaway is that we're asking the wrong sacrifices of the wrong people, and we still are not showing that this is going to save money. It may just disrupt town. So until we have that data, I don't know why this is what we're asking instead of asking, demanding that we change healthcare and we tax wealthier people before we shut down whole schools and whole towns? I guess those are my concerns in a nutshell.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, I think we are all reacting to the input we're getting. I sort of go back to the BSA testimony we had is that our position is still the same. Change must happen to Leanne's education system. Maintaining status quo is not an option the state is serious about improving quality, equity and affordability. Changing the status quo is very difficult. And it's going to be hard if it is the consensus of this committee that we need to change status quo. That's the input I'm reacting to as opposed to the emails I'm getting.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: But does the status quo have to be interpreted as status quo of how we operate buildings or gonna be the status quo of how we fund education? Like, look at the mental health that is now part of the end fund and taking that out. Look at the, maybe actually consider going to a statewide health contract. Although I'm really hesitant to say that, I don't know where I stand on that yet, but exploring ideas like that. What I mean, sorry.

[Robert Hunter (Member)]: You mean

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: for teachers'

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: contracts? Yeah.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah. So, I would just remind all of us, we have other pressures out there. We've got a governor who's threatening to defund or stop government funding on June 30. We've got people who really want change. We also have an equity issue in terms of funding across the state. We have, you'll hear me talk about this all the time. We have a declining enrollment challenge that we are not equipped to deal with very well. Our ability to adjust to it, and I think history has borne this out, has not been quick enough as it has dropped so precipitously. And we have a per pupil spending problem. They could look right up there and see that as well. That's actually something that people could debate. We spending enough on schools or are we spending too much on education? So yeah, we're getting this from all sides and I appreciate that where coming from about that.

[Emily Long (Member)]: Can I respond to the

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: timing of them before we switch?

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: I'm not sure. I'm actually going to agree with some of what you had

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: to say. I'm to continue going around circle, even though I keep interrupting everybody.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: You guys say I want think about the declining enrollment, because it's all about that. Which is like, if we move our schools out of our rural communities, I wonder if we're actually ensuring declining enrollment in those areas for the rest of time. So do we instead, what we want to be doing is figuring out what we need to do to build up those rural communities to bend the trend?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So, think it's like this existential question. It's a hard one, because guess what? That all costs money, and we kind of agree that we have an affordability problem in the state.

[Leland Morgan (Member)]: Talking about declining school population, I just wanna make a correction. There are five towns. I said that one has closed, actually two towns in that district county has closed. And there are concerns. She indicated, I've heard them from people there, that if we close schools, people are going to leave there and go somewhere else with their children, and it's still gonna make a decline in population, school population and affect the remaining schools.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Would, I'm showing my bias here, I would reflect back on the superintendent's testimony. I would go back and reread it. When we talk about, will it save money? You could look at the folks who have been through Act 46 that testified in that part of that testimony talking about the reductions that they were able to achieve in terms of staffing. Representative Brown, you in?

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Oh, sure. Yeah, I guess to follow-up on that, I think representative Harple raised a good point, which is now might be a good point in this conversation that we're having to sort of go back to some of the elements of the task force report, like the matrix, the evaluation matrix. Even, I just was pulling it up as we were talking, even the guiding principles, just to really sort of ground ourselves in what exactly are we trying to do here. Hopefully it's improving public education for Vermont students. I'm not really interested in compromising and twisting ourselves in knots to preserve the parts of the system that aren't necessarily currently aligned with that goal. But obviously, as the conversation gets more political, that's going to be harder and harder to do. But on the issue of financial sustainability, I think now that we have a new governance concept react to and model, I am interested in seeing where does that take us in terms of streamlining or efficiencies or that kind of modeling? I know that's a bit of a vague question, but

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I I'm here alone with this proposal. Folks have got questions and comments and all that. At a certain point, I'm going to say, that's great, I need you to follow-up on that and lead the next discussion. And I say that to everybody, because I'm personally running out of steam. I'm happy to keep us moving forward, but we need to take big concepts and make them specific. And we need to understand what each one of us is saying. Now, if we're going have a conversation about matrixes and rubrics, that's fine. But I need to know what that means. And I'm happy to sort of say, Representative Brown's got a proposal about our discussion and rubrics and how you take over. But I can't take some of these concepts and carry them myself.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Well, and I think, yeah, and it's gonna take some time to work through, if the theory is that governance change is gonna set us up for a more sustainable future or improvements to education that's happening in the field on the ground every day, I just want us to have really honest conversations about how long it's gonna take for this process to play out. Leave it there.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Representative Brady? Would you like me to call him Representative McCann? Sure.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: I don't know if I have anything I don't even know where to begin, so

