Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay, we are live and this is House Education on 02/25/2026. This morning, we're gonna have some testimony from an organization, Friends of Vermont Public Education. I think we'll just dive right in. But I hope you'll give us a quick overview of who you are and what you represent in the beginning. Anyway, if you'd introduce yourselves, the floor is yours. Welcome, and thank you for joining us.

[Neil Odell]: Yeah. No, absolutely. Thank you very much. My name is Neil Odell, and with me today, I've got

[Jessica DeCarolis]: Christa Hewling and Jessica Carlos.

[Neil Odell]: I shouldn't say with me. We are together. Are together. That was a little awkward. No, we are part of an organization called Friends of Vermont Public Education. It's a nonprofit that we started about two years ago, really focused on Vermont's public education system. We, at the time, felt that there wasn't a whole lot of we were feeling not a whole lot of support out there for public education in the state. And together with a group of others that I had sort of come in contact over the years, we formed a nonprofit. Think we're showing up there the mission Franklin for Other Education and also the members of the boards of directors. If you can read the mission statement, I I think the thing that I would wanna highlight with that is that, we firmly believe that our constitution basically got it right on education, that education is a common benefit. It's for the good of all Vermonters, and it's really the foundation of not only our state's democracy, but the the country's democracy. And so it holds a really important role, and you'll see maybe we'll get into it a little bit later. As you all have noted before, right, it's the one governmental service that's specifically mentioned in our state constitution. So it's the one thing that you all are responsible for providing. And I know that you sometimes delegate it to some of us people at the local level to carry out that mention, but it is state's responsibility. Taking a look at I can't believe that they've already gone through introductions. I think the one thing that I wanna note about this, if you take a look at I would say the three of us are representative of or representatives, from the three pillars of Vermont's public education system when it comes to governance. Right? So I serve as a local school board member. Christa has served as a member of the State Board of Education and the chair, and Jess has served as part of the agency of education in senior leadership roles. So, right, the three I think we we cover sort of the three main pillars of the governance structure of education in the state of Vermont. So with that, I will punch Maggie in the yard because she's gonna move to the next slide. I just wanted to start out by acknowledging that this committee, you all are tackling some very challenging issues. Act 73 set the stage for the conversation that you all are having this session. And as I reread the law's findings, so act 70 three's finding last night, I think that they're very important and worth highlighting for the work that you're doing. They acknowledge that education in Vermont is a public good, a common benefit. We had mentioned that before. And it's also the only governmental service in our constitutional responsibility of the state. And, also, as part of the Brigham decision, the state has to ensure substantially equal education opportunities for all students. That's one of the things that we have to make sure that we do. And as you'll see in a moment, we believe that you can't truly accomplish any of these goals if you have two separate education systems in our state. One that is a public system and one that is a private system. Two systems, separate rules, separate regulations, both funded by taxpayer dollars. We understand, and I know you understand really well, property taxes are top of mind for many Vermonters these days. But on top of that, they've been told that it's rising education spending that is the cause of the problem, that is the major driver. So as you all work through things, if consolidation is being considered as a cost saving measure, it's just as important that we examine where the current costs are going in the system and how they're currently being used. A key part of that conversation is Vermont's tuitioning or voucher system. As you all weigh potential consolidation changes to the funding formula, we urge you to keep Vermont's constitutional obligation to provide public education at the center of your work. Our constitution requires us to fund schools. Yet it can be really easy to lose sight of that when we constantly talk about education spending per student and dollars, tuitioning dollars following the student to other schools. We wanna thank particularly chair Conlon for inviting us in today. We greatly appreciate it, but also for starting the discussion that you all are having right now, for putting a map on the table, but also putting bill language on the table. That was really important, we feel, to move the discussion forward. Your proposal raises some really important issues that this committee this committee and all legislators really needs to to wrangle with. If we're not able to under to address the underlying issue of SU versus SP head on, then we're unlikely to really move forward with any meaningful work on consolidation. We believe there is another bill that dovetails nicely into this conversation, and that's h eight thirteen. On top of all of this, we believe that your efforts are also being hampered by incomplete and inaccurate data. And we're going to spend a little bit of time talking on that data. But at this point, I am going to turn it over to Chris Taylor, who can take it

[Jessica DeCarolis]: from Yes. Okay. So next slide. So when we're talking about the eight thirteen, is requiring approved in hand schools receiving public tuition to fully comply with the education quality standards. So there are two QR codes up here.

