Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay, welcome back to House Education on February 17. Moving into a committee discussion on sort of where we find ourselves with Act 73 advancements, changes, language that's been on the table to look at, maps that's been on the table to look at. So, I'm just going to start off maybe with another sort of explanation as to what I have put on the table so far. The map I've explained is what's really it's there to what I put on the table is to sort of say, here's a package that answers some questions, perhaps prompts a few more that responds to testimony that I feel maybe folks in here can understand at a minimum or get behind. That being school districts as opposed to a mix of SUs and SDs, which I don't think is really feasible. Two to 4,000 students in each, trying to sort of do my best to kind of group things in a way that's culturally sensitive. But definitely did not bat it out of the park with that necessarily. But to sort of make it all in the sort of more reasonable realm than what has been previously discussed. And then the accompanying language is really there to say, okay, unless somebody has a better way of addressing this. I don't see how you can have a world that is only school districts. And fully understand that not everybody agrees that we should be all school districts. But if you're going to go that route, I sort of frankly sort of used what the governor had proposed in the original April to say, all need to be operating and school boards need to be in charge of where kids go to school. And if you sort of parental choice as we have it today is incompatible with newer, larger districts that are school districts, not SUs. And so that's why it was written that way. So it was really just to put out there that if going to do this, this is in my view, way it needs to be done, barring any better suggestions or other suggestions or compromise suggestions. So that's what's there. I think what we might start off with today is talk about things that we can't agree on. And what we might do to put a bow on them to the extent that we can. I also would just like to remind us of what we've done. We talk about sort of trying to make a more efficient sized school system for the state of Vermont. We've talked about class size minimums. We've talked about creating definitions for small by necessity. And then we've also talked about what we have on the table that we already use. We have the excess spending threshold, which has been reinstituted. Senate is wrestling with spending caps. So there are other things that we've sort of taken action on or are looking at taking action on that are sort of outside the realm of the bigger changes. As I've said in my observation of our discussions, I think that the stuff that I have put on the table and other issues that there's probably something that each one of us can't get beyond to say, wow, Peter, great idea, let's do it all. And so that puts us at a little bit of a point where we can be hard to move forward on anything. But let's at least talk about BOCES or CSAS, probably have just a whole conversation about what we want to call them going forward, as well as school construction aid. So, we, I guess I would say, when we talk about agreeing that BOCES could be a positive step forward in addressing some of the costs in the state by increasing regionalization of services. If we were to take that and translate it into a proposal to be turned into a bill, what do people think that should look like? For example, I might say it should be voluntary and I don't wanna define districts. And I think that by solution would be fund an FDE at the agency whose job it is to spend two years getting superintendents together and making it happen. That's just an example. I'll just bounce if you want.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: Beth? So the testimony we heard nationally, that really there's three things that need to be in place. How's it funded? Is it that every district or supervising or pays in? Is it in some states it's part of the ed fund? So you'd have to have something to discuss the funding mechanism, perhaps. The mandatory versus voluntary piece, which you did mention, but also the governance, whether we would prescribe that because it's different in some states, some it's board members, some it's elected members. So those three areas would have to be sorted out, I think, in whatever bill.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Thank you. That's actually very helpful. Your thoughts on this? I would need to know,

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: to me, it almost don't realize on how many districts we're going to have because this has to it's going to be a layer kind of on top of the district. To me, it's got to be those areas have to be much larger, or it has to be much fewer CISOs than districts in order for it to make it permanent.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: I think we have some. I'm trying to go back to the task force report because they actually did draw a map on this.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: They just used the

[Emily Long (Member)]: existing five Superintendents. Yep. Which,

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: as we are frequently reminded, are

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: based And around we weren't real strong on the lines being what the line, but the number of five was taken from that.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: And just my opinion, did it have to be mandatory?

[Leland Morgan (Member)]: It would have to be mandatory?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I have a second. All right, this is fascinating.

[Kate McCann (Member)]: Even if the districts

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: were mandatory?

[Kate McCann (Member)]: In my mind, was thinking if we make the districts mandatory, maybe the CSALs are voluntary. Thinking about who you could join with

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: makes the best partner

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: mandatory is just more of the efficiency level of it. You know, have those big larger CISA districts making it mandatory for everybody to join should translate to more efficiency.

[Emily Long (Member)]: I just want to speak to what you said originally, and this is not a pushback on that, but the courage only one do

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: we have.