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Representative McCann, do you want to weigh in? If you're not up for it, that's fine. All right, Representative Brady.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: I think we are hitting pretty hard up against the brick wall that the state, these committees, everybody's been in for a long, long time, and I'm feeling quite discouraged today, honestly. I think if we are gonna just gnash our teeth over choice, over whether same dollars, same rules, or we have a lot of different things happening around the state. We are not getting anywhere in terms of transformation or equity. So trying to check my attitude tonight, but I am somewhat discouraged today. I think, we had this discussion, the things I was most concerned about us working out were fleshing out your policy proposals around designation and contracting so that we have clear rules around where our public dollars go and how all kids are served. I would echo Representative Brown in that I really want to understand then, if we were to go forward with this, the implications of the foundation formula and some clear modeling so that we, I think, we are also really obsessed with maps and not obsessed enough with the foundation formula that's going to potentially have huge change impacts on the ground. And I think that regional middle and high schools, like whatever clearest way to regional middle and high schools, I think is the most important quality piece that we can be doing. It's the only part about all of it that I get excited about and feel like we're doing something good for education. So in terms of concrete, my next steps with your map are to better understand what would that look like then for particularly high schools, because it will be easier if they're in the same district in terms of the future of high schools in the state. I've shared this article with many of you. There's obviously lots of research out there. I believe strongly, obviously, in public education. But I think we need more bodies under fewer roofs, we need kids together commingling from different backgrounds. And the last thing we can afford as a society is picking and choosing off on different lanes, or only some kids going some places. And the research last week that had me really excited about regional middle and high schools is the single strongest predictor of economic mobility is the fraction of higher income friends that low income children have. In communities where you have more cross class interaction, kids do much better. And I think that's an incredibly important component to what we are talking about here. Again, to me, it comes down to regional middle high schools, which also means real facilities funding has to be part of our plan going forward. There's no way to get there without some school funding. And I know that school consolidation is not popular and it's emotional, but I think we've gotten a lot of testimony and I really appreciated Bruce Baker's, some of his testimony on Friday. District costs level off around 2,000. So I mean, clearly we can do some work around districts, but costs spike because of instructional and school costs the more you disperse your dollars. And that dispersion can happen in a lot of different ways. But I think right now, we're dispersing too much.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I agree

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: with a lot of what you say, and I'm hearing from some high schools up in my more rural part that are ready to make that transition, I think, to consolidate and have those bigger high schools. And I think the mix of kids and what you said sort of about income levels is good. I was playing with them back this weekend and like definitely there are parts that I was playing with up near my area where you are not going to get anywhere close to, I couldn't get about 800 in one corner of the state, you know? And that was like a huge corner too. But I think that one of the things I'm really struggling with is like, does it have to be the same for everyone and everywhere if some districts are really willing and ready to take that step? But you know, I represented a couple of places where there is just real holdout. And part of that holdout is sort of community loyalty and history of having kept their school going for literally two hundred years. One of my high schools is celebrating its two hundredth freshman class. And I just, I wonder if there is room for most of the state or part of the state is ready to do this to do it while there can be some pockets of communities that say, everyone in this community agrees that this is not what we want and we are getting good outcomes and we wanna keep this going. I've heard the phrase thrown around that like, we can't rely on towns to close their schools because towns won't close their schools, but we lived in a democracy. Maybe that is the lesson. Towns won't close their schools, so towns don't close their schools. They chose not to close their schools. And so where is there room for that? I really want to be able to help the communities that are like, we absolutely want our small schools still. And I think that other schools, even near them, would still do it, would still consolidate. I think that's the challenge of a statewide head fund, the Brigham decision. Right, so we got to be realistic.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: And we are a representative democracy where we need to be making decisions for the good of the state and for the good of where we come from as well. So, in terms of addressing the very specific idea of regional high schools and all that, I find that the testimony that we had about the inability Virginians and Valedonia to get together. Because for a number of reasons, one, superintendents and school boards are very busy and don't necessarily have time to make it happen. We have a really voluntary system. Anybody can get together with anybody right now. People are sort of making entries to it, but not a whole lot happening. Now, even Virgins attempted it, but they went to the voters and the voters voted it down. Hence my bias toward broader government units because they have that that's a tool that allows those decisions to be made. And yes, a less democratic way. It is a board, is what we did under Act 46, and to me, Act 46 mergers have, and I know people will disagree with this, have been a proven concept. What I hear superintendents talk about the ability to have achieved significant one time savings and staffing, the ability to provide seniority for teachers so that if you're hired at a very small school, you're not the low man on the totem pole with always living inferior, you're gonna lose your job. The ability to move staff where they're best deployed. So that's where my bias comes from. And when we talk about larger regional middle schools and high schools, I think we probably could go around the table and say, absolutely everybody's in phase with that. How to take the concept and make it a reality. This is where I'm almost sort of like out of stuff to talk about and I really need everybody else to say, here is a specific proposal that I'd like the committee to talk about.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: I'm go back to that point Leanne made and likely my assumption is this is the place that everybody can love. You brought up healthcare being such a huge driver of the cost and education, as we all know. What about, and I don't know how this works, what about pulling that from the Ed fund goes to the general fund and then you instead of just doing the healthcare for public school, you make it a public healthcare where it's coming, so everyone who works for the state of Vermont, right? That turns into the new pool of healthcare, which now gives you larger quantities of saturation within it. Who makes those decisions? Know, that's a whole

