Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Welcome back to House Education, Wednesday, 02/11/2026. Continuing on with some more testimony from the Superintendent's Association and superintendents in the field. Now we're gonna turn to just some testimony, I would guess we could call it reaction to what we have been discussing in this committee in terms of both maps. I would say we don't need to get hung up on individual lines, but sort of the overall philosophies behind it and some of the policy that's on the table, which is also ever evolving. Chelsea, you're up first, probably since we started a new recording, we can have you introduce yourself again.

[Chelsey Myers]: Chelsey Myers, executive director of the Vermont Superintendents Association. And I'm going to have the superintendents that are on the call. Some of them are at conference this week, and some are still in their districts. You want to introduce yourselves, Ryan, Glenn and Jacket.

[Ryan Heraty]: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for having us. I'm Ryan Harity, superintendent of Elmore, Moorestown and Stowe, Lemoyle South Supervisory Union.

[Lynn Cota]: Good morning, everyone. I'm Lynn Cota. I'm the superintendent for the Franklin Northeast Supervisory Union. That's Bakersfield, Berkshire, Montgomery, Richford, Sheldon, and Enisburg.

[Patrick Reen]: And good morning, everyone. Patrick Reen, trustee for VSA and superintendent for the Mount Abraham Unified School District. That is Bristol, New Haven, Starksboro, and Moncton.

[Chelsey Myers]: Great. So thank you for inviting testimony on the district consolidation. We're gonna call it a conversation starter introduced last week by Peter Conlon. At the outset, the Vermont Superintendent's Association appreciates that this proposal reflects key elements raised repeatedly in our prior testimony, most notably a more reasonable attention to scale and a clearer focus on creating school district structures that are operationally effective and efficient in the context of Vermont. For BSA, this proposal represents an important turning point in the consolidation conversation. Earlier proposals, beginning with the five district concept, were nonstarters for our members. They failed to account for Vermont's geography, took scale too far, and would have effectively erased local governance while likely increasing rather than reducing costs for taxpayers. Those proposals did not align with how school districts actually function on the ground. This conversation starter strikes a more appropriate balance. It acknowledges the need for greater efficiency and effectiveness in governance and district operations while not moving so far away from local identity that communities feel disconnected from their schools. Democratically elected school boards continue to play a meaningful role in decision making and remain close to the schools and communities they serve. While we cannot speak today to the specific borders drawn in the proposal, we do recognize this as a far more earnest and grounded starting point. Even though we do not have a uniform solution to education reform that all super superintendents would support, given the context each exists within, BFA has been clear that change is needed. We will not oppose progress in the name of the way we have always done things. At the same time, we believe it is important to reiterate that district consolidation is not an end in and of itself. Consolidation must be a means to broader reform focused on achieving the right scale at every level, improving the quality and breadth of opportunities available to students, and ensuring that all students have access to high quality education regardless of where they live. We also want to acknowledge the proposal's general approach to contracting and designation. While we cannot yet speak to the specifics, we agree with the underlying recognition that Vermont's historic academies and certain independent schools have long played an important role in serving regions without access to local public schools. That said, preserving inefficient governance and operational structures solely to maintain access to independent schools should not be the policy goal. In other words, we should be looking towards other solutions to maintain those goals. We urge the legislature to explore alternatives to the supervisory union structure that respect the role of historic academies within the broader education delivery system while avoiding outdated structures that are not serving students or taxpayers well. Once again, I have to reiterate the idea that school districts are the most efficient governance model is a very commonly held belief by VSA superintendents, but is not unanimous. And I would also like to emphasize that there are some cases that superintendents would not be able to share publicly how they feel on certain topics, which is why they have me. As this conversation moves forward, VSA believes it will be critical to support policy decisions with careful analysis and data. In particular, we recommend further examination of the following questions. And once I'm done with this testimony, I really want to invite the superintendents on the call to talk about some of the logistics of what consolidation looks like, what data would be important to look at as well. But what new opportunities, programs, and efficiencies could realistically be achieved across larger districts by building on the strongest offerings that currently exist in individual systems? How will the transition be supportive for districts, families, students, and communities? How will governance be determined? What would the proposed districts look like from a collective bargaining perspective? And what would it take to align contracts across new districts, both monetarily and logistically? Given concerns about lower spending districts experiencing tax increases under Act 73, what are the projected tax implications of the proposed districts when interacting with the new foundation formula in the home site exemption? What debts and assets would each system be contending with? Some of these you could pull data right now to look at those questions. Another essential next step is being candid about the timeline and the scope of work required to successfully consolidate districts. Meaningful consolidation does not happen on paper alone. It requires time for governance transitions, contract alignment, staffing decisions, financial system integration, community engagement, and trust building. Superintendents caution that setting unrealistic timelines risks undermining the very efficiencies and opportunities consolidation is meant to achieve. An honest phased implementation plan will be necessary if this work is to be successful and sustainable. We also want to be very clear that school construction aid will be a prerequisite to the success of any meaningful reform. Without addressing the condition, capacity, and flexibility of school facilities, even the most thoughtful governance change will fall short. Our students deserve learning environments that support the educational opportunities policymakers are trying to create. I hear a lot about where that funding is going to come from. I will just make a plug for the fact that there's been significant buy downs year after year, which is important for taxpayers. But even setting aside some of that money year after year would have had a pretty significant pool of money. And it doesn't have to start big. I think people see a multibillion dollar price tag on school construction and get paralyzed and do nothing. And if we had started with doing something, even if it was small, and even if we leave hindsight behind, if we start doing smaller pieces now, even through competitive grant programs and things like that, we really have to incentivize this change through construction aid. We can't continue to let our buildings crumble. Finally, we want to address a recurring critique of past consolidation efforts, particularly Act 46, that promised savings and expanded opportunities were not realized. We hear a different story. I specifically hear a different story from superintendents who have experienced successful mergers. They witnessed reinvestment of resources into student opportunities, increased flexibility in staffing and building use, and more resilient systems overall. While education spending has increased statewide, there is no credible way to causally attribute the increase to Act 46 mergers. No one can say what education spending would look like today had those mergers not occurred. What is clear is that Vermont's current governance structures are overly complex and increasingly misaligned with declining enrollment. Performing those structures must be a part of a broader strategy to increase student opportunity, improve system sustainability, and provide long term relief to taxpayers. The public deserves to see a clear through line between governance reform and operational changes to improved outcomes for students and property tax relief over time. This proposal is an important starting point, and BSA is committed to supporting the work of the General Assembly as this critical work progresses. I want to turn to the superintendent so I think can share stories about Act 46, what consolidation actually took, thinking about data and the processes that I will take if you do move forward with a proposal like this and their own experiences. Wanna start? Patrick?

[Patrick Reen]: Where to begin? I guess the first thought on my mind really is the recognition of the challenge of redistricting as we're talking about right now. And also the acknowledgment that it is a step in the direction we need to go if we're really serious about addressing affordability, equity, and quality. Perhaps the most important and consequential steps are the steps that will follow redistricting. I'm concerned if we don't get past the redistricting hurdle, those next more consequential, more beneficial steps will be harder to take if they can be taken. So I wanted to sort of get that point in the room as we talk about the challenges, and the realities of that kind of district consolidation. I know, you know, Chelsea, I think spoke really well to many of the things that I experienced, as superintendent of the former Addison Northeast Supervisory Union that became the Mount Ebrahim Unified School District. The staffing flexibility, all those things Chelsea mentioned were very real for us. Costs continue to go up. So the idea that costs would go down, I think was perhaps misleading at times for folks, but they didn't go up as sharply as they would have if not for Act 46 for us. I've given presentations before, we've reduced 43 positions over the last eight years. We would not have been able to do that without the flexibility of being a school district, able to move staff across schools to meet needs of students while reducing staff to account for our declining enrollment. So we definitely bent the cost curve even though costs continue to increase. Maybe I'll pause there for others to insert their thoughts.