[Emily Long (Member)]: It's SUs that are the entity that

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: sign on,

[Emily Long (Member)]: and we haven't done it for government exchange. And that one covers essentially two countries.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: But if it's SU, it's not. If we're dealing with SUs, I was going along the lines of the TSD model, SUs, I can see where it might be smaller because you're getting the consolidation and efficiency of all those separate districts underneath. There's 14 of them, so sorry.

[Emily Long (Member)]: But my point just being that in the current governance structure that we have today, we have one that essentially, single one that essentially comes to government.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: It might be worth reviewing, that one is voluntary. It is funded by dues. Yep,

[Emily Long (Member)]: it is. Or

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: paid for service.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: Like an a la carte menu of services, paid for service.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: And its governance model is superintendents?

[Emily Long (Member)]: Correct. The board of directors. Administrators. The boards aren't on the board. And we have an executive director.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Does it appear to be work?

[Emily Long (Member)]: Well, it's very early in, but everything I have had feedback on has been positive. Don't think it's negative. Caution or positive.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: And I've checked around a

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: little bit with superintendents who we haven't heard from down that area, and they probably would say haven't taken advantage of it yet, looked very

[Emily Long (Member)]: promising. Beth?

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: I thought you answered. But just some clarification about the mandatory, Not mandatory necessarily that you join a specific one, but that you join one. Because you were saying maybe a partner might be better. What Kate was saying is like, Oh, this would be a better partner than this would be about I haven't

[Emily Long (Member)]: thought that far. Thought that far.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: Mean, Andrew, you must join this particular C Symphony.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Because you're going to have the audience, then you can join the area

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: that I you're

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: think on the taskbar, we said, We know those lines. Which partner do mean? Well, if you've got two of them, like if you look at the BOCES map that's there, I'm a school district that's kind of on the border between those two. I might say, Oh, it makes more sense for us to be part of this one, not part of this one, and be open to discussions, say, oh yeah, we'll move that line at this thesis some based on what we hear from communities. So

[Emily Long (Member)]: mandatory Flexible mandatory? Well, it's

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: mandatory folks, who's drawing the borders, who's drawing the thesis.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: So I played around with some coloring this weekend, and I am not at a point where I'm like, I'm submitting this map yet. But I was thinking about tech center maps, and there's 14 or 15 of them depending on how you do the borders. And of course, these lines could be changed. Like I said before, I can't really get past here with any real knowledge of what the situation be. But I think that we could do something where we treated both tech center CSAs as SBUs. So these are SBUs, and they are mandatory. And within that, the voluntary incentivized districts, if this was an SU or this was an SU, we do probably need less districts. That's a lot of budgets. Are some schools that maybe should consolidate. Those, I think, should be local decisions. But this is kind of what I'm thinking about, with mandatory CISAs surrounding the tech centers to download 15 SUs and that be a governing body, but then we figure out a whole handful of things that the SU altogether is bingo, bulk contracting, bulk purchasing. That's kind of what I was thinking.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So this goes back to, I think, Chris's point that if the new larger SUs that we've created are going to do this, why we, why wouldn't we be talking about those two or CISAs?

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Well, because, I mean, that's where sort of the CISA, that's what the CISA districts would be. Well, I think it was used as sort of an interchangeable thing. Like,

[Emily Long (Member)]: SUs are the OSUs. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So I I guess

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: in that we would eliminate OSUs then. Yes,

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: suppose so. We'd make supervisory kind of, I see it more

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: as making supervisory someone to not invest with those kids.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Right.

[Emily Long (Member)]: We break the current one up into four.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Well, I guess I would say that given what Leanne just said, we're we're just creating SUs. Right. It would take on the role of CSUS, but that's the

[Emily Long (Member)]: the role is My point, though, there's one of these plates. Seems just

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: a first question, I'd say that those are probably too small for a CISA in that they Okay. The task force looked at.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: I mean, is just an initial stab of trying to get something on paper so that we can move on to some of the other things that we need to do. But I know that the people that I represent are very much in favor of not the mandated districts and moving to an SE model instead. So I don't want go back to the governor's five SU, that did not go over well.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We can tackle this in more detail when you're ready, but just for now, we're just kind of ironing up the posies kind of what we might want to do this going forward.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: In our original law, owning a lawyer friend, we have up to seven?