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: another thing. We've been through the universal healthcare debate. We've been through the one year debate. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars and we are where we are today.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: I was just thinking just in the state of Vermont, like the employer, the state of Vermont, right? The public piece of it. Not like universal for everybody, but just there, like can that pool help lower the cost for both education and state workers?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think it's studied many times and I'm afraid the answer is not significant. No. I am incredibly sympathetic to the problem that healthcare is a major driver of education costs. It's a major driver of all costs. We're an old state, we're a high utilization state, we don't have a solution to it. Does that mean that we sort of sit on doing anything about education until we get that solved? That's the challenge with the calls for, go after the cost drivers. Don't do it till we have housing. These incredibly systemic problems that only a major demographic change can probably cure.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: More of a curiosity question.

[Emily Long (Member)]: Be a demographic change without some of those things in place.

[Robert Hunter (Member)]: It's all chicken and egg, absolutely.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That's exactly what I think it is. Yeah, it's just like the challenge that Leanne brings up about, you know, the old small school, small town, no school, the town just gets smaller or small school. Do people want to move into a school where their kid might be the only girl in third grade class of four boys? It's it's roadspoken all the different ways. Yes.

[Emily Long (Member)]: Can speak to that just a little bit? Because I know there's a general consensus, I think, in Vermont, I'm just gonna say, that small schools won't close unless they're forced to close. Communities won't close their schools. And that has not been my experience. I can sit here right now and say in my SU, we've closed one, we've closed two, we've got two more that are closing on the ballot in the next couple of months. They're being asked to they are asking. There's articles of agreement that means the town has to ask. And so I want to burst that consensus or concept that communities won't do it. I do deeply believe that Vermonters strongly support their public education system and want the best education for their kids. And they fight closing because they're hoping there'll be another help or support. But when that doesn't come, they close their school. And that's what I'm experiencing in And my it's painful and it's really challenging for a community. And people tell us the things that we've been hearing. I keep hearing, well, we could make this better just by tax policy. We could change our tax policy and help. Where's the help for us? We've done everything we can. We've cut, we've cut, we've cut, and now we And so I just want to acknowledge that there isn't just this wall all the time. I think people are grasping, trying to make it work for their community and for their kids. Accept that sometimes school can't stay open. And then I want to follow that with when a small school closes, the cost savings, they're not significant. They're a small school with a small budget normally. And so I want to bounce back to Representative Brady's discussion about middle and high. That is a different animal that we're talking about when we merge into regional middle and high schools. Much larger numbers, much larger budgets, but it's an investment and it's something that I think we can sell to our communities as a true opportunity down the road. I understand that it's an investment in cost, but I don't know how to sit here and let the Commerce Committee come up with a CTE proposal that doesn't include this committee's future conversations around regional middle and high schools, because I think this committee needs to really grasp that concept and see what we can do with it.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: How do we operationalize that statement? Here's what I Let me put this quick. Let's say I get hit by a bus tomorrow.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: Sorry, Chris.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: And this conversation needs to continue. What happens?

