Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Welcome back to House Education on February 13. We are continuing to hear testimony on Act 73 and some of the proposals on the table, well as the big act in general. And we are welcoming folks today from the Vermont Rural School Community Alliance to provide some feedback and testimony. With that, the floor is yours if you just introduce yourselves and we look forward to hearing from you.

[Cheryl Charles]: Thank you. I'm Cheryl Charles, I chair the Westminster School Board, I chair the Windham Northeast School Board, and am the chair of the steering committee for the Rural School Community Alliance. And I'm here today with Doctor. Jeannie Albert, who is chair of the Lincoln Town School District Board and also a member of the steering committee for the Rural School Community Alliance. I think many of you know that the Rural School Community Alliance was formed about a year ago, a year ago January, actually, and has grown up to more than 100 towns and villages in the state of Vermont. And what we all share is a commitment to public schools in rural Vermont and a participatory democratic process that lets decisions affecting those schools be made at a community level. So today, we're going to make comments about in three major areas. And we start with the fact that we believe in the value of the collaborative education services area model or BOCES, any of those shared services models. And we'll tell you why we believe in that. We strongly believe in the value and the importance of supervisory unions, especially in the rural areas of the state. And we'll tell you why, again, about that. And then thirdly, this will not surprise you. We don't believe that forced mergers are effective. We do believe in strategic voluntary mergers in the state. And again, we'll tell you why. So I'll start with CSUN, the Cooperative Education Service Area Model, or the BOCES, and begin with that. I think I know you know that the Vermont legislature passed the board's, the BOCES legislation, in July 2024, Act 168. And the stated intent was for BOCES to be one of the initial steps in ensuring the opportunity to transform Vermont's educational system. BOCES and similar education collaboratives have reduced costs significantly in other states. They've been around for a long time, and they're currently in 41 of the 50 states. The ability for school districts and other entities to share resources and reduce costs, as well as improve quality of education, has been well documented. It's heavily documented in the research. You have heard testimony in this committee from a number of people who've provided you data and evidence and supported the value of this cooperative or shared service approach. You heard from leadership from the Association of Educational Service Agencies. You heard from Jill Graham, the executive director of the Vermont Learning Collaborative. You heard from Superintendent Sherry Souza, who's one of the leaders in developing the new shared services model and the new Southeast Vermont BOCES, the first one approved by the Agency of Education. You heard from Erin Maguire, the former president of the Vermont Council of Special Education Administrators and other experts in special education in Vermont, who really testified of the value of this shared services approach in reducing costs in special education. One of the reasons, one of the things we're seeing where I live. The Act seventy three Redistricting Task Force provided what we believe to be, I know to be, a thoughtful, well documented set of recommendations to be implemented generally in sequence, starting with the shared services model, the Cooperative Education Service Areas model, followed by strategic voluntary mergers. And then thirdly, the comprehensive regional high schools is a part of what the task force recommended and provided supporting evidence for. So the first step is the development of the CESAs or BOCES. And we, the Rural School Community Alliance, actually supports the task force recommendation that all supervisory unions and all school districts in the state be required to join one, to required to join a shared services model. And the reason that we do that is because it doesn't dismantle the current governance. It doesn't dissolve the local school boards, but it does achieve the goal of every district and every supervisory union in the state participating in a thoughtful and proven structure for achieving efficiencies, cost savings, and improved services to children and youth. So mandatory participation in a shared services model still allows for their selectivity in terms of which services are most important or relevant to them, where they can get the most savings as quickly as possible. So we also recommend that once assigned, let those districts and supervisor unions look to see if it's the best fit. If they find that their partner is in another shared services entity, let them move if they can work effectively to save money at that. So we've brought a couple of documents. I'll pass them out. One is a document that's in the testimony that shows the savings that we're already seeing through the Southern Vermont BOCES. And the other has a little map on the back and some immediate detailed steps for action, which I know you guys have been looking for as well. So the map that's coming around you reflects some current examples of cooperative educational service area models that are already up and running in Vermont. They show you in the Northeast part of the state, the Vermont Rural Education Collaborative, VREC, as you often hear it called. Those folks up there are exploring creating a new BOCES or CISA. They already have the nonprofit Vermont Rural Education Collaborative, but they're looking at doing even more. The Southeast is where I live and the boards that I represent are involved. And that's where we have the first ever approved by the agency of education on January 6, the Southern Vermont BOCES. And that is seven supervisory unions and one school district serving about 8,000 students. And then the third is one that's been going for a long time, the Champlain Valley Educator Development Center, where they especially work on professional development. At the end of the document, and it's in one of the handouts, we have included a set of steps for implementation of these shared services entities throughout the state. We do believe that it starts with creating the map. That's a map you can create that's based on voluntary associations, but it does assign every district and every union to at least work on the shared services approach. Again, we believe and know that there are many benefits to the shared services approach. All school districts and supervisory unions, as they become part of a CESA, they will not only see savings in some areas, they'll become accustomed to working together and we'll find new ways to improve on services and cost savings. And we have seen that again be quite successful. I'll say a couple more things specifically about the Southern Vermont pilot. Since we're a part of that, since Windham Northeast is one of the eight districts that signed onto it, it started with a group of superintendents in the southern part of the state, and they worked together through 501c3 Vermont Learning Collaborative. And when the law was passed in 2024, they said, Let's do this. Let's create a BOCES. Let's take advantage of this opportunity. To become a BOCES formalizes them as an agency. It provides more opportunities for additional funding to help do the shared work than a regular five zero one(three) does. So in your handouts, there's some examples of the savings that we're already seeing. Jill Graham talked to you about this, but the business managers in each of our eight districts did an analysis of what savings they were seeing in these shared services areas. So this data came from our business managers in these districts. And you can see 66% savings on professional development, 20% to 50% on evaluation services, and some additional services up to 50% on full time equivalent employees, especially in the special education area where we can't afford to hire a specialist and we don't need a full time one in some areas. But if we can divide up the cost, the person is employed by the CISA. And then we, the school district, get the service without paying a full time employee that we don't need. And a 62% savings in consultation fees, and up to 85% savings in the program area, especially in special education. So I signed this agreement, the Article Agreement, because I chair the Windham Northeast Supervisory Union. So I know the details of it, and I know that it's also built into it, all kinds of measures of accountability, documentation, record keeping, so we can really see where the savings are, and we can hold ourselves and others accountable in this whole process. So with that, I am done,