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Beth St. James' Office of the Legislative Council, yes. Part of the limit, yeah.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Would mean somewhat have land what we already created, debated, created, and passed into law. But possibly, we're taking it to the next level

[Emily Long (Member)]: here. So student population does have an impact, I think, on size of the use of shared staffing is really important in a rural area and that's why you could do it much bigger BOCES, whereas areas where there's not as much of a need for that, you give them the benefit of that shared staffing. The professional development is a real positive, working through professional development. But a lot of the special ed positions, there's a great area that can't support that means data. So sharing it over a broader area in the world, I can't see Chittenden County who can A huge plot.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, but you're right, you want a certain to know what the number of students Exactly, there you go.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: If we want to talk about smaller, did you say four or five BOCES? Is that what you said, students?

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: To seven.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Up to seven is what the problem So

[Emily Long (Member)]: I think why

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: talk about a smaller amount of proceeds, I could also see something like this, I'm really pro SU, but I also want to move forward. I could see something like this or similar being school districts if there was a way to ensure that the school districts were not going to start making mandatory decisions for communities that don't want those decisions. Like if we could adopt something like Representative Wilson's Bill that said Town still had input for place on local boards.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Which could be on a both seat. Which could, yeah, sure.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Just to bring us back to what Beth Quimby, which I said is we need to talk about, can you talk about both of them again, about how we might fund the mandatory versus voluntary and what their governance should be?

[Emily Long (Member)]: I have opinions on the governance.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Lay it on us. Remember,

[Emily Long (Member)]: this is still really new for my Us. We only signed on in December or something. So this is pretty new. But the feedback that I've been getting, I don't see any need for a string board member to be part of that. I think it needs to be administrative. This is what what they're talking about, what they're dealing with, is what our administration does, just on a much larger scale. So there's been no request from my SG or anybody that I know of to have board member representation. Because it isn't do much boards do much higher level policy work, not the on the ground professional development and staffing levels and all that. Of course, boards have to oversee what's going on in the BOCES. But as far as governance, I see the need for administrative. The money gets approved by the boards.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: Just looking back to the testimony, another key consideration is there needs to be a way for accountability to be tracked for the thesis as well. Governance, funding, accountability, voluntary versus individual. What

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: do we need to decide about the funding, of how the money travels there? Is it based on student count? Is that

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: what we're looking at? I

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: can tell you what's in my notes.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: Nationwide, some of them are direct appropriations that are state funded. It's just a direct appropriation in the budget Some states.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Other

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: states fund them directly as a direct appropriation. Some do. Most common or more common now than when this all first started back in the 1950s, is fee for service. Most places now, most states have a blended approach of some appropriation and some fee for service. Only Michigan has a CISA model that the CISA itself has tax inquiry response. That's only Michigan. So most states, it's a blend of an appropriation and then the school district actually is paying a fee

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: for service on top of that.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Or I suspect part of

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: the blend might be every school district puts in 50 and thousand then there's fee

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: for So

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: it's basically on top of So there's various models. At least

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: to get started, because then could probably winnow it down to just fee for service.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: I would argue for absolutely mandatory or not elected boards, but administrators from a member schools or districts. I think my picture of this all along has been eventually a fee for service member organization. I know we're starting mentally, I'm not sure it's realistic, kicking around the idea of what if some of the buy down is used instead for school construction? Could you actually take a teeny, teeny tiny amount of the buy down? What would it be for the startup and actually, if this is one of the most quick ways to start to lower costs in pool services, use. What is it going to take? A million dollars less than that to start them? So that they are funded and ready to start operationalizing.

[Emily Long (Member)]: You do have $10,000 right What's that? You do have a $10,000 preparation for when one's born.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: Right now, gonna yes. Switch back to help

[Emily Long (Member)]: it to help get But the

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: if you needed, say before when we had talked in a prior ag committee a lot about how many, how many, not saying we landed in the right place, but it was about seven after we did a lot of matching our teeth over maps. But say you needed $750,000 or less for one would get you somewhere, That's a tiny investment for a potential faster payout. It's accelerating some of this work.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So, you know, I think that if we're going to talk about mandatory, and. That means that the burden falls on us to define lots of stuff. Many board members, what does each area, what school districts does each area include, how is it funded, what the governance is going to be.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Or perhaps then what I was just talking about is maybe that's the incentive for voluntary, there's a little bit of startup money, a little more than the 10. And I do also wonder, going back to the task force report, and a lot of discussion of districts of 500 or less, which is a lot of our districts, that those are the places where you can start to capture some efficiencies much more quickly if there is some metric of extra incentive, a little bit of requirement.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I mean, we can't I don't know how long it would take to create seven BOCES, sex group, but one's already created. So a five year, a two year.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: I would certainly hope it's a lot less than a five year. I I think the last one was a two year one, but there was quite a bit of, it took quite a while on some of the They've illustrative parts sort