[Krista Huling]: And usually as a public school teacher for twenty years, I did not like it when people took out their cell phones. If But you want to take out your cell phone and you can get into these documents by taking those pictures, go for it. So the one on the left is the education quality standards, which you all probably know just went into effect July 1 this past year, the new set of education quality standards. And then the second QR code is for the district quality standards. And those district quality standards, those went into effect, I believe July 1. It was July 1 also. So these are the two set of rules that public schools have to follow. So, is when we're looking at those SEUs and SDs, this is what they comply with. So, this is when we go and we're going to get into what the education quality standards are in just a minute. But again, that is the blueprint for all public schools and all the rules which they must comply with. This requires things like open enrollment. This idea prohibits admission screening so you can't screen students. This idea about complying with open meeting law, complying with public records app, making sure that you are accounting and reporting your data, distribution of annual budgets, discipline policies, safe facilities, licensed special educators and nursing, and just licensed educators just in general, and prohibits charging publicly tuition students additional tuition and recognizes and bargaining in good faith. And so those are all things that are required of our public schools. And again, I highly encourage you, especially the district quality standards, because I feel like those are the ones that people are less familiar with to go through. But if we could first focus on the next slide for the education quality standards. It's a little hard at the box to maybe get that, but it's again the same link. And I just went through and wanted to see the education quality standards. What are things that are we requiring of our public schools? And when we think about non discrimination, we think about college and career counseling. We think about promoting personalized and high expectations. This idea that there should be an EST team all coming together. All of this really is the education quality standards are created by the State Board of Education, which when I was part of, we redid the education quality standards. They've been redone since. And they get redone when you all pass legislation. So when Act 77 was passed, we had to go back in the State Board and look at how do we change the EQS to actually legislators told us that needs to be in there. So with Act 77, the idea of flexible pathways, the idea of moving away from seat time, graduation requirements are in that document. And so when the Act 77, we had to go back and change the graduation requirements. So graduation requirements could no longer be seat time. So it's interesting in ACT 73, back to, now you need graduation requirements and went back to seat time, which was the opposite of what ACT 77 had requested. That's why there's some interesting, when you go back and look in the education quality standards, lists these of the areas you have to be proficient in, and they have to be with standards adopted by the State Board of Education. So when I was on the State Board, was on from 2013 to 2019, that was a time period where we were adopting all of the new Common Core. We were adopting next generation science standards, C3 standards for social studies. So all of those were being adopted during that time period to meet the needs that you all set with ACT 77. When ACT one was passed, that again opened up EQS because ACT one talked about some state curriculum. There is no state curriculum, but there is the graduation standards. That's why I opened up EQS and that's why they redid it to take Act one and take what you all said needs to be in education for all students and put that in. Problem is education quality standards are set of rules public schools follow and it's optional if you are not a public school. But it does envision other schools going for that. So that's what the highlighted yellow is actually a quote, is that independent schools seeking designation for EQS, there is a way to do it. It says who, when it talks about providing the district school districts for schools, that's assigned to the independent school. Duties assigned to school board shall be assigned to the independent school governing board. There's only one independent school, I believe, that has gotten designation that's that bird. So these set of standards are optional for some of our students. So the question is, what in this document, what is optional? And if we don't want it for all of our students, why are we asking our public schools to meet these standards? So just when we're thinking about the H813, it really bases the fact that all schools, all students that are getting publicly funded dollars should follow the same rules and those are EQS. So that document is, again, a fluid document that goes through open meeting. What I really like about having things go opposed to the district quality standards, which just came from the EOE, something that goes to the State Board of Education has to happen in open meeting, which is really important. That's that transparency piece, right? That is very much evident in that 73 that you all very much care about, this idea that there's public input. And again, if the legislature changes their mind, they pass a bill and then the state board has to go back and rework that education policy standard. So again, the bill itself, H813, really focuses on taking the education policy as a backbone and everything in here is applied equally, it's no longer optional. That's the basis of the goal. Krista, can I provide you some?