[Dr. Jeannie Albert]: and I'll turn it over to Doctor. Albert. Thank you. Thank you, Cheryl. Yes, so thank you again for having us. I'm Jana Albert, and I live in Lincoln. I am Lincoln Schools for Forward and a member of the RSCA steering committee. And I am going to speak to the part of our testimony following where Cheryl left off, namely around the fact that supervisor unions demonstrate cost savings and improved educational quality while maintaining community vitality and democratic values, especially in rural Vermont. And that I'll talk a little bit about the evidence that shows there isn't support for forced mergers of school districts. A supervisory union is itself a tested and effective shared service model. Cost effectiveness, local accountability, community identity, and retention of local knowledge are among the reasons that the RSCA strongly advocates for the continued role of supervisory unions as one of Vermont's preferred educational governance structures. After the passage of Act 73, the RSCA encouraged all member school districts and supervisory unions in our alliance to read and discuss the law with their communities. School boards held meetings with their neighbors. They had conversations about forming shared services models or merging with their neighbors and documented their preferences, which they sent in the form of public comment to the Act seventy three Redistricting Task Force. In total, 26 school boards representing 100 towns, Pat, or Oceans expressing their preference to remain in a supervisory union. The task force received public comment from over 5,000 individuals and school boards. Their voices demonstrated no support for the forced merger of school districts and no consensus that a map of large state mandated school districts will bring about positive transformation of our educational system, in large part due to the significant disruption it would cause with no demonstrated benefits. However, that does not mean school boards are fearful of change and unwilling to do their part. The public record demonstrates the willingness of rural school boards to find solutions. And we've included in the testimony a few examples that I think really describe this willingness and work that's already started. So the first example comes from grouping, Essex North Supervisory Union, North Country Supervisory Union, and Orleans Central Supervisory Union. They provided a particularly robust position paper that outlined the reasons they proposed to stay in their current supervisor unions. They stated, while, quote, large scale consolidation is not a viable option for our region, we are strongly supportive of a cooperative services framework modeled after the VOCE structure. Given our geography scale and shared service history, we believe this model represents the most practical and equitable path forward for the Northeast Kingdom. And the second example we've excerpted here is from Caledonia Co op School District. And they stated that their district, which is Barnett, Walden, and Waterford Schools, has a strong desire to remain a supervisory union model. They know that the district has already started to reach out to St. John's three School District and Kingdom East to explore the potential of forming an enlarged supervising union. And then finally, the Grand Isle Supervisory Union Board passed a resolution that included the statement consolidating the existing three districts into a single Grand Isle County district and subsequently forming a larger supervisory union with mainland district partners aligns with the objectives of Act 73 and the mandate of the redistricting task force. This approach effectively addresses our geographic isolation and leverages established community connections to facilitate logistically viable local schools. These examples of public comment demonstrates the conscientious and vital work undertaken by Vermont school boards to understand the implications of the law and make commitments to strive to meet its intent. They are tangible evidence of organically established voluntary partnerships in action. Locally elected boards are an asset and an essential component in translating Vermont's vision for the future into a lived reality. And I think it's a great example of where it's not needed and would be unnecessarily disruptive to go the forced merger route when people can be inspired to work locally to bring about change. The last section of the testimony we have for you is just a couple of different ways to affirm that supervisor unions have been cost effective. A couple of charts that are included there's a bar chart on one page and then a line graph on the next one. These are a couple of different attempts to compare over time per pupil. When I say per pupil, I always waited. Just a second. Do we