[Emily Long (Member)]: of laying the groundwork for this, I think, in fact, for example. They were cooperative. Exactly. They've been cooperative for a while. So that But we now know a ton more.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: I guess I'm more comfortable with a more accelerated timeline here because zooming up, I do think we have challenges. I think we disagree around the table around what the most important first steps are. But if this is a far more strategic and gentler approach than mandated districts, a trade off in the field might be. Yeah, this isn't a five to seven year on ramp. This is a one to two

[Emily Long (Member)]: year Okay.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So, question we get. So about what? For the moment we can think about it. But again, would say there are still decisions to be made. If it's going to be voluntary, which I heard Representative Brady evolving toward, if we can provide a current approach for going to a stick, I would imagine. So we could say that the state is going to provide whatever number is $50,000 grant funding to provide seed funding for BOCES. My question is, we are still proposing something that it's up to a group of people who are already very busy to get together and do. And so how do we make that happen? Other than just saying, here's the potential for a $50,000 grant to make it happen.

[Emily Long (Member)]: Or

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: you have somebody who's competent to go out and get together.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Well, that was going be my question. I mean, in other states, I'm assuming there's probably some person embedded at the Agency of Education who would be helping to manage some of these things.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I don't know the answer to that. Think, I mean, we know that it's

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Some it's an arm of

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: the AOE and some it isn't.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Exactly, some states it is. Some it's an independent Some states, county government, you know, it's just, It's gotta be the Vermont.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Right. There

[Emily Long (Member)]: is something to be said about a system like this being very collaborative, which lends itself toward some voluntary mechanism, I think. Want buy in, you want everyone to get it and understand what the benefits are.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Would be, you know, one thing we, I don't think we really asked about with the BOCES that does exist is the accountability portion of it. That'd be interesting to know that.

[Emily Long (Member)]: Actually, I'd be interested in knowing the funding mechanism as they've gone. Every day there's few things going on just formed.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: In the current post?

[Emily Long (Member)]: Yes, yeah. It might help me.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That something you could, rather than bringing in testimony, is that something you could follow-up on and just sort of say, what is the funding model down there? Assume that Yeah, can honestly tell what we did over. Like, do you pay per student? Do you pay per Is it strictly fee for service, that sort of thing?

[Emily Long (Member)]: So, myths? Yeah. I just don't even know how the ASUs in that region didn't. I don't know anything about that.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So listen, I know that BOCES is not moving the big part forward, but I'm glad Justin talked about something that we could talk about that we could get some agreement on. I think we also have agreement on school construction aid. We are gonna have a couple of superintendents come in and talk about that. Again, remind us of the importance of it, perhaps even talk about numbers. Rob, go ahead.

[Robert Hunter (Member)]: Yeah, sorry, no, you were just on a roll. I didn't mean to interrupt. Was just

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Anytime somebody else wants to talk, it's great

[Emily Long (Member)]: with me.

[Robert Hunter (Member)]: Heard. Yeah, before I get into a coughing fit here, was just thinking about what the superintendent said the other day, you know, how they hemmed and hawed a little bit when they were pressed in terms of, you know, a new districts and simultaneously, know, BOCES or seesaws, which, you know, maybe that sentiment just needs to come into the equation as we're thinking about voluntary or or, you know, forced kind of things. You know, just wanted to throw that out there as I was thinking about it.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yep. I think that's a very good reminder that you can't do everything all at once.

[Robert Hunter (Member)]: Right.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: School construction aid, I'm just simply going to assume that everybody in this room supports the fact that we need school construction aid. What I don't know is what people think about how much and where does the money come from and is that something we want to tie into a larger bill? What's kind of nice is that we have been talking about it for way too many years, but we have in the meantime created an infrastructure. We just haven't funded it. So, I'll put it right out there. Do we want to talk about trying to claim some of the buy down for school construction as a way to seed the program finally or not? And if yes, how much? And what are the next steps? So if we seed it, where do we go from there? I guess it's the question, how do we accumulate more money after we've got a little chunk? Yes, absolutely. That's the biggest issue because the model that we're looking at obligates the state to pay annually toward construction projects. So it's a mandate.

[Leland Morgan (Member)]: So someone's got to figure out who and where it's going

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: to come from and how much.