[Jessica DeCarolis]: Yeah. So I think one, what I appreciate about what Christa is pointing out, particularly in that highlighted language is also to point out that a lot of the work has already been done around language. The fact that this has already been contemplated and codified in rules. I think also, DQS, BQS, state board rules, it's like hundreds and hundreds of pages in a rule of French. Something to do on a Friday night. But I think from the perspective of how would we characterize it, is public institutions by law are inclusive. Everyone is welcome. And that they have to be both socially and fiscally responsible to the public. And I think that that's really what Christa was just walking us through. And so I really do encourage you to look at those two documents as hand in hand. When we are asking, and if there is anything that's too honest, I would love to hear why can't a school need them? And if they can't, then we really need to have a conversation with all of our schools, public and private, about what would be better, what would make things better. I know what really comes up is licensed educators. I'm a licensed educator. It was for twenty years, right? I've stopped teaching, but I was. And I think if we want to have our students to have licensed educators, why would we want that for all? One of the things I think is unique about being a licensed educator is not only do I have to prove and I have to do continuous education around teaching my craft and also my content, but I do things like I have to have an FBI background check. That's part of being a licensed teacher. The state legislator said, I can't owe back taxes. I mean, there's all sorts of things that are required of teachers as they get licensed. And if those are too onerous, let's talk about that for public schools too. It is difficult sometimes to find licensed teachers. That's why there is a process of a two year emergency license and then a person can work towards becoming a teacher. But again, if that's too onerous, let's have the larger conversation, let's not have carve outs. But that's what this really tries to make that even. Also, it introduced its legislative language to support the idea of state governance and efficiency goals outlined in 1753, and I was just speaking to that, this idea of transparency and governance legitimate in the state and local level. Lack of transparency at the local level diminishes that on the legitimacy at the state level. So again, that district quality standards is where the education quality standards is really for the schools, the district is really where it talks about the mechanics of this, an idea of meeting open meeting law, making sure you're putting forward your data, all these things that you have a budget that people can look at and see, and it's very transparent. And I feel like that was really evident to me when I was reading Act 73, that those were things that were important to you. So to make Act 73 be successful, I really think you need the H813 to give that even more transparency and to where our public dollars are going. Currently, we have public dollars going and there is no budget to come out to see what's happening. There is no board meeting minutes. There is no access for the public to go see what's happening behind closed doors. So all those things which actually bring more transparency. So public school boards operate in the public. Public school boards really are the voice and representation of an area, and those don't exist for some of our communities. And by following these same rules, it would give those same opportunities to all Vermonters no matter where your kids are going. And again, spending public money requires a public process and public input. And by following the same rules, it really creates a life one system. And to that end, it would support improved data reporting and analysis and evaluation improvement efforts. And you all probably saw the news reports in the state report card in identifying schools that were failing schools or commending schools. I encourage you on that hyperlink to go to that list, there are no independent private schools on that list because they don't have to put forward their data. So it's really hard to have a conversation about what schools are meeting quality when they don't report the data. And so we're only pointing out our public schools and how they are being treated. So again, that report, it's really missing. It's not capturing all Vermont students and all Vermont schools. And then a narrative becomes who are failing schools. It's these public schools. And that's not a fair narrative, especially when this data is being excluded. And to speak more about data, Justice, data. Sure. And