[Lynn Cota]: I don't mind jumping in. I think back to Act 46, I serve as a Supervisory Union Superintendent and I had two at a side by side structure. We had two merging boards, merging districts, and we also inherited another community from a neighboring supervisor union. So when I think back to made a list this morning of all of the things that had to happen before we were ready to go live, and I'm happy to share the details if you'd like them, and I'm sure it's not comprehensive, but we were working emphatically for months and months and months just to operationalize at the scale that we had. So there was a lot of work that had to go into that. I'm concerned about the timeline in merging these larger entities that there might not be enough runway to do this well. So I do hope that there are opportunities for us to give some really thoughtful feedback around what could be a more appropriate pace and timeline in order for us to be able to get everything in place from curriculum to assessment plans, to all of the business entity pieces, to aligning policies, to having the student information system, the financial system. And honestly, even the hiring of a superintendent. If any of these are sitting superintendents, they're going to be running their existing district or supervisor union while they're trying to stand up this new entity as well. And they aren't going to necessarily have a central office staff yet. They're going to have to work through all of those hiring pieces as well. So I guess the timeline is definitely something. Are we sticking at this point on the Act 46 implications? Or are you open to other thoughts?

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Do you have any thoughts you all have?

[Lynn Cota]: So I think before I switch off the Act 46 piece, I want to add to what Patrick said about saving money. One of the things many of you on this committee know my Chief Financial Officer, Morgan Daybell, and he took a look back on what we were paying for a family plan in 2018 and what we're paying for a family plan now. And that cost for those family plans has gone up 235% since 2018. So in terms of the notion that we didn't save money on consolidation, I think we need to take a look at all of the elements that have occurred over these last many years that have played into the cost of education in Vermont. One thing that I am hoping is going to happen is that as we move forward around district consolidation and shifting to a foundation formula, hope that there's a serious look at modeling the impact of the tax equalization on historically low spending districts and what that is going to do in terms of impact on taxpayers. I think that's a really important element to all of this.

[Ryan Heraty]: I would just like to add, again, we thank this committee for your work for Vermont and the conversations that you're having here are really critical to the future of our state. I've heard a lot of conversations about the need for modeling and really looking at leveling of contracts and what the cost implications will be of that. I think that the tax revolts of 2024 is one of the main reasons that we're having this conversation right now. And so we really wanna think about when we're making these decisions and if consolidation is a path forward, what will be the financial implications of that? In our Elmore Morristown school district here, we have a relatively low tax rate. We're a low spending school district. And I know that our community is really concerned about the impact of consolidation on the local tax rate. And so for us to support that, we'd really wanna see how that would play out and what the costs would be around that. And so there's two big questions that I would really encourage the committee to have around any discussions around consolidation. It's really, first and foremost, will this improve the quality of education? And second is, will this actually save money or stabilize property taxes? And I think if you look at the maps through those lenses, it can really bring up a lot of questions and make sure that whatever steps are taken are going to be a positive outcome for a lot of work, for a lot of effort, a lot of disruption to our education system. Over the past five to seven years in Vermont, we know that there has been many different changes to the financial systems, to the proficiency based grading system. There's so many different things that have been changed and adjusted from special education to the classroom grading systems, and it's a lot of change for our students, for our teachers, for our communities, And so we just ask that any change that's being proposed really is thoughtful and measured. And we know that based on the conversations you're having that you agree with those points.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Thanks very much. A little bit of a follow-up. There's a lot of call from really everybody to say show how consolidation will improve student outcomes. We can sit here and talk about how consolidation can lead to equity in funding. We can talk about how consolidation can give school boards tools to control costs better than they can today. But I don't know how or how would you suggest we could show that this will improve student achievement when it's really a bill designed to have more efficient governance with an eye toward providing more resources in the classroom. Don't know if we can make that final last mile leap and say, and those resources are guaranteed to provide higher student outcome.

[Chelsey Myers]: You all talk a lot about regional high schools and middle schools. And one of the things that was most striking to me is some superintendents shared their programs of study across different high schools and middle schools. And the differences there are really striking. I think that was a really big wake up call. Not that we need a wake up call, but the disparate opportunities across school systems is something to really be paying attention to. And does that mean that consolidation automatically reduces that? I don't know. But what we're doing right now, I will say there are very inequitable experiences across when you look at programs of study specifically and opportunities across school districts. Even if I draw attention to the chronic absenteeism conversation, there are some districts that are afforded 1 point whatever million dollars Wendy talked about to be able to address chronic absenteeism. That is not ubiquitous. Social workers in every school is not ubiquitous. And so we're talking a lot about will consolidation increase opportunities. I think we also have to be really serious about the fact that we currently don't have equity across opportunities and experiences now, too. But that's just my observation. I'm sure the superintendents have much more insightful things to share.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Well, think that's why I say I think we can make the case for increased equity and opportunity. It's making the leap to saying that that equity of opportunity also translates into better student outcomes. And that gets down to a level that we're not involved in. Of the things comes versus opportunity is challenging.

[Patrick Reen]: One of the things that's coming to mind for me, and this is something we struggle with in my district as we have, like we're engaged in conversations right now about potential school closure for two schools and sort of similar consolidation conversations on kind of the micro level that we're having at the state. It's difficult to imagine, we want to compare our potential future reality to our current reality, And that's an unfair comparison to be attempting to make. What we have to compare is future reality scenario A and future reality scenario B. Current reality isn't an option to maintain. So as we continue to face declining enrollment here in MAUSD and we continue to face staffing reductions effectively every single year, what we're able to provide for our students gets squeezed more and more every year. And when we project out ten years, if we continue on the trajectory we're on, what does that look like for students in terms of quality and outcomes versus what an alternative future might look like in terms of quality and outcomes? That's the comparison we need to be making because current reality is not an option. And and I guess to that point well, I'll pause there. I'll save that point for a little bit later.

[Lynn Cota]: I think I have a couple of points I would like to add. One of the things when we're thinking about student outcomes, one of the things that districts like mine struggle with is hiring and retaining staff. So it is rare that I'm able to hire teachers who are traditionally licensed. It's more common for me to hire someone coming outside of education, learning how to be a teacher while they're teaching in my classroom. And we know that the quality of the teacher is the single greatest indicator of students success. My teachers get trained up and then they're able to go a half an hour down the road and make more than $10,000 more per year. And so recruitment retention is challenging. In a larger district under a foundation formula, we would have more of an ability to get closer in terms of the staffing piece. And there's another element in here as well. I've spoken to colleagues about their MTSS system, a system that we build within each of our schools to support our students. And I wonder if there's research to be done there to be able to look at some of our poor communities that have the higher poverty levels. If we were to compare the level of staffing that they're able to budget for to build a strong MTSS system compared to some of the more affluent schools who in theory have students that are starting from a more advantaged position to begin with, I think you might find in that data that there might be a discrepancy between the depth of services and supports that are being offered in both of those scenarios. I know that there's just in a one on one conversation with another colleague about the level of intervention by way of example, in a like size system in that superintendent system compared to one of the buildings that I run. And it was pretty dramatic from eleven interventionists to three. So trying to navigate that with students who are starting from a more disadvantaged starting position, I think it's pretty telling. So I think that from my perspective, if we're able to right size that a little, I think that we're going to get better educational outcomes for our students.

[Ryan Heraty]: And I wanna make an effort to answer your question, Chair Conlon, about educational outcomes. And so just providing some nuanced perspective, we have two high schools in Lemoyle South. We have People's Academy and Still High School. Neither of the high schools could hold the high school the other high school, neither one has capacity to do that. In the proposed map, Lemoyle High School is also included in our region. Lemoyle doesn't have the capacity to hold any of the other high schools. And so I think what I would just advocate for is a more nuanced and surgical approach when thinking about the maps and thinking about the, potential for improved educational outcomes. Because if the argument is really about a regional high school that would provide more access to additional coursework or additional AP courses, when we look at Stowe High and People's Academy, both of those high schools offer about 10 AP classes. And yes, if we had a much larger high school, maybe the students would have access to 20 or 30 AP courses, but they're not asking for that. Our families, our students are not asking for those additional courses. And our students are getting into excellent colleges and feeling like they have a really high quality education. And so what our communities would be asking is, what is the benefit on the other side of this consolidation? How will this improve educational outcomes for our local communities? And so they're really gonna look at what their students have access to right now. And what we see is, we have 90% of our students participating in extracurricular activities, that's something they really view as very valuable. And so if that would shift or if that would change, if you increase transportation, if you those are all just things that our community is gonna be asking. And so I support the conversation and the dialogue, but I think Vermont is small enough, and that's our strength to really look at these situations from a nuanced perspective and think about whether or not it will actually benefit us in the end.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: You know, I think you bring up the point that we're gonna wrestle with, is that any new foundation formula financing system ultimately is gonna produce winners and losers. I can look at my own district. I think it's the highest spending Unified School District in the state. Clearly, a new foundation formula, it is going to receive less dollars. And yes, corresponding lower taxes, which might be very attractive to a lot of people. So there's a hurdle there, to say, well, everything we're doing is great and we can't lose anything. That doesn't help the other end that unless we just dump more money into the system, we have the other end that is saying, well, we need more and we're kind of counting on more in order to equal up. It's just what we're wrestling with. So I appreciate what you're saying. It's just the challenge of finding the balance of opportunity doesn't mean that everybody gets to maintain what they have without that costing us a lot more money. Representative Brady?