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: Well, becomes the new intern. I

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: mean, we can sit here and say, we believe this, we believe that. I almost feel like we should poll whether people just would like to do keep the status quo. Yes.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: I don't think that not going for the mass consolidation is the same thing as keeping the status quo. And I don't know what that means, keeping the status quo, because nothing that I've ever suggested has been like, it's not a thing to get you thing, but I'm not for sort of the changes that are on the table. So I feel like that's a message that's getting really confused when we're saying, let's change different things.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay, so we need specific proposals on the table to discuss.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Beth? So I

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: missed a lot of this conversation, so it may have been said before. Because the concern is the SUSD question was one of mine. And the other is the tuition piece, the designation piece, thinking of the region I live in. I'd like it to just go away. But if it's on the table still, I have two concerns for my region. One, can designated schools be out of state? Something of my border towns in Essex County that have no schools to pick from. I did have the same concern that three is not enough, again, Essex County where you have to tuition all K to 12, not just

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: high school. That's over giant geographic region.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: And then my third one about that, had one night, I just sort of lost it. Oh, that it's not just about geography, it's also about capacity. Because where I live in Linden, we don't have any public high schools. There is one twenty minutes away, but it doesn't have the capacity to take in 400 kids. So we have to have something in there other than just distance.

[Emily Long (Member)]: So

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: either tomorrow or the next day, I'll hopefully have some language that I can present that

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: think you're working with Angela.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I discussed a lot of that. But again, I'm not hearing a lot of love for the map.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: I haven't even gotten dug into the map because I

[Emily Long (Member)]: know the maps are not. I'm focusing

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: on policy more than I

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: just what I'm trying to do is. I need to report back to my superiors. Okay, how is your committee going to move forward Or is it going to move forward? Is there appetite to make change? If so, what is that change and how are we gonna make it? I think I've made my opinion pretty clear. Put a map on the table. I believe that we need to move to only in the February range and move away from choice. But within that, there's lots and lots to discuss, but I don't think I've sold any of you on these concepts. And so therefore, what's our next step as a committee?

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Could we look at a similar map that was not forced mergers, but was incentivized CISOs that sort of had the same order landscape and see what the cost savings would be?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: If you can take that and translate it into something that we could put on the table and discuss, absolutely.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: And then my other question is, is there any room

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I'd like to say, like the word incentivized. I don't know what that means in what you're saying.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Right. Well, mean, the study construction for the New York City.

[Robert Hunter (Member)]: That's that. Yeah.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: But is there also any room, I'm like trying to figure this out as I go. But you know, I was really stuck on your question, like what would a town do if it was one girl and six boys or if it was three kids left in the school and like the town doesn't want to put her children to school. First of all, I think I have more faith in the parents that would really push for that. But if that did happen, is there any kind of like a hybrid model in which we could treat that school in the same way we treat a non operating district and say, if your school falls below the average minimum class size, you have three choices, then probably the parents would choose other schools anyway until, and you have to make that decision at the beginning of the year or something until there was no class for them. I'm just starting to think of other ways we can do that so they could still choose to sell them to a bigger school if that happened.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I would say that goes to the broader question of, is that something that a school board decides about how it operates within its district? So like, for example, my school district just implemented elementary school choice.

[Emily Long (Member)]: Yeah.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: You know, That inter comes with some real risk because what do you do if one school is left with 30 kids? Do you send, know, anyway, but that's it.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Within that district, is there a way to make it so that yes, you have multiple schools within that district. So like, the kids could go to a different school because it's in the same district, but the district couldn't necessarily decide for that town to shut down their school. The school could still remain open until the town shut it down. I mean, that's basically representative of all bills that he presented. Like, could we consider that that even within if you moved to a district, the town still gets the final choice and whether this will actually get shut down?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That's certainly on the table. People want to do that, but that comes with risks as well. It is not an educationally viable school because of it and the town won't close it.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: That's true, but closing down an entire city forever also comes with huge risks that may last for decades or generations.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, I mean, is, I keep saying yeah, that's what we're dealing with in a state where we've gone from 93,000 to 82,000 in fifteen years. And I would say 123,000 to 83,000 in forty years.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Yeah,