[Speaker 0]: have a document with bar charts on it? It's on the test. It's in the handout. I'm sorry. It's

[Dr. Jeannie Albert]: in the submitted testimony. Yeah, been watching. I was saying that we provide some data around per pupil spending. And when I say per pupil, I'm always thinking weighted pupil. And obviously, it's hard to look at more than a couple of years because we changed how we weighted pupils from people as pupils to LGWADM. So I tried to find a couple of different ways to do it. So the bar chart looks at just the last couple of years when we transitioned to LGWADM and comparing per pupil spending in the three main organizational units, supervisory unions, so that's by that multi member district, town city supervisory districts, and merged unified union supervisory districts. The supervisory unions have tended to have the lowest cost per pupil. And then on the second chart in the submitted testimony looks at a five year range, but does it in a way that avoids this problem of going from equalized to LTWADM by looking at the total spending statewide. We took the total actual spending statewide and then compared it to had it been spent at the rate that has used it for people, or had it been spent at the rate that merged SDs spent per pupil and figured out what that would have been for statewide spending. And you can see while they were fairly close five years ago, they started to diverge. And again, if the state had spent at the same level as supervisory unions did per pupil, but spent at that rate statewide, that would have been 112,000,000 less spending versus at the merged rate per pupil would have been 120,000,000 more spending over the last few years. So just a couple of different ways to confirm that, at least on that point, that supervisory unions have been able to be cost effective. I think it provides some pause to really going all in on a merged supervisory district statewide model when it appears, at least from our own experience, not saying we know why, that would be useful to know, but that those districts do spend more on average for people. So in conclusion, just to try to capture the items we've shared with you today, Vermonters are strongly opposed to forced mergers, as evidenced by public engagement with the redistricting task force. We believe the effort to persuade voters to accept large mandated school districts is unlikely to succeed, would further erode public trust, and would waste precious time that could be used instead to quickly enact a system of statewide CESAs or BOCES. Secondly, the merged supervisory district model has not produced cost savings compared to multi member supervisory unions. This is what I was just mentioning. Given this reality, it seems unwise to expand them further, but instead makes more sense to achieve scale via CESAs by expanding that model that has a record of cost effectiveness. Third, cost sharings through CESAs will likely suggest further voluntary merger opportunities. And this is because after local management of administrative and other services has been greatly reduced, because it's been lifted up potentially to the CISA level, that would automatically, or at least it would tend, we believe, to suggest further mergers at the SU level potentially or at the district level for management of those services. During this phase, the state could facilitate merger conversations between SU and SD neighbors with expanded high school and CTE opportunities of priority if that's where the focus wants to be. Districts, fourthly, rural districts, we haven't spoken to the part of the proposal that speaks to designation. So we just want to make a comment around that, that rural districts that don't operate in some or all grades, designation of just a few schools can be highly problematic. This is because large geographic area means greatly varied work and travel patterns of families. These patterns play an important role in determining where children can reasonably attend school and take advantage of extracurricular and other opportunities. So before considering imposed designation, we just urge the committee to hear more voices of rural families who will be potentially negatively impacted. And finally, for change in our education system to be successful, we strongly believe it must be done with support of Vermonters across the state. The RSCA grew very quickly because the alliance reflects the reality on the ground in rural areas of Vermont. The best way forward is solving problems together using an inclusive participatory process, especially at a time when democracy is under threat all across the country. So thank you for this opportunity. Happy to

[Cheryl Charles]: answer questions. Jean, would you say, make a couple of comments about the steps that

[Dr. Jeannie Albert]: are outlined? Oh, sure. So one of the handouts that we distributed is also the table part of it is at the very bottom of the last page of the submitted testimony. This is an outline of how one could actually implement a statewide CISA map, along with some of the other ideas we've talked about today and that are also, in some cases, part of the task force proposal, the strategic voluntary mergers in particular. So we see the first step as kind of a combination, establishing both cities or see some map with with every district and SU in one of them, but at the same time conducting comprehensive district and SU data analysis, which is gonna be really important when you're thinking about the benefits of these CISOs as well as potential mergers.