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Where do any or all of you see cooperative services fitting into the kind of future landscape here? Obviously, there was a strong recommendation from the redistricting task force around that as a kind of needed layer in our system to more quickly pool some resources regardless of district changes and probably even with some district changes. So I'd be curious where you see the opportunities, where you put that on the timeline, what concerns you have.

[Ryan Heraty]: I'm happy to answer that question. I think there's a lot of opportunity for cooperative services agreements across different regions. One of the main challenges that we have is really around special education and providing specialized services for our students. In smaller schools, sometimes we do not have the capacity to have very specialized programs for students that might need a different delivery system. And by regionalizing some of those services, I think we can improve the quality of that and reduce the cost of sending students far away. One of the biggest challenges that we have is that a student might have a need for a very specialized program that we can't offer. And those students are oftentimes on wait lists for two, three, four years. We've had students that have been on those wait lists. And so their quality of programming is really at a disadvantage. And so I think that by regionalizing those programs, we can really improve quality of education for some of our most vulnerable students. And also, I think it would be very cost effective. So I support that. I think there's a lot of opportunity for negotiating things like transportation across those regions as well. And so I think it's conversation we should be having more.

[Patrick Reen]: I would echo everything Ryan just said, and I sort of see that as a tool to move us in the direction that we're looking to go in terms of affordability, equity, and quality, not unlike redistricting as a potential tool to move us in that direction. A concern I have and and sort of a request, I guess, of the legislature would be, you know, when we get to critical decision points about providing tools to make the change that's necessary, important to see those decisions through because the concern is we don't take the action to provide the tools that are necessary to make the change while we do take action to continue to create the pressures where the only option you have is to make the change that you now don't have the tools to make. I have a fear that that could happen. Right? We don't act to create these regional cooperative agencies. We don't act to create new districts, but we do act to implement spending caps or we do act to implement a foundation formula that only exacerbates the challenges that I'm personally facing right now in our area to make the change that's necessary. So just try to avoid that scenario that would only make it harder.

[Chelsey Myers]: Just really quickly, like all legislation, right, the proof is in the implementation and the magic is in the supported implementation. You've had enabling legislation around BOCES for a couple of years now. And what I think about is there would certainly, I think, need to be tweaks to how that currently is structured. Bringing together a cooperative service agency is not a small feat. And when you think about the current legislation where you are bringing together multiple boards, so if you were to think of a region right now, and let's say we're going with the five CSUB model, you could be bringing together 30 boards to be establishing those CSAs, and that is going to take a lot of time. And so just thinking about the logistics of the enabling legislation around BOCES, I think is an important step if you are going to consider that direction is how are we making this as easy as a hard word to say, but easy as possible for successful implementation? Because if it was easy to implement, the enabling legislation would have seen more of those structures arise after you had passed that law. But I do still think that there is promise in the shared services. I just want implore you to think about implementation and how tricky that is. And if we're talking about bending cost curves and things like that, that's another one that is going to take time. And so we shouldn't be misleading to the public about that. And I do want to, for the record, say I'm sorry for my facial expressions. There's a lot of activity going on outside that window. It's still falling down.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Representative Harple?

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Well, in the explanation that you just gave, and thank you, because that is important to consider, You said though, if we go with five, like why, I mean, does it not really save money until we get that big with five?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Like this Five was just brought up because I was in the report.

[Rep. Leanne Harple]: Right, I know, but I'm saying that, so that

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: would be tricky, but would it be maybe less tricky if we're going with more and bigger or no, would be more and smaller CISAs?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So we haven't, we really haven't even developed that language for us. The question could be, we keep it the way it is. It's voluntary. It doesn't say how many, how big they have to be. But there's also nobody out there being its champion and organizer. It's ultimately a people management effort.

[Chelsey Myers]: You need to think about the talent pool as well. The beauty of CESAs is that you get very highly specialized professionals that will likely be pulled from school districts to form. And in areas where we already have staffing shortages like Lynn spoke to, it's just something to consider. The more that you have of that, you have to think about that talent pool and the number of specialized positions that you have available in that particular region.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Think it's also

[Lynn Cota]: challenging when we're thinking about reducing the number of districts in order to be operationally more efficient. I think that there's a fine line with the CISAs. I think that there's a good opportunity to gain some efficiencies, especially around the specialized areas. But I think we have to be careful also not to create so many that we lose that efficiency by having to pay for the creation of maybe not the right number of CESAs.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Do you have a follow-up

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: on that? Oh,

[Unidentified Committee Member]: it's not really a question. I guess just a follow-up thought. I think that's a really interesting point. So we heard that if we were to implement CISAs to achieve more efficiencies, like pulling staff, we don't want duplicative services at both levels. So it's sort of an interesting tension between pulling existing expertise from districts. But theoretically, I think we want to expand the reach of our most expert education leaders. So in a way, that's part of the design, I think. But it does create this sort of interesting implementation challenge where you're But I think we did hear really clearly, the thing you don't want is you don't want the expertise in the school district and necessarily the CSO. We have to make sure that we're putting the right expertise at the

[Chelsey Myers]: right level. Supplementing, not supplanting. Exactly, thank you. Not the call after special education. Yes.

[Patrick Reen]: I was thinking about it as pooling instead of pulling. Right? Pooling expertise versus pooling expertise.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'll let you go first.

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Representative Brady? So speaking of, Patrick,

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: could you see CSOs and new districts simultaneously? Is it like, I guess, where do you see the kind of order of operations here? Hearing what Chelsea says about see, says in our current system, you've got more boards to deal with to do that pooling.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Question.

[Patrick Reen]: Simultaneously makes me a little nervous because that's happening at the same time and just capacity to make that all happen.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yep. That's right.

[Patrick Reen]: And I could see pros and cons to either one happening before the other or after the other. There's something appealing about having moved to fewer districts before creating CSES because you have fewer entities to Lynn's point to collaborate to create this and to ensure that we are pooling and not pooling. Depending on that timeline, you know, the opportunities that could be created by these CSIS that maybe could get created sooner than the timeline to redistrict. I don't know that we'd wanna necessarily, you know, not consider that as an opportunity to pursue, but I guess I would slightly lean in sort of off the top of my head reaction to new districts than CESAs as maybe the better way to go.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Do you think it's sorry.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Go

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: ahead. Sense has been that despite the BOCES enabling legislation a couple of years ago, and then sometimes we hear like, well, you can do it now, but that's not happening around the state. The reality is because we are basically asking this giant question every day at the state level of like, what's our future state going be? Are we going to redistrict everything? That has pretty much shut down the conversation or the interest around the state, that has stifled us creating that enabling legislation. And the fact that we don't now have seven CSOs operating today is largely a consequence of the conversation of the policy decisions in the interim. Is that a fair that's my working belief. Is that a fair

[Patrick Reen]: So working the challenge, right, I could you know, spearhead creating a CISA with colleagues in Chittenden County.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yep.

[Patrick Reen]: And then three years from now, redistricting took place, and I'm in Addison County as a single district now, and all the effort we just put in to create this CISA now just gets undone because of the re the rearrangement of the districts, and now we've gotta create a new CISA with different teams. So I think that's where some of the concern is with the uncertainty about what the future holds. Holds.

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: But I just have to ask your thoughts on the there is a CESA or POCES right now taking place over two full counties. Clearly, no matter what our redistricting turns out to be, I doubt we're going to have, since we've already rejected the five district model, I think there'll be multiple districts within that. And I guess it's happening right now,

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I guess.

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: And I think that one started prior to this recent push.

[Rep. Leanne Harple]: Seven years ago, they started talking about this.

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: But I don't want it to be a barrier to having this conversation because it's ongoing through the district redistricting. They were only just now in November or whatever made of BOCES, approved the post, or January, approved.