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Some places even more dramatic changes than others. Conceptually, I am mostly in agreement with the things that you have put on the table as a package to me that are also in the map. I particularly want to dig into looking carefully at high schools and ensuring that we are maximizing the opportunity for regional middle and high schools in the near future. And I think district boundaries play largely into that. That I appreciate the tutorial here. I need to overlay that better. I think that the size and number is reasonable and is somewhat in line with what we've heard again and again about kind of loss level off after 2000 or what the BSA has recommended. So I'm broadly in what, again, would need to get much more particular. Again, if it's packaged with designation or contracting, and for me, some of the rules around what has to be the same if you're taking public dollars, what same rules do you have to follow will be important there, and then spell that some. And that we would go forward with some of those Cs or CSAs as another way to better regionalize some of our services and supports. My big asterisk is the facilities money. That's not your problem. But I would say in the suite of things you have put, am conceptually interested, but to me, they're bundled as a package. If you pick off one, it kind of syncs the package.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So we've got lots of blocks of time to continue this conversation all week and next week and the week after. I mean, the clock is ticking. We have a crossover thing. And so I guess, don't know what we're gonna talk about the next meeting, but we will get some reaction between then, so maybe that could help focus people. What I would say is, for those of you who would like to see us go in a different path, needs to be more specifics and you you know, you're probably going to need to spend some time with Beth or John to understand if what you're even saying is possible, given state statute, state law. We can change state law.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: Law, stop the constitutionality.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yes. Right. And, you know, we can sit here and talk about doing better for kids and all of that, couldn't agree more. But we also talk about affordability for Vermonters. When we talk about, can we just move the cost of healthcare out of the Ed Fund? Sure, still gotta pay for it with taxes. There's no easy solution here because all of it has to get paid for with taxes by the botters. And whether we do it at the general fund or through the Ed fund, it's all part of the affordability challenge that we have.

[Emily Long (Member)]: Yeah, I just want to We've circle around this constantly. How do we find a way to fund full construction aid? And I'm experiencing this all the time. There was a concept to close two out of three elementary schools in my region, and it couldn't be done and couldn't get support because there wasn't money available to renovate and add on to the one school, the only school that was available to do that, to be able to take the students from the elective schools. But there was a lot of community conversation about it because people wanted more opportunity for their kids and their concerns about traveling and all that. So I still think maybe we need to be saying that this is actually really important to us, and we want a dedicated fund. And we want to figure out what a timeline is going be for figuring out how to fund school construction aid. Because I can tell you, if there were some funds for that, communities will get on board for both consolidation of schools because there are other things that come with it, Increased opportunities for kids.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I'm gonna take the opportunity to take what you said. I think it's because you bring up something that I think we all agree on. Unless I see people saying, No, I don't agree that we need to fund school construction aid. So there's a real conversation about how we're gonna do that, which I That's what I'm asking. We're talking about buying down the tax rate with a lot of dollars. And we can put the concept on the table or something that needs to go to school construction

[Emily Long (Member)]: in

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: order to I'm trying to be specific here. And so, if somebody's got a number in mind, an idea of how do you maintain that year after year, let's talk about it. But I think at least saying school construction, it's gotta be part of the package. Some of us like me would say it's gotta be contingent. Others say perhaps not necessarily contingent, but let's try to make it happen. But at least there's, I think there's something we can put on the list of broad consensus. Making progress here, And that school construction date, I mean, we have set up a system for school construction. We have an advisory board that is in charge of sort of saying, okay, how do you build that out in a way that meets the objectives of the state? So maybe you just need to restate that the objectives of the state are regional high schools and middle schools and supporting efforts like you're talking about.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: So in Act 73, there are those carve outs for the four historical academies that probably wouldn't really be touched by this and wouldn't still function as the regional high schools anyway. I can't remember the language, guess I could go in and find it. Was there a specific worded definition of what makes it a historical academy, why there are only four?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So there's not, that's not in there. Okay. And I don't actually think it speaks to this at all.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: I thought I remembered us dealing with that.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: Tuitioning to out of state. Yeah,

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: it's about identifying which schools are approved

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: independent schools.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Language that kind of constricts it down,

[Emily Long (Member)]: think, or so. But,

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: yeah, Anyway, all right, everybody had enough?

[Emily Long (Member)]: Yeah, I don't think this was a I

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: think this was a good exercise.

[Emily Long (Member)]: I just want to say, I feel it feels like we spin our wheels a little bit here, but it's still a lot out on the table. Yes.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I have advised we have the competition. Frequently reminded of the episode of The Office where they're all at the beach and Michael's trying to decide who the next manager is. They have lots of big talks and Pam comes in and gives her a big speech and Michael says, yeah, I'm looking for somebody with sales experience, which is my way of saying looking for specifics. Yes. So it's Steve. All right. Thanks, everybody. It was in fact a good discussion. They moved the ball a couple of yards, but let's

[Emily Long (Member)]: go

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: with the bad