I'm appreciating the math that you've got on the whiteboard behind you. And hopefully, I'm going to be able to do this in a slightly discernible way. I also just wanted to follow-up on a comment that Christa shared in particular this idea of what do we mean by undermining the governance legitimacy. And I think you've heard a lot from various secretaries, etcetera, that we delegate our authority to our public schools to administer public education. So they are acting as government. And what happens, and one law professor has characterized this way, when we don't have the governance rules follow the public money, what we're doing is we're outsourcing our sovereignty. And that's problematic, right? Because it means that you don't have as much control. And I think that part of the discussion around Act 73 was getting your arms wrapped around the system. So what I have here, next slide, is data without context, divorced from context, I think is problematic. Understand it. On the right hand column, you'll see some of the state contextual factors that happened. So the secretary highlighted it to 2017 as being a high point. I will just point out that in 2,009, we were at about 85.5% graduation rate. So we do have ups and downs. That happens in education. But particularly what I was trying to highlight here is that a lot happened since 2017. You'll see that we've had at least four different transitions around secretaries of education. We had a global pandemic that officially ended in 2023. We've had three back to back major flooding events. We passed Act 74 that resulted in mitigation. I do want to commend the chair for, I think you introduced an amendment around perhaps pausing the PCB testing. Persistent organic pollutants are really hard to put your arms around it. The US, while being a signatory on a global treaty, has failed to actually ratify that, which means that we have not committed to being legally bound by it. So I'm not sure if it's fair to bound Cabot School District or North Country Supervisory Union to managing persistent organic pollutants, particularly when we've set the standards 500% below what the EPA set. But I think that what we have is we've had a lot of disruption. I think in the 2122 legislative session, were 68 bills around making amendments to public education, very similar amount of bills modifying this. This is a lot of churn, right? So while, yes, I agree that we always want to be moving towards that target of increasing our graduation rates, we also have to make sure that we are talking about the context in which we are producing this data. Next slide. Before we go, just want to Do you want to add? So I was the chair during Act 46. And so that last became the state plan.

[Krista Huling]: And just to point out that Act 46 really was only for public schools, and it's only for operating like districts. So we're talking about who is feeling the churn, who is feeling that turnover. If you remember, the precursor to Act 46 was Act 153 and 156, and those tightened up what SUs were responsible for. So if you remember before, it used to be that every district in an SU had separate teaching contracts. Everybody had different curriculums. So that Act 01/1953, 01/1956 tightened what they had to do. It also had the voluntary program with the reds. I think of my daughter and her best friend sitting behind me, and her best friend is in Spanish immersion because she's in a district that did the reg, the MMU, and created Spanish immersion. So those were precursors, but they were only for those public schools. Hardback 46, when I was sitting at the table looking at the map like you all are doing and getting blurry and looking at all these different districts and who's operating, who's not operating, it's very overwhelming. But with Back 46, we didn't have to, we were prohibited from doing anything to anybody that was non operating. So that wasn't even part of the conversation. So the only, when we talk about the churn that's been going on, this is public schools that have been dealing with this turnover. Nothing has been asked of schools that don't know, and nothing's been asked of those communities to give up. And so it's been a long conversation and changing. Yeah, I might also point out that 2025 is a really interesting year. And I think when we were introducing ourselves and obviously formally being at the Agency of Education, But the state plays a role in the fiscal responsibility of how we administer public education. And so in that year alone, both the district quality standards and the new updated education quality standards were supposed to went into effect. And we undid it by passing Act 73, which is reopening the education quality standards. Right?