[Rep. Leanne Harple]: State approved, yeah. I was just trying to understand if

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: you think the current policy landscape here is a barrier to on the ground

[Chelsey Myers]: collaboration and BOCES formation right now. The dynamic that's happening here. Yes. Yes.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Well, it's certainly not limited to forming BOCES. Well, construction decisions, even educational

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Being able to hire.

[Chelsey Myers]: Conversations with you all are very monumental to what's happening in school districts right now.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I just want to circle back to something that Lynn Cota said, just about it's important to know the tax implications of what we do with the foundation formula. That's gonna be a bit of a hard one in that it's almost it really is gonna depend on the excuse me, individual person. Because as we go to a new homestead exemption model rather than a homestead rebate model, everybody's situation is gonna be a little bit different. And that it's almost you know, we can only sort of say that in general, most Vermonters will come out better than going into it if the second home tax yields what it says it's gonna yield and and all of that. So I just put that out there as, you know, as challenging as it is to say we can guarantee it's gonna improve student outcome. I don't know. I think I can pretty solidly guarantee it's going to at least stop the decline in student opportunity and hopefully improve opportunity for students, taxes are going to be more individual.

[Chelsey Myers]: You are a school board member. That's exactly what happens now, right? Like, it's different. Like, they say, if you own a home of $300,000 and your income is this, then this is what your tax, that tax looks like. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I hope that the nuance doesn't get in the way of trying to model the implications because there are a lot of worried people out

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think it's fair to say that if your district starts receiving more money than it is currently spending, pressure on taxes will be upward, and your foundation formula creates less money than you're receiving now, taxes will be going downward pressure. But again, it depends on each individual circumstance. Now go ahead, Lynn.

[Lynn Cota]: I just wanted to reiterate what Chelsea said. I know it will be challenging, and I know that we have some really incredibly bright people in the state that can come up with a variety of ways to model that out. I know that that part is very scary for some of the communities that are really low spending now. While we're talking about this, I just want to say I don't envy the position you're all At the same time, want to thank you for taking that first step to get us moving into a direction to consider a map to get us started. It's not lost on me that the conversations that you're having are hard now and down the road, we're going to be faced with hard conversations too around scale at all levels. And I don't think this is unlike conversations that have happened in Vermont for generations. If you go back to the early 1900s and then again in the 1960s, there were people that didn't want their children to go to school with, I'll use one of my towns by way of example, there was a West Hills School and there was a North Hills School. And I think there were 15 others in this one small town and they didn't want their kids to go to the same schools, but they merged into the larger schools. People got over it eventually and they had better opportunities. So I know we have some tough roads ahead with the district and other scaling up at all levels that we've got to work through. But I think I just hope we continue with the forward momentum. And I hope that we continue to help try people to see the outcomes both on taxation and on opportunity for students.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That may be the perfect comment to end this on, unless there's any other questions.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I have a quick question.

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, go ahead.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'm wondering, this is a question for Lynn. As we talk about moving forward with school districts only and not supervisory unions, would you comment on that from your perspective?

[Lynn Cota]: I think that it makes sense to have school districts only. I think that there's a lot of things that we have to duplicate. I have a supervisor union right now, I have three boards, and I have colleagues that have far more than three boards. So we run multiple payrolls, we run multiple audits, we have just duplicate so many things. I think that operationally it's much more efficient. I think the greatest part about moving from a supervisory union to a supervisory district is it reduces the barriers of flexibility. So being able to make both financial, like resource decisions and human resource decisions without the barrier of running multiple districts could allow us to become much more efficient. And I think it could help us to become, to create better opportunities for students because right now I can look at scale and I can look across those existing districts, but I can't look across the supervisory union, which makes it challenging. So I think it makes sense. I think that the language that you put in around the designation contract makes sense because I do think that there's a role for those historic academies. And I think that some of the language or some of the reasons that people have shared around protecting supervisory unions has been around choice. And I think that there are parts of the state where the historic academies are really important and the idea of the designation contracts still allows that to happen, especially in the areas that don't have access to public high schools. So I believe that moving to districts makes a lot more sense.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Thank you, Lynn. Ryan, would you also comment?

[Ryan Heraty]: Yeah, I'd be happy to comment on that. I think there's pros and cons to both. And I think that it's important to have that conversation honestly. We have a supervisory union. We have been a unified union, we were a supervisory union, then a unified union, now back to a supervisory union. And so I've lived both the district, unified district and the supervisory union model. I can tell you from an efficiency standpoint and from superintendent standpoint, it's easier and more manageable to navigate a school district. I think financially it is absolutely, as Lynn mentioned, easier to be more fungible with your resources and make sure that as needs arise, you can allocate resources where they're needed. And so I think there's a big benefit to that. Managing multiple districts simultaneously creates a lot of redundancies in accounting in our business operations. And that's a fact. There's also some costs associated with borrowing money and carrying money over short term when you're operating multiple districts where you have to take on debt temporarily, where you wouldn't have to do that in a district, and that's a cost to our taxpayers. At the same time though, in a supervisory union, we also need to acknowledge that there is more local voice and the school boards are able to have a lot more say into their individual schools and feel more connected to those decisions as they're being made. And so, there is a value around that that we need to discuss openly and think about if we move away from that, what are we losing and what does that mean? And one of the reasons that Stowe, I think the primary reason that Stowe voted to withdraw from the joint district was around school construction and getting a bond passed. And so what they had said at the time was that they didn't think they could get a bond passed if they were in a larger district, and the students in the other towns wouldn't have access to the school that they were bonding for. It ended up that the bond didn't pass based on a lot of different factors. It's just, those are things that need to be considered when you're having that discussion.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Thank you. So, Linda, unless it's quick, I'm gonna need to call it here because our time is running past.

[Lynn Cota]: Could I just give you two quick pieces? It's super quick. Supervisor unions are not allowed to borrow money and they're not allowed to own property, so those are two other reasons why they are less efficient. So we are leasing spaces where if we were a district, we could own those spaces.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Thank you. Okay, thank you all very much, as usual, for your very insightful words and commentary. We're gonna jump right into our next sort of This is a a little bit of presentation, a little bit of Q and A, and frankly, little bit of follow-up on some of the comments we just heard. Come join us, Julia, if you would. So, I have asked JFO to join us today to sort of talk about the work on the foundation formula, the sort of work to date, but work that's still being done, and really open it up to everybody. If you have questions, we can talk about what has been modeled, what is yet to be modeled, what needs to be decided before any more modeling can actually take place. With that, it's all yours.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Thank you. Good morning. I'm Julie Richter with the Joint Fiscal Office. As the chair mentioned, he asked me to come in and do a brief review of the foundation formula. I'm not planning on walking through a slide deck unless that's helpful. An update in terms of the work that's ongoing about the foundation formula and financing from the JFO perspective. And then also to talk about any of the questions that you all have or questions about modeling. So, Chair Conlon, would you like me to dive into the foundation formula and review or talk about modeling? Where would you

[Cami (Cammy) Naylor]: like me to begin?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I don't know if I have a strong opinion here.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Okay.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Then I'll jump into it. If I'm going too weedy, let me know. Live in the weeds. And if I'm not going weedy, I'm not always happy to go deeper. So Act 73, as you'll recall, it contingently created the foundation formula and many other financing aspects. A lot of that work of course, was done outside of this committee. And so as a reminder, before we talk about the ongoing work, a reminder of really what Act 73 included. So it contingently created this foundation formula that we're talking about. That's funding that's based on a statutory base amount that's increased by inflation. And then that base amount is applied to a school district's weighted student count. So there are those weights for students from certain circumstances that the evidence shows cost more to provide education. And that funding of the base amount times the weighted pupil count gives us the education opportunity payment, the EOP. The other piece of that too are grants. There's a small school grant. I know you're all familiar with this. You've heard testimony earlier, a small school grant and a sparse school grant. So assuming that a school district fits or a school fits into the criteria established as a two part test for the small school grant and or the sparse school grant, there's additional funds included in the education opportunity payment for that school district.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yep.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Clarifying question. So it's not part of the weighted? Correct.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: The weighted is our current system. Correct. Yeah. So under current law, we have tax capacity weights, and there is a weight for school districts that are considered sparse. So every student that is within a sparse district gets a sparse weight. And then there's also small school weights. The policy decision was made last year, instead of including that in the weighted pupil count, to instead create a grant for students enrolled in those schools. Well, it's like a school district based off of the students enrolled in schools.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Is it fair to think of those grants as off the top of the head fund in terms of that phrase we use?