[Leland Morgan (Member)]: That's right. It's not up to this.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So the testimony that we have heard on this is that once the sort of annual obligation of the state is determined, and the idea is that a municipality would take out a bond, and then depending on the criteria, the state might fund anywhere from, say, 10% of the annual payment back of the bond to 50% of it. That's a twenty to thirty year obligation on the state's part. So, a one time infusion of $20,000,000 gets the ball rolling, kind of finally makes it a reality. But that obligation, as we have heard from some folks in JFO, should be an appropriation that is in the budget, period. Now the question is, does it come out of the Ed Fund? Because then we're not really doing anything except socializing the cost of construction projects over everybody as opposed to coming out of the general fund. Yes. So it's never going to be

[Leland Morgan (Member)]: a fully funded amount of money per district. It's going to be a subsidy and assistance. We take out a bond to build a new school. You'll help, but we still have an obligation. Correct. Yes. And

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: the way it is set up is that that money would be probably awarded on a point system, the percentage that you would get based on does the level to which it sort of meets the goals of the state. So if our goal is newer and fewer, and you're saying we're going to just fix our own high school and not make an attempt to make a regional high school, it might get 20%. But if you are looking at saying, we're going to add on to U32 so we can accommodate every school that surrounds us, that would be meeting the goals of the state and it might get a 50% contribution.

[Emily Long (Member)]: And that is with the loss program. You got 30%, but it emerged captive.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: On a somewhat related topic, might be throwing a monkey wrench in here, we did have presented to us Bill from Rev Kimball, regarding construction and bonding and the excess spending threshold.

[Emily Long (Member)]: It's a great time spend.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: And that's not I was just saying that's really a ways and means issue. Yeah, it's not our purview to

[Emily Long (Member)]: weigh in on that, but

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: I thought I'd bring it

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: up as long as we're talking about school. There's something out there in the works. We can't do a bond as a state. Do have state bonding, is that?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: The bonding capacity of the state is could not absorb the need of school construction. So in other words, was the old

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: But like a one time state bond for school construction.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think the answer is no. That was that is how Rhode Island seeded its program as they sort of initially large bond.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, that was my thinking.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Thank you, you reminded me there is in some states, of course, some people I've talked to, they actually use treasury dollars as investing in public infrastructure, with the payback being part of a small

[Emily Long (Member)]: And instead of a bond, part

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: of the regular legislative.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Right. Yeah. And we do it much more on a local level in Vermont. It's all done through the municipal bond. We've really moved to a state keep on a pay go system at the state. Alright, since I'm only hearing silence at this point.

[Emily Long (Member)]: Why don't you talk a little bit

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: more about what you got in front of you? I

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: mean, this is just me thinking To in be clear about that, I'm thinking in my hands, I'm not proposing anything. But I guess I was just thinking that there's been so much that we thought we've put into our tech centers. I understand that everyone's getting really hung up on this SUSD question. To me, that is really secondary to some other really more important questions. So I kind of wrote these out as SUs because that's the feeling that I'm hearing from my district. But I also could see them being SDs if there was a safety mechanism in place that people weren't trying to eat each other's. And I think that, I don't know what to say about it. Like what questions do you have that you want me to speak more about?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Oh, I'm just curious. Is, is it based on the task force original CTE Yeah,

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: although I wasn't looking at that. I was really just looking at a list of the tech centers and probably the lines would need to be adjusted by people that live closer to those. They may be wrong on this.

[Emily Long (Member)]: How many do you have? So you mentioned tech centers, it's centered around just the tech centers, not a future state of regional high school even school Well, that's the other thing I was

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: thinking, is that this does not preclude the idea of regional high schools and all of the state construction that could go in that and be incentivized. I think that there probably are a lot of places and maybe a place for one or two more tech centers, but some of these are getting kind of big. But we could continue to have regional high schools, like maybe, I think there's 17 on here right now. Colors, 17 districts, SUs, how hard we went. 17 little separate boxes.

[Emily Long (Member)]: I

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: think there could be regional high schools, probably not as few as 17, because I know of at least some communities that don't want just one regional they want to continue to fight for their schools. But I think that if there were sort of guidelines in place, the foundation formula could still apply to this. If you can make your school work within the foundation formula and you're meeting the standards that we, the quality standards that we're setting for high schools minus maybe the minimum class sizes, regardless of your size, you have a chance to try and keep going. This could exist within here, but with one government structure for each of these colors. And I think that we can, well, I guess too, because there would still be the districts if we wanted to make these estimates. I could maybe be sold out by main districts, but maybe not.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So actually, just from a public records point of view, probably we should hold off discussing that specific map until we're ready

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: to

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: submit it and post it and all of that.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: That's what I said, was thinking with