[Speaker 0]: Obviously, you're saying this as the work of the agency of education? Certainly, they would have

[Cheryl Charles]: to be. They'd be involved, absolutely. Actually have a pretty detailed report that we've developed that does define the roles of the various entities. This is just an outline that we've looked at because we're with you on this. We're trying to figure all of this out as well. So we do have a detailed report. We could offer it another time.

[Speaker 0]: We've sent that in if you would.

[Dr. Jeannie Albert]: Okay. Yeah. Yeah, so this and then we have the second step incentivizing voluntary strategic mergers at the district and SU level using that analysis. And then we also added here the next because we know the next step in Act 73 is leading to the implementation of a funding formula, and that that's also ongoing, updating that. I know you've received testimony about that this week or discussion about it. And we also think because the districts are starting in such different places across the state and there's so much difference on the ground, we recommend folding in a professional judgment panel so that people can really understand those variations and how the funding formula would be, how it would really play out and how it might need to be adjusted. So those are some of the recommendations we have.

[Speaker 0]: I understand a role of a professional judgment panel to be part of putting together what the foundation formula should be. I think you're describing a perhaps a different role. I mean, I

[Dr. Jeannie Albert]: think we're seeing it as a balance. So I know that the cost function approach is what was used to develop the one that's in Act 73, and that I think is going to be continued to be used as far as updating. That's my understanding through the consultants. And I understand professional judgment panels the same way, that is how they would be traditionally used, but we were thinking there might be a way to use them in combination to sort of get the best from both.

[Cheryl Charles]: So again, thank you for the opportunity.

[Speaker 0]: Sure thing. Let's see if we got some questions. The comparison of spending, spending is largely a function of what voters approve in the budget. So, I think that that largely accounts for differences in spending across the state, not necessarily how a the governmental structure is. I mean, I would say, I would agree with, I'm not disputing your numbers or your statistics, but I would just say it indicates that supervisory unions may choose to spend less on the education services they're providing.

[Cheryl Charles]: I wonder if I can, you know, is my eleventh year on the school board and I'm looking at a reduction of 3% in Westminster in our budget. I'm looking at an increase overall in the supervisory union of 3%. We've done an amazing job. And our voters always vote to approve our budgets. I just think the fact that we're there, we're hands on, we're close, we're able to manage the money in cost effective ways. So I wouldn't generalize. We'd have to look at that in much more depth.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, good. You were generalizing.

[Cheryl Charles]: From direct experience. I was just

[Dr. Jeannie Albert]: going to add that my view is I prepared the data then, that's my background, a quantitative background. And so for me, it's more, I want to just see what they say. That's like the first step. What is actually happening on the ground? Why it's happening? That's a really important question that I think, in other words, is it because there's an interest in spending less when they could spend more, but they aren't able to pass a budget that's more? Or is it for another reason? I don't think we know for sure, but I think that's But the starting point should be just what's really actually happened. So that's understanding that was very important.

[Speaker 0]: Do have any other questions? This may be the challenge of a Friday afternoon, a bit of testimony.

[Dr. Jeannie Albert]: But it's like basically spring.

[Cheryl Charles]: Well,

[Speaker 0]: if you have that report sort of available in an electronic form and would like to submit it to our committee assistant, he can distribute it to the rest of us. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for both of you making, I think, right, pretty fairly long or mountainous trips here today to talk to us. We appreciate it very much. Appreciate

[Dr. Jeannie Albert]: it. Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you. Right. Have a great weekend. So committee, I guess final instructions, Robert.

[Dr. Jeannie Albert]: I've listened better when I know

[Speaker 0]: we all sort of need a mental break, but just do lots of thinking over the weekend about everything that we've been discussing. We will perhaps try to get out two bills next week, the PCB bill. So if you have any issues with that, feel free to let me know over the weekend or if there's testimony you want to hear, if you're feeling comfortable with it, that's fine. The small eight zero two bill, we will get up in record time. And then any other things that you have thoughts or whatever over the weekend, feel free to text me or send me an email for further testimony or whatever.