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I really appreciate that question because the foundation formula really changes that. The whole intuition of off the top of the education fund is gone. And that's because under current law, the way that the financing structure works is there are these state categorical aid programs like special education, universal meals that are equally impacting all districts' property tax rates, regardless of how many Those are not the local decisions. And then there's the school district budgets that assuming they're approved by voters, we then subtract all of the offsetting revenues and get the education spending term. And that's used in the determination of a local homestead tax rate. So that's where we sort of see the difference in like off the top of the education fund versus education spending. In the foundation formula, there is an established equation where it's here's our base amount increased by inflation. It's a school district's weighted pupil count. Here is the money associated with those small and sparse grants. And that is what's flowing to the school district. And all school districts will have the same equalized homestead property tax rate, non homestead property tax rate and non homestead residential property tax rate. So we're really it's a real significant financing shift.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Redone. So the small school grants and the sparse school grants, so it would be possible to be both, right? And so under our current construct, and if we ship to the foundation formula, the money is still flowing to the school district, right? It's under the foundation formula or am I Yes. Okay.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I think this is your question. Tell me if I'm not answering it. It's determined at the school level. If that school qualifies as small and or sparse, it could be both. Then it qualifies for the grant, but the grant flows to the school districts along with the education.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Precisely my question. Thank you.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So it creates this foundation formula, which includes the base, the weights, and these small and sparse grants. It also creates something called supplemental district spending. So another part of the financing mechanisms that were established in Act 73. And essentially what that does is it permits school districts to spend up to a capped amount above their education opportunity payment, kind of, we'll talk about that in a second. And it needs to be approved by voters. And that cap, that supplemental district spending is determined by the number of students in the district. So the more students that exist in a district, the more a school district can put to voters to spend in supplemental district spending. That supplemental district spending is paid for by something called the supplemental district spending tax. And we can get really weedy, but I'm gonna say high level for now. Essentially, the way that the supplemental district spending tax works is it equalizes the tax rates across all school districts based off of the school district with the lowest grand list value per pupil. So what does that actually mean? It means that the more significant difference there is in property value per kid of school districts, the more funds are going to be recaptured from the school districts with the higher property value. So if everybody had the exact same property value per student, there would be no money recaptured at the state level. But the more significant the variance, the more money that's gonna be recaptured at the state level of those higher grand list value districts.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Can I ask for a question? The

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: cap, the supplemental spending cap, is based on the number of students without weights. Correct. Correct.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So that's the supplemental district spending in a nutshell. And then the other financing change, there are a lot of financing changes. I'm trying to hit like the big picture ones are the property classification changes, right? So establish it, breaking out that non homestead property classification under our current financing system. We have homestead, which is where you live and the surrounding land and non homestead, which is literally everything else that includes second homes, deer camp, parking lots, businesses, you name it. Act 73 splits that and says essentially those non homestead properties that someone could be living in full time, but is not, that's subject to a different tax rate. And Act 73 also created the homestead exemption. And I came in at the tail end of your conversation and you're talking about income sensitivity. This is replacing the current law income sensitivity. Essentially what it's doing is based off of a household's income, they can exempt a certain portion of their homestead property from property tax. So essentially, if the household has lower income and they would then qualify for saying, okay, we're gonna take off the first X percent of our property value. So we're only gonna be taxed on a portion of our homestead property rather than the entirety. And that creates a system where when property taxpayers go to vote on supplemental district spending, they will know exactly the tax rate they are voting on. And we will be able to better explain how a person's overall property tax is calculated. There no longer will be two rates on two different bases like we have under the court law.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Is that exemption based solely on income but not wealth?

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I guess I'll provide a very nonpartisan staff answer. It depends on how you define wealth. That's challenging term to define. It's based off of household income. So that's essentially the sum of all of the income under one roof. It's not factoring in some of the components that you all often talk about when talking about wealth. I will say that because it's based off of a household's property value, it is capturing the property wealth as well as the income. But other assets, for instance, stuff that you have sitting in your Roth are not gonna be included in that calculation. Okay, so that was sort of the whirlwind big picture financing changes that I thought would be helpful to provide a brief overview of. All of those pieces, among others that I didn't speak to, are subject to contingencies. So they're only gonna come into effect if these contingencies are met that I know you've all been talking about. The contingency that's been talked about more broadly are the new school districts being operational. There's another piece of it that is the General Assembly has received this report that JFO was required to contract for in Act 73. Shall I keep going? Is this the right level? Okay. So we've got the new school district boundaries as one contingency, and then we've got this report as the other contingency. And so JFO was charged in Act 73 of going under contract with a consultant or consultants to examine a whole host of outstanding questions or pieces that the General Assembly felt needed further diving into that. And those charges were included for us within Act 73. So JFO recently executed a contract, the entire contract was awarded to American Institutes for Research, AIR. And that report is due to come back to all of you in December. We had an extensive review process for that, which included the RFP questions. Then we sent out identical list of follow-up questions to the bidders. We had a panel interview. We did reference checks. So a lot of work and we have landed on AIR. And that scope of work really is reflective of what Act 73 charge. So that includes revisiting the special education weights to move from disability category to services. I have the scope of work open, so I'm gonna, don't wanna forget anything. Recommending any updates to the foundation formula determined to be empirically necessary for an adequate and equitable education and taking into account cost savings generated by new larger consolidated districts. Task three is for the contractor to recommend suitable geographic measures for determining sparsity within the foundation formula. So getting deeper into that sparsity grant, how should we consider sparsity? Task four is to determine whether it costs more to educate a secondary student than an elementary student in Vermont. And if so, for the contractor to recommend a weight to capture that cost differential. Task five is to recommend how to account for the provision of career and tech ed, CTE, in the funding formula. So both how to account for it, should it be a categorical grant, should it be a weight, and also how much. And then to recommend any other updates or changes that are a ripple effect from any of their findings and tasks in the earlier tasks that I just laid out. In addition to that, our contractor is required to train both GFO staff as well as AOE staff. In all of the analyses, the consultant updates, the consultant identifies needs to be updated in the future. So essentially, the consultant is gonna say every X number of years, we would recommend that the weights and base are recalibrated. Here's how you do that. Here's the methodology. And then JFO and AOE will be trained for the consensus process to do that. And then finally, they'll be providing legislative testimony after their findings. So that's really big picture where we are at within the process.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Would any regional differences or impacts beyond I see it sounds like one specific to sparsity, say, of living or cost of competing, leveling up of contracts, would that fall under that number six other ripple effects? Or would that need to be spelled out explicitly if the legislature wants more information Yeah, on