[Emily Long (Member)]: Grand Yep,

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: that's fine. But here's a discussion I think we should have right now, because we are using a lot of terms interchangeably. What do we mean by regional high school? Anybody can start right off. Thank you, Kate, your I

[Kate McCann (Member)]: would think it would be a high school in which the kids that live in the region go to that would include some access, maybe not full access, but some access to CTE curriculum. I'm kind of thinking about the regional high school that I went to in Whitefield, New Hampshire, where you could take AP calculus, and then you could go outside and do maple sugaring. Or you could go into the garage and learn how to change the oil or whatever. I want kids to be able to do a wide variety. I don't want them to have to necessarily make a choice and go off to another school. And then that's the choice that they've made. So, that's what I'm thinking when I say a comprehensive regional high school.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So, comprehensive is actually in statute. I

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: know, I know,

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: But we keep using, just want to get some common understanding of regional high school. Like, does it mean an existing high school? Because if we're going to talk only about brand new high schools, we need to ratchet down our expectations because at 190,000,000 a pop.

[Kate McCann (Member)]: I think it could mean what you had mentioned earlier, maybe 32 adding on donations to existing structures,

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: whatever it means to our book.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: How about a number? Is this a Not number of schools, but number of kids at a regional high school. I'm not going stop talking.

[Kate McCann (Member)]: Well, your report

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: that previously that's many years old now that he talks about evidence that moderately sized schools, and at the high school level, he calls that 600 to 900, may optimally balance economies of size with potential negative effects of larger schools and consolidation. So that's a very rough benchmark. There's something that came from somewhere.

[Leland Morgan (Member)]: I think of regional, it has to be a geographical accessible region.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Think one of the primary things that would involve everything that you indicated.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: I can't put a mountain in

[Kate McCann (Member)]: the way that doesn't open the paths during the winter.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So, if we were to use my map and Addison County basically becomes a district, and we've got three high schools there. In that case, what is meant by regional high school? And what if the one that we think is the regional high school, because it's got the CTE attached to it, isn't geographically convenient to everybody within that district?

[Kate McCann (Member)]: I would go back to the idea that you could have satellite pieces. I think the tech center that we have over at Barry, it's already exceeding its capacity. So if they got to stay in that space and we took some of those kids so that they could expand, they still might not have enough space. So let's say they still need another automotive and another HVAC. Those two programs are built at E32. That still makes E32 a regional high school.

[Emily Long (Member)]: I don't think we can duplicate all programs in all schools, but I think all regional high schools should have access to career tech curriculum program, because there's many things that don't actually require more than a classroom along with some investment in

[Kate McCann (Member)]: lot of them.

[Emily Long (Member)]: Right, that's one of them. I think we pretty much all agree on that, having that CTE. But it is why I went from the comprehensive high school, because it is in the Yeah, well, yeah. And I'm still not sure how middle schools fit into this. But I think middle schools could fit into this. And maybe not in region of high school, but it could be regional high schools, regional middle high schools. It could be both. In rural regions, you may need to have middle school. And you may need the middle school to hit the numbers. Yeah, I'm just trying to get opportunities in front of kids. It's my goal.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I also want to weigh in on what we mean when we talk about regional high schools. Because I think the task force report said we should incentivize the creation of regional high schools. The challenge with that is, who gets to be the regional high school? Or are you just saying, we're gonna empty out these buildings, we're gonna build a brand new facility, which is probably beyond our capacity at state?

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Well, then I will

[Emily Long (Member)]: add on to since you brought it up, I'll add on to that, that I wanna make sure that we don't create in the process of creating regional high schools, however that happens, that we don't create public school deserts.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: When we say that it's beyond our capacity as a state, I guess one of my questions is, does everything have to be sort of the same? Because it seems like there are some parts of the state that have really adequate or more than adequate facilities right now that could service some of those regional high schools. And there are some parts of our state that just have nothing that could service that. I mean, we don't need to build a new high school in every region. There are some that have some. But like, you know, this wouldn't really work in my region without a new high school or two. We don't have what E32 has or what Chittenden County has. So I don't think it needs to be uniform for fairness. That's equality and affection.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yes, I think if our goal is to increase access to regional high schools, we could Hazen be a regional high school with a significant investment of money.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Think it would need an entire league in building. I mean, offense to Hazen, but it's a different planet, not