[Jessica DeCarolis]: And Act 127 funding went into effect and we're undoing that. And so some consideration as to, and I think I've heard this mentioned before in this committee, think, Conlon, you and I have spoken about this before, is in two year cycles, legislative cycles, you can't always realize the outcomes of your behaviors, but you can set the conditions. And one of those conditions can be to not contribute to churn. Next slide. Okay, bear with me. I'll walk across the columns, right? So the four year and six year are the graduation rates. From 2017 to 2024, those all come from the Vermont Education Dashboard, which is available on the Agency of Education website. The 2025 data graduation rates, I pulled from the secretary of the agency's report, but those aren't available in the dashboard. CDP stands for the Collaborative Data Project. The state education agency, the agency of education, along with all of the other state education agencies in New England, were part of a New England Secondary school consortium in which we had agreed to come together to tackle some major issues in education around equity and quality and rigor together. And part of that was to have a common data project. And so column, the CDP reported end size is the number of twelfth grade students that we've recorded, that the agency reported to this collaborative. The twelfth grade enrollment fall is what is reported in the Vermont Education Dashboard as the enrollment status of twelfth graders in the fall collection. In the end of year, it's the end of year collection, same grade level. You'll see a trend there with some wonky data in which there were disruptions or changes. So obviously there weren't zero twelfth graders in 2017, but there's no data available. It's reported as zero in the dashboard. But you'll see that generally it increases. So at the end of the year, you have higher reported numbers of enrollment. And then the other published report is all from reports that the agency of education has published or co published. So from 2017 to 2021, the other published report, those numbers, the 5,561, that's twelfth grade enrollment as reported in a combined report from VZAC, the Agency of Education and the Vermont State University System around early college. The 2022 to 2024 in the other published report, those are the bolded numbers. So you see we jumped from 2021, five thousand four hundred and ninety two twelfth grade students reported to 7,020. Now we didn't have an influx of a population. We're constantly talking about declining enrollment. So what the agency did last year when they submitted their legislative report around Act 77, is they have an asterisk in which they explain that from '22 to 24, in the average daily membership, they included enrolled in public schools and publicly funded students, but excluded home study students, even though home study students are afforded the publicly funded early college enrollment program. And so what I wanted to point out here is if you look across these four columns, none of them line. And this is all from the agency. And that begs the question, when we're reporting on performance, what's in the numerator? What's in the denominator? We don't know. And that's not to knock the people at the agent. The people in the data management and analysis division are hardworking statisticians, but we have created a system of complexity with constant change and churn that we are constantly chasing the next thing. We don't have responsible data governance, we just don't. So the other thing I want to point out is that in the final call, that difference, the difference between what is currently sitting in the Vermont Education Dashboard as end of year enrollment for twenty twenty four in twelfth grade, and what was reported in the legislative report that is sitting on your website right now from last year is 18%. That's a big number when you're trying to report on student performance. That can significantly skew when you don't know what 21% or 22% or 18% of your publicly funded students are doing. Next slide. Additionally, we're talking about college and career readiness. Same problem. Based on agency data, Vermont Public had an article in which they talked about how CTE is not struggling to serve students or to enroll students, they have long waiting lists. The AOE report that 5,467 students participated in CT. We know that predominantly by law, that's juniors and seniors. Additionally, the AP report that was published for fiscal year twenty four shows that 3,371 students took AP courses, 5,934 exam for taking, and seventy four percent of those students scored three or higher in three means that you are hitting it, you are proficient. And finally, in the 2025 Act 77 report, which is about 2024, so this is all the same years. We know that twenty six point five percent of our students took college coursework either through dual enrollment, early college or fast forward, which is Perkins funded concurrent enrollment. So it's all college level courses. But again, when we're saying then that we're not meeting our college career readiness, it's really hard to understand Because again, we don't know what's in the numerator and we don't know what's in the denominator. And what we're asking is that if we were to have data governance that apply to anyone accepting public funds, We we would probably be able to answer those questions. And we would probably have a clearer understanding about how our students are doing. Next slide. Oh, you're already there. Yeah. Okay. As you see, the vulnerable populations just wanted to point out, and I think Chris has already touched on this, so we don't need to repeat it. But we wanna make sure that our folks are trained and licensed and that they've gone through the same sort of background checks and vetting. But I think another thing that we wanna sort of look at, and again, this is where there can be this inbuilt inequity. And we've all contributed to it. Is that even though 37% of our Vermont communities tuition their students, that is actually only addressing 19% of our publicly funded Vermont students. And they are only those communities taking on 26% of the tax burden to maintain and operate our constitutionally defined public schools. And that only 3% of those students actually live in our highest quartile of social vulnerability as defined by the federal government. And that's compared to 24% of our students who don't have tuition as an option. Which brings us to the next slide. This is something that was built from the agency's FY24 report around tuitioning. It's no longer available on the website. I do have a downloaded copy if folks want to see that. This summary is something that I pulled because it was a massive spreadsheet and I went through and sort of organized the data. But I think, again, when we're talking about equity and fairness and responsibility, when we're thinking about that sort of shift around