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: that's a great question. I think it will depend on what the contractor finds. I don't want to speak for them and their work, especially because they're really early on. I think they will, or not, I think they will be identifying places, and this is also included in the contract, where they recommend there's additional analysis or points that they would raise for us to consider. We have a weekly standing meeting with a contractor. We're in the process of setting up a meeting with the agency of education. So it really is an iterative process in terms of understanding where the contractor's at and the work that they're doing. And it's also a third party contract. So we can't tell the contractor, Here's where we think you should land. They're gonna land somewhere, and that's for them to stand behind.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Let me just see if I had anything. That's what I had planned in terms of the quick JFO review to help re ground the conversation or remind you all in terms of what we're doing. I'm happy to talk about modeling or switch to questions, whatever.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think that would be great to talk about modeling a little bit. We have called for it. We also know that you can't model something that you don't have.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes. So I did make a few notes and I will admit I have not watched all of your conversations and testimony. I'm trying to keep up, but we're all busy. So I think there's a couple of pieces that are helpful to think about with respect to modeling and analysis. Big picture, one of those is there is a significant amount of work and modeling that we have already done and that we have presented throughout last legislative session, worked on over the summer, and continue to work on now. I also wanna know where the fiscal Is the sister office to legislative council? As you know, you may work on language that never sees the light of day with legislative council. The same is true for our office. So. Just because I'm not talking about something in testimony does not mean that it's not being worked on. I guess that's one thing that I would say. Another thing I would say is that outstanding policy decisions really matter. And one of the questions is, one of the things I've been hearing is we need modeling for maps. And my response is, well, what maps do you want me to model? I think the district builder tool is really helpful to understand some of those preliminary questions. And when we get into how things will shake out for maps, first, would need to know what maps are being considered. And then what are the questions associated with those maps that we want, that you all need answers to? And in some of those cases, we don't know. And those are questions for the field. How would a foundation formula impact their school district budgets? I can talk about at the aggregate level, what it would look like in the state, how the mechanics would work, but in terms of local funding decisions, that's gonna depend on the school boards. The other sort of outstanding policy decisions are there are a number of other pieces within Vermont's education financing structure that still haven't been sorted out within Act 73. So some of those questions of categorical aid, right? Transportation, special education, pre K, like looking at that intent list just within Act 73, all of the policy decisions that are made related to each of those outstanding decision points, of course, will impact the fiscal picture. I know you all know that, but I think it's helpful to remind that. And then lastly, the findings of the contracted study that I just spoke about. So part of that contracted study is for the contractor to take into account cost to estimate and then take into account cost savings of new consolidated districts. One of the conversations that we're having and that we're thinking about is to the point of we can't Well, it won't be me estimating it, but the contractor can't estimate cost savings of new districts if they don't know what those new districts are going to be, because those lines really do matter, as I know you all know more intimately than I do. So to that end, those are the kinds of conversations that we are continuing to monitor and meet with our contractor to talk about in terms of the work they can or cannot be doing in terms of that task. And lastly, going a little bit more deeply into one of the questions that I came in on the tail end of is in terms of the intuition of the overall impacts of the foundation formula. I just wanna reiterate what Chair Conlon said, the intuition of those impacts really does hold true. That if you have a foundation formula that's bringing everybody based off on their weighted student count to the same level of funding per weighted student, the school districts that have higher spending per weighted pupil now are going to be receiving less under the foundation formula. And the districts that have lower spending per weighted pupil are going to be receiving more. Those districts that are receiving less before supplemental district spending will also see a lower property tax rate because we're pulling that rate down. Those districts that have a lower per pupil spending and are going to see an increase in funding are going to see a higher property tax rate. And that modeling and those spreadsheets I presented last year in the Senate. So those are my list of prepared comments.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Go ahead. I have several.

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: You have several? Okay. Go ahead. So this might be very overly simplistic. Well, I guess there's two parts to it. So when we talk about, obviously, would need to know the district size and the boundaries in order to understand the costs, savings or the efficiency that it could. Is that efficiency going to be baked into the base foundation formula?

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: It will be included in the report that we will come back to you, or the contractor will come back with in December. The contingency is just for you all to receive the report. So you'll receive that report, which will include those estimated savings and then a recalculated base and weights corresponding with those estimated savings. It'll then be a policy decision. Do you want to amend Act 73 to change those numbers?

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Just one quick follow-up. So if we assume, if we go under the assumption that a larger district is gonna have more cost efficiencies and savings, then we absolutely will need to know how big these districts are gonna be and how many districts are gonna be in play in order to get to a foundation for me.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I mean, I guess I would say the more precise information that we have and the contractor has, the more precise answer and findings they can make. If there aren't district maps, of course, are all policy choices that I know you all know. We will then need to work with our contractor to help them figure out how can they best respond to that task within the scope of work if there isn't a map for them to be analyzing?

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Representative Brady, Representative Brown. So is

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: it possible then to model the PC map versus, like, you know, FY '25? Is that something we can get a rough

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I guess Or is

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: a real map on the table?

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: What does model mean? Like, when I hear we need modeling, like, what what is what is needed? I

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: guess what would be the district's allocation, their foundation for me their EOB this under this map, given the because then that would allow us to compare to what it's like in current conditions and see where there's

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes, that is feasible with the huge caveat that we still don't have the small or sparse by necessity hammered out. And because of the outstanding policy choices related to categorical aid, it would come with like a highlighted bold caveat that says this is not capturing the entirety of the estimated funding going to that district. So it may seem that a district will be receiving less or more. But until we know all of the pieces of the foundation formula, we won't be able to say that with certainty. And if that is what is meant by modeling, absolutely. And I don't know if actually if the Does the district builder have long term weighted ABM by the school districts?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I don't think district builder does. Oh. It's just ADM.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Okay, so all to say, if it had long term weighted ADM, which I guess it doesn't, it would be a very simple calculation. That is the foundation formula at its core is quite simple. You take the long term weighted ABM and you multiply it by the base amount, and then you add the small and sparse grants. So that's why I'm asking. But yes, we can follow-up with that.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: And then I guess if folks want to say, am I going to be better off or worse off, then you look at your current within those drawn lines, current spending is current today? Yes,

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: you could do that. And my hesitancy is that because there are outstanding decisions, our office has produced these comparison tables and we can do them. They need to be approached with caution because the education spending and the education opportunity payment are not apples to apples. They may be, but the decisions haven't been made yet to determine if they are apples to apples. So we can look at them and that will provide insight with caution.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'm sorry. Oh, no, it's okay. So you said that part of the charge of the contracted study was once we have new district lines, was to sort of estimate the cost savings of those new consolidated districts. And can you say a little bit more about what that analysis looks like? What data do they need to pull from the field to do that? Because I think just in my own mind, I'm thinking with consolidated districts and then there will cause operational changes in the field. Until we know what that looks like, I'm just confused about how they would model that. And maybe there's some sort of standard assumptions that they work with. Can you shed any light on that process? I will say I'm

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: not able to shed as much light as probably you're hoping for because it will depend ultimately on the contractor's work. That was a direct The language that we include in the scope of work is verbatim what was included in Act 73. So Act 73 required the contractor to look at cost savings from new consolidated districts. And so they will be The way that the analysis works is it's cost function analysis and resource analysis and working with Vermont data, meeting with certain professionals in Vermont to better understand it. When they've done that work, I'm happy to have them come in and talk about it in more detail. Included in the contract and the scope of work requires the contractor to include a detailed list of all of their underlying assumptions of the analysis, the data use, and their methodology so that it can be replicated. So once the work's been done, we'll be able to say exactly here were the assumptions. So it's not as if they have to wait for the change to actually happen before they can analyze it. They're gonna sort of proceed based on past experience and what that sort of organizational efficiency has looked like elsewhere. Yeah, exactly. And they've done a number of these financing studies in a number of other states. So they're well versed in this kind of work.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Just

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: quickly, and I think I got most of it out of what I just heard. But in a nutshell, we're being asked many times as legislators that where's the modeling. And everybody is making an assumption that once we have a map that we've come to some agreement on, let's just say we've come up with a map that we've come to an agreement on, that then we could do the modeling based on that map. But decisions that need to I'm I'm really there's a number of other decisions that need to be made, and that report needs to come back in December before we can even model whether the districts that we've already agreed on are actually going to produce what we, are hoping to get out of it, which is multiple factors. Is that essentially it?

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I would say there are a lot of outstanding questions that we would need to understand the answers to, to provide some of the analysis. And I will admit this is coming from my background in economics. I hear the request for modeling. I don't know what modeling always means. And I think that people within the building and within Vermont, just in general, use the term modeling to refer to very, very different things. And so I think from my perspective, we the more can understand what exactly are the answers that people are trying to get at, the more we can help you get at the answers to those questions.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: This committee is definitely emphasizing being more specific.

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: And if I could just say, it's not only the data points that you're asking that need to identify before modeling can take place, because how can we do modeling it at all, knowing all that information? But it's also, I'm asking more about the timeline of the ability. I just want to make sure everyone understands the timeline of what we're getting into in this Act 73 process. And I'm not sure that we all here and in Vermont understand about that time. It's not specifically about the data points and the modeling. It's how they all unfold in what order. And so you helped a lot with that today. And it's been a little bit of an eye opener

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: for me. So thank you. Yes.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Am I correct in that the foundation formula as it exists right now in Act 73, obviously, is based on lots of assumptions about our system. Labor is the biggest one, that it's using a statewide average for teacher salaries in terms of that cost piece of the foundation formula? I can tell you where my thinking and concern goes with that, but I

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: guess I can just ask the question. I would say I would need to go back and review the specific inputs. I don't wanna say which specific input was or wasn't used. I can definitely follow-up. I'll send the memo to Matt that outlines the modeling. That work, I wanna clarify, and I know this is not what you're asking, was not a simple average of how much it costs to educate in Vermont. The work is a regression cost function modeling, which essentially looks, it's in a econometric tool, looking at the existence of significant or not significant relationships across the state in comparison to a number of different factors while controlling for others. So it's not taking an average and saying, on average, Vermont is spending X number per pupil, this is what our base is going to be. And the work that's being done by the contract follows the same, uses the same methodology where it will be looking at I was just actually looking at their data requests. We're meeting with the agency within the next few days to walk through their data requests. And it includes at the school and district level, the FTE counts in different positions over from 2017 to twenty twenty five and the salaries associated with them and the benefits and all of these district at school level data points. Did that answer your question where you were going with

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: it? Sort of. I think what because we worked so much on the policy side and then things moved pretty quickly on the money side. Obviously, there's been much discussion of small, sparse. There's another end of the spectrum where there are some pretty stark cost of living differences that would directly impact the cost of labor in parts of the state that also tend to be more at scale and have class sizes right around or above the minimums that we're putting in.