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: It's just a different used up. The building is used up.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: Well, it's added up north region. PCBs, resulting in perhaps the whole demolition and rebuild of at least a major wing of a school at my region.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Bring it on home.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Alright. Well, this isn't going to I know that we are rushed, and we're feeling a lot of different pressures. And for some of us, some of the decisions last year were perhaps rushed. But now, given all the work we've done in the legislature, all the tools in the district builder and the drive time, all of that, all the work the redistricting task force has unearthed, what the commission continued to go through, we have a lot more information, and to an extent, engagement. It's absolutely not uniform at our fingertips. And so it just seems it doesn't seem unreasonable that we could have a couple actual look at the real schools, the real kids, the real drive times, the real FCIs, and plot out a couple scenarios of what the future state of the actual high schools might look like. And I'm not quite sure how to get from here to there. If it's just a matter of us doing it ourselves, I get nervous about that because I feel like I only know certain regions well. But it just seems like instead of this theoretical and I think the task force was starting to get there, and they did it pretty intensively in a couple of regions. But to take the whole state and start there doesn't feel unrealistic, it also feels like perhaps a more kind of logical starting point to go backwards from. Because what I will also add to totally complicate and annoy everyone is that I am very worried how much we are obsessing over maps. And I totally understand why. But you can see things super clearly on a map. You can see lines. You can see towns. There's two major pieces to this transformation, and the foundation formula is a huge policy change. And it's not as clear. It's multi years of process. It's lots of spreadsheets. It's things that are not on one paper for us to easily see and may have even more dramatic impacts in lots of different ways on the future of education. And so am concerned, I guess Leanne talks through things there that increasingly my first question is, and what about the foundation form? What does it mean? What does it mean? What does it mean? Because I think if we just keep looking at the maps in isolation without a concurrent conversation about the foundation formula, what assumptions have already been made, what assumptions could be made, and what that will mean. Because right now, these two go together. And so if there's a map, then there's a foundation formula. And so if one happens before the other, but some of the things that people might feel strongly about in a map actually might be more impacted. The decisions they might have to make might be far more impacted by the foundation in terms of what stays open, what stays closed, how many teachers, what opportunities, what programs. So that's secondary to my dream that we could actually create a real high school map, I think. I don't think that's unreasonable. I'm not sure who or how, but it just seems we've got lots of stuff here. It seems possible. But then the second is my really existential concern about where we are in this two parts, and we're only looking at one part, and that it's a two part mega change. I'm sorry.

[Emily Long (Member)]: Remind us that even the governor has been very clear that, and it's always been this way from the beginning, that the foundation front doesn't happen without governance change. The governance change has to come first. So as much as we have a, I don't want to call it framework, because a lot of work has gone into this foundation formula, it feels like we need to work on this governance first.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yes, please.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Well, was just gonna say, just to add on to that, I think maybe I'm speaking just for myself, but I think I'm speaking for more than that. I think we just need to be really clear about what our governance decisions, if we get there, sort of trigger down the road. And I'm not sure that we're all operating with a common understanding of what the governance decisions mean for the issues that just highlighted for us.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Representative Emmett said, You're kind of stuck to sit there in silence, wait till somebody talks.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Is that a strategy?

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: No, it doesn't work in this committee.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Alright. So we can talk about regional high schools. Mandatory, voluntary. If it's voluntary and it doesn't happen, then what?

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: I guess that's where it is a lot more than that, but that's where I think having the conversation isolated from the foundation formula is hard because there's a very strong connection between and then what because we are constraining education spending and we are controlling it at the state level. And so the choices people will have about and what may become more stark in different ways. And so, you can keep your small spool, sure, at what cost, and then if the foundation formula's pretty tight, what do you do then? Or you have your opportunities that you want to maintain, but the foundation formula's pretty tight, you don't have a lot of wiggle room, then what do you do?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Can almost work that argument, that conversation down to, are we spending too much on education?

[Emily Long (Member)]: Right, yeah, make sure.

[Leland Morgan (Member)]: Voluntary with a lot of incentives can go a long way.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: What those incentives are, I don't know, but it makes

[Leland Morgan (Member)]: voluntary much more

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: useful. So Leland says voluntary and lots of government tax dollars to Oh, yeah. That's gonna

[Emily Long (Member)]: go a long way.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Leanne?

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: I guess I just have a lot of faith in Vermonters and in small towns that these regional high schools existed, that a lot of schools would a lot of families, a lot of students, a lot of towns would in fact choose them. I feel like when we're talking about voluntary versus mandatory, there's this assumption that if we don't make it mandatory, people won't choose them.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: But you have a chicken and egg thing. Do you invest $100,000,000 in U32, not knowing if people will come?