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: And so I

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: don't understand all of the sort of number crunching that will go on, but it leaves me concerned that the only thing that those districts will be able to do is to cut, that it will force them into a place where significant cutting is the reality because of what salaries are, what the cost

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: of living is, and what efficiencies already

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: exist and cannot be squeezed out of the system. And so the only thing left is cutting.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: No comment. That this gets back to exactly the piece of outstanding policy choices. Thank

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: you. You came on short notice and that this was really helpful. And these little refreshers we may just continue with as we go.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. Yeah. All the modeling that exists is where, like what's the best place or the analysis, the things you did at the end of last session? Is it on the page?

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Is there a particular place that's best to go find that stuff? Yeah, we did put together at the end of last session a website on that had broad strokes of H450 for modeling at the end of last session. And then it's it's it ripples out through all of the committees. We haven't aggregated all of it in one place, but I'm where staff let us know if there's something specific you're looking for or let Matt know. And I can coordinate with Matt. We can always come back and talk through any of this if that's helpful. The follow-up about the modeling in the formula as it passed last year's would be great. Yeah, I've got the modeling memo with an arrow next to it, which I'll follow-up with.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Essentially, we might even get a one on one explanation of that.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: All right, thank you very much. Yeah, super. Thank you. Committee, is everybody okay if we just press on? To If you step out, go ahead and step out, but time is tight here. Okay, why don't we get rolling? We now are welcoming folks for Disability Advocacy Day. Sarah? Sarah here?

[Cami (Cammy) Naylor]: I believe Sarah is still at the back.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Okay,

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: so essentially, whatever way you guys would like to present, it's entirely up to you. If you would like to have multiple seats up front, you're welcome to. Really, the floor is yours.

[Cami (Cammy) Naylor]: When Diane and Sarah are here, I'm happy to have them join me.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay. So we're just waiting for them to arrive? Yes. I In

[Cami (Cammy) Naylor]: don't know about Diane. I know Sarah is in the building.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay.

[Cami (Cammy) Naylor]: Would you like me to proceed with my Sure.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That'd be great. Yeah.

[Cami (Cammy) Naylor]: Thank you. Good morning. For the record, my name is Cammy Naylor. I'm a staff attorney in the Disability Law Project at Vermont Legal Aid. You received my remarks. I hope that they're posted. I am going to read from my remarks and expand on them in a couple of particular places, but I welcome any committee questions on our perspective. Good morning. Thank you for having us today. My name is Cami Mailer. I'm a staff attorney at Vermont Legal Aid. Vermont is the Legal Aid is the oldest and largest provider of statewide free legal services in Vermont. I work in the Disability Lab Project within Vermont Legal representing individuals with disabilities whose civil legal needs are related to their disability. The majority of my work involves representing students with disabilities in education related matters. Thank you for the opportunity to draft your committee as part of Disability Advocacy Day. The theme of Disability Advocacy Day is write disability rights into every bill. Given all of the work your committee is considering, I think that is particularly important. The Disability Law Project at Vermont Legal Aid is a sub grantee of Disability Rights Vermont. Through our relationship with Disability Rights Vermont, the Disability Law Project advocates for children with disabilities and education matters. Our efforts on behalf of children with disabilities involve both direct representation and systems advocacy. Requests for representation in educational matters represent over half of the requests for legal assistance we receive in the Disability Law Project. In the last two years, due to changes in our staffing and increased case needs, we have played a less active role in the legislative process, and we deeply appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today. It is our perspective that the importance of addressing systemic challenges in the delivery of education and special education in this moment cannot be overstated. At the federal level, we are witnessing a systemic dismantling of long held systems responsible for supporting and enforcing the rights of children with disabilities. At the state level, there is a forceful call to transform our educational systems and structures to address ever increasing costs. Last year, through Act 73, this body commissioned a legislative report on the current state of special education delivery. The report identified a variety of specific concerns and pressures impacting special education service delivery in our state. As your committee considers the ongoing educational transformation work, we ask you to hold and understand that from our perspective, addressing the pressures on the special education system in Vermont require holding schools accountable, which also means making sure that they have meaningful support, to see students with disabilities as students first. In recent years, we've observed significant discussion and concern over the rising costs of special education expenses and extraordinary costs. While I do not have the data available, we encourage you to consider the cost of special education and extraordinary costs not in isolation, but in comparison to the overall education spending trends to better understand how these costs are increasing relative to general education expenses. We believe that considering special education costs in a vacuum contributes to a red herring that children with disabilities are driving an education cost problem. While aspects of special education are separate and distinct from general education, The rights of students with disabilities are inseparable. Special education must be considered as part of the whole, not an entity of education unto itself. We love the work the agency of education has done to elevate their special education team within the agency. This is an important step towards ensuring our schools are supported to take meaningful steps to dismantle the general education and special education divide. To give you an illustration of the general education and special education divide, I want to talk about modifying instruction and modifying assignments. Many students have different learning needs but are included in general education setting, and that's where they receive their first instruction. Often their IEPs call for modified instruction and modified assignments. But general education teachers don't have the resources or the qualifications, in some cases, to modify those assignments. And for special education teachers, while they have qualifications, they're not given the time to meaningfully work with general educators to make sure that the assignment, the instruction is meaningfully modified, the assignments are meaningfully modified, and there's a firm understanding of how to grade those assignments when considering proficiency. We know there is a tremendous amount of incredibly complex work on your plate. As you continue to undertake and lead the educational transformation of Vermont, we echo and raise the concerns of the Act seventy three Task Force and the concerns in the initial report by the Commission on the Future of Public Education. Transforming education systems in Vermont is an incredibly complex problem. You know that. We understand the pressure to put forth a redistricting map, and we know the committee has been working on one. We also understand that the educational foundation formula has not been fully modeled, meaning the committee doesn't know the impact implementation of the foundation formula will have on funding of special education systems that are already overwhelmed. We do not know if the funding formulas and their associated weights will meet the federal requirements for maintenance of effort and maintenance of state support. If these metrics are not met, we risk federal IDEA funds, which, as you may know, have never been fully funded at the federal level. So we're already getting less than we need from the feds. We urge you to work with JFO, and I know JFO was just speaking with you, to model the foundation funding formula and understand how even on a statewide level, funding for special education will be impacted. We understand that in some regions, it is too hard to pull the specific special education data. But the agency of education has the data for all students in Vermont, and they should be able to deliver that so that you can look at the weights more meaningfully. Our direct advocacy work reflects many of the findings of the special education delivery report. While acknowledge and hold tension that the families seeking my assistance represent those struggling the most significantly with our education systems, we believe our experiences accurately reflect the systemic challenges. In short, our supervisory unions, schools and school districts lack capacity, and our students with disabilities pay the costs. In our work, this looks like inadequate staff to provide services. What that means is oftentimes students have a service or a support written into their IEP. For example, last year, there were a number of districts that sent out no service letters to students with disabilities and their families. The no service that they could offer, at least in one supervisory union, was a student's behavior interventionist. So that one on one that worked with a student in supporting their behavior throughout the day. And that means that the student doesn't have access to the service they're entitled to. That's a denial of their right to a free and appropriate public education. We also see service decisions being driven by available resources, not individual analysis. And we get it. This is an impossible bind for schools. But what it means is that children may not be being served in their least restrictive environments and are almost certainly being denied faith. So for a student who is having really difficult sensory experiences at school, they may benefit from direct OT services or consult OT services. Direct OT services would be a student working with an OT. Consult OT services look like they're OT doing some observation of that student and interacting with the team members, other team members and other teachers to help those teachers understand when to intervene, when to offer the student support, and how to best support their sensory needs in the classroom environment. Many kiddos show up at school needing direct OT support. And their districts, because of available resources, are only able to offer consult OT supports. Oftentimes, this looks like schools saying, We don't provide direct services in that related service area. That's not an individualized decision. We see significant overreliance on paraeducators to support our most complex learners. In our opinion, this often results in a denial of faith and the failure to provide services in the least restrictive environment. And in some cases, creates extremely complex problems for future educators and IEP teams to solve. So when a paraeducator is working with a complex and challenging student or working as a behavior interventionist, and that child has a behavior plan and that child is having challenging behaviors, remember that our paraeducators are often the least trained staff in the building. And so they know that their job is to help support that student in their behavior. And they know that their job is to try to help make sure that that student can be in a classroom. And sometimes what that looks like is out of desperation or goodwill, for a million legitimate reasons, that least trained person in the building does what they think and they understand that behavior support claim to say, but what they're really doing is co regulating, right? Their presence, their intervention, their coaching is calming that child's nervous system and helping them stay where they are. But co regulating doesn't teach behaviors or change the environment so that that child is learning new ways to interact in a challenging environment. So then what we see is when that child has a major educational transition, for example, the transition from elementary school to middle school, and they no longer have a BI because they were doing a great job, they blow out. And when I say they blow out, I don't mean like it's hard to go to school. I mean, there are really severe behaviors. They are in danger. Other people are sometimes in danger. And in the handful of cases that I have seen that has followed this narrative, those kiddos end up without a placement. We also see ongoing soft exclusion of vulnerable students with disabilities in violation of their due process rates, their right to FAPE, and their right to an LRE. What is a soft exclusion? That's often when the school calls mom or dad and says, hey, Johnny's having a really hard time today. This is what's going on. So the school isn't saying you need to come get him. The school isn't saying he's suspended. But the school is throwing it out there and encouraging the parents that bringing him home might help him feel better. Did you have a question, Chair?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: No, no.