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Right. But that's kind of the point that I'm trying to make, because I think that they will. And for those that it was really important, is there a way, I guess it would be through districts. I'm thinking about this out loud, is maybe a risky thing to do. But is there a way that students could choose in their tiny high school to still go to the regional and then it'll probably take care of itself? They'll either, you know, families will either choose to support their small high school or they will move to the regional high school, then the question has been answered.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: If there is high school choice. You have to be able to offer them that choice. Right.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: I'm always concerned, or have been even when I was on the task force, of not looking at it all statewide when it's all voluntary because I worry about the left out, the piecemeal part of it, the deserts that get formed because nobody takes them in. And you get an increase in equities rather than a coming together. So I worry about that also. And I think that's part of what happened the last time I tried this, is it happened, but not on a large enough scale statewide, in a coordinated way statewide. As you can see, regions really worked well, and regions of the state that have just been devastated.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: All right. Anything else before I say we'll adjourn for the day?

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: I would say the thing that really one piece, there's many things that have me stuck, but one piece that has me really stuck is that I feel like, you know, Vermonters at least, I don't know if your guys inboxes are filling up at the rate of mine match, But I feel like Vermonters in my region have really spoken that they want a chance to hang on to their schools and make their communities survive with those schools. Maybe that doesn't preclude like a regional school, high school, middle school, the elementary schools definitely feel like they are trying to hang on to it. To me, I feel committed to listening to what they want. I feel like that was the position I was hired for. So I don't know. I don't know what my point is.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That's a totally solid point.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: I would say it's going

[Kate McCann (Member)]: to take a while to get these regional high schools built. And maybe your region doesn't start with one because they don't want one. Right, maybe they And they wait and see what happens.

[Emily Long (Member)]: Yeah.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We have a fundamental issue in the state on how we do our education funding, and while everybody may want what they have, some of what they have cost the rest of us a significant amount of money. That's one of the challenges. Change is very difficult for many people. Don't know it's changed, but it has. Well,

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: I would touch back on that though, because we keep saying that change is difficult for people and it's stealth and it keeps them wanting to have their schools open. I just don't think that that's the entire answer. It is also wanting to see those regions survive for generations to come. And as we shut down schools and make them nothing more than a postcard for the rest of Vermont to say, Hey, this exists. Then those regions will not survive. And so that's what we're trying to protect. It's not lack of change, but a chance for a future that has community.

[Kate McCann (Member)]: I might push back and say, if they want those schools to exist, they should think about big C, big S community schools at the elementary level and try to save those schools that way. I mean, that's even annoying. I think is great. Like we saw this in Washington Central. I keep talking about it. Doty had an opportunity to put a daycare out there, much needed out in that area, and they chose not to do it. And now if we go forward with all of this, they're likely gonna have their school shut down. And that's a choice that that community made. So every community's got a choice. They gotta figure out where they want to go. But I think we often talk about this redistricting stuff as closing schools, closing schools, closing schools. I don't think it has to be that way. I just don't think it has to be that way.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: And I hope you're right. And I think it would be way easier for some parts of our state to move forward if we had a few more assurances, and it's not going to be that way. Because right now, it feels like asking people to sign up for

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: their own execution. And so if

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: that's not really what we're talking about, then we should be clear of that. The foundation formula is gonna constraint spending, so there's

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: big growths and losses. This is that we're all feeling that in different places. But that is, again, why I'm raising that point. But this is two part package. They're both huge and they're both going to have implications. It is not just district boundaries.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We have a bill on the wall that says just implement the foundation formula and get rid of class size minimums and other things and just let everybody. And it's the money in their own way.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: I mean, how do we even do that when there are so many pieces of foundation formula to be like a TBD, to be determined? So it's like, don't even know how I wrap my head around a bill like that.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Right. Well, definitely would be And that is one of the major challenges with us wanting to be able to connect the foundation formula to any map work we do right now is because TE hasn't been figured out. Pre K hasn't been figured out. Those are the big ones.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Special Ed.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Special Ed hasn't been figured out. There's big study to back at the end of this year. So, we

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: are

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: challenged, are challenged period. We're definitely challenged by wanting to take a step forward and we want 100% of the information so we know exactly what we're doing, but we can't get 100% of the information until we make a decision on what we're doing. And we're gonna just keep grinding over this. I'm not sure we have maybe a stumbling block, as I keep saying, every one of us has got our stumbling block here, whether it's sort of preservation of local control or needing to know the foundation formula or whatever it might be. The alternative, what we need to know is what are the alternatives to the status quo that people get behind?

[Leland Morgan (Member)]: I have to take off.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We're gonna adjourn right now on that, Leland. Thank you.