[Cami (Cammy) Naylor]: Okay. We also see an inadequate continuum of least restrictive environments, leading to an overreliance on alternative placements that have significant wait lists, resulting in students with disabilities receiving interim inadequate services and lacking access to their free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment. We do not believe lifting the moratorium on the approval of independent schools eligible to receive public funds will solve this problem, although it may help. As disability advocates, we're extremely concerned about the limited oversight of independent schools and the privatization of services for our most vulnerable learners. We do believe greater use of boards of cooperative education services as described in Act 168 of 2024 contained beginning at '16 VSA six zero one, like the recently approved Southeast Regional BOCES, must be supported and play a primary role in addressing the inadequacies of the educational continuum. Statewide legislatively led efforts to contain educational costs and transform educational systems in the last decade have been met with resistance and poor implementation. In fact, it's my understanding that census based funding approach to special education developed in 2018 has yet to be fully implemented, and we're already talking about changing the funding formulas. We understand the urgency behind needing to address educational quality and costs in Vermont. We ask the committee to consider that rushed solutions to complex problems often result in more failure, resistance, and poor implementation, which will further compromise our educational systems. Vermont's children are our future. We must understand all of the implications of changing educational governance, delivery, and funding will have on the systems, ensure schools are meaningfully supportive, and move forward with caution and purpose. Our children deserve systemic transformation that will support their success, not annihilate the system they're trying to interact with. On February 28, I attended a virtual listening session with OSERS, the US Department of Education Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services. As I listened to other callers imploring the federal government to continue to fund, support, and enforce special education and rehabilitative services, I heard many adults with disabilities share their experiences and life successes resulting from receiving services they needed as a child. The repeated message was, these systems are valuable because of the return on investment. That was both an effective and troubling message to hear. At Vermont Legal Aid, we believe all children have value and deserve quality education regardless of their future contribution. In a moment where so many rights are threatened, I'd like to leave you with the 16 VSA Section one, which is the current state statement on the policy of education in Vermont. The right to public education is integral to Vermont's constitutional form of government. It's guarantees of political and civil rights. Further, the right to education is fundamental for the success of Vermont's children in a rapidly changing society and global marketplace, as well as for the state's own economic and social prosperity. To keep Vermont's democracy competitive and thriving, Vermont students must be afforded substantially equal access to quality basic education. However, one of the strengths of Vermont's education system lies in its rich diversity and the ability of each local school district to adapt its educational programs to local needs and desires. Therefore, it is the policy of the state of Vermont that all children will be afforded educational opportunities that are substantially equal through the educational programs, although the educational programs may vary from district to district. We thank the committee for your work and investment in all of Vermont's children's and especially Vermont's children with disabilities. I don't see any of the other folks listed on the agenda.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: You'll provide a great resource for any questions we have.

[Cami (Cammy) Naylor]: Yes, I'm happy to ask any questions or answer any questions the committee may have. Again,

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: thank you

[Cami (Cammy) Naylor]: for the opportunity to speak with each today.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So this is the question I ask every year that these issues come up. And we talk about inadequate staff to provide services, service decisions being driven by available resources, overreliance on paraeducators. Doesn't that all It really kind of boils down to we just don't have the people with the skills to meet the needs in many cases of the students with disabilities.

[Cami (Cammy) Naylor]: I think it's a yes and answer for me. I think, yes, it's true. We don't have enough bodies to do the work. I also think that what I commonly see is really, really well intentioned schools that don't have the level of technical assistance and coaching that they need to be agile in making decisions about student services and needs. A couple of years ago, I represented a young man who was removed from school. He'd had some pretty serious behaviors and the school felt like a therapeutic program would be appropriate for him. Mom and dad disagreed. The steps were being taken to secure a therapeutic program, but there wasn't one available. And so I entered the picture and worked collaboratively with the school's administration. And we were able to establish a highly individualized educational placement for him in his local school with the supports that he needed. That once that was in place, he was increasing his access to his peers and his access to school substantially. And so we went from having this kid out who the team was in crisis and didn't know how to support him and was really concerned about his safety and everyone else's to a situation where he was having a greater level of access to school than he was even before he was removed. And I had an opportunity to recently see the superintendent who was involved in in some of the decision making around putting that program into place for him. And I said to her, we did it. So you and I did it like, why? Why is it so hard? And she said it's so hard because the system is so flooded. Schools are so flooded that we don't have time to meaningfully think about how we're making these decisions. And so I think, for me, part of the limitations of the system right now also goes back to what does the general supervision of the entire system look like? And it's the agency of education that's responsible for that general supervision. And I think we also saw this play out with the implementation of the MTSS systems and incredible materials were developed and distributed. But what schools needed was connection and more technical assistance and actual instruction in schools demonstrating how to do it and sort of alleviating some of the pressures on those individual schools by bringing in intentional supports. And so I think that, yes, we may not have enough bodies, but I also think that the system needs better supports for schools. I think sometimes we forget that like, right, schools are the boots on the ground, But the boots on the ground don't work if the entire system isn't designed to make sure that they can do their job.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Anybody else?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'd like to just add that the work is incredibly hard, and I think we have special educators leaving, and so it's not so much that the bodies aren't available. The bodies

[Cami (Cammy) Naylor]: no longer want to do that work because it's hard. And they feel disenfranchised. The decision making that occurs in an IEP context is often administrators making decisions. In full transparency, my spouse is a principal at an elementary school in Vermont. So we have some really interesting dinnertime conversations. And he started his career in public education as a behavior interventionist. And he moved to being a special educator and very quickly realized how disenfranchised he was in that process. And while he could make meaningful change on a day to day basis for a child, he didn't have the resources he needed to implement the services for that child to make meaningful, intentional change at a broader level. That frustration, that inability, being the person who works directly with a child to say, no, this is what they need, which, of course, special educators are members of IEP teams. But again, decisions are often being driven by resources. We led him to administration so that he had more power to make those decisions, to set up systems that he believed would be more supportive of students. It's incredibly hard work. I remind many parents of that on a very regular basis. I recognize there's an incredible tension in some of the phone calls that I have in the work that I do. And I am a big fan of reminding folks who are experiencing crisis and are having really, truly challenging things happen and are having their child's rights violated that we need to we're not going to make progress on solving this problem if we can't take the temperature down. And part of taking the temperature down is remembering that no one gets into public education to hurt kids. But that sometimes harm happens.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Thank you very much for your time today.

[Cami (Cammy) Naylor]: Thank you.

[Julie Richter (Joint Fiscal Office)]: You for

[Cami (Cammy) Naylor]: your support. Appreciate it.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: All right, so a reminder committee, we are downstairs at 01:50 for continued joint. It's at ten or

[Unidentified Committee Member]: eleven.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: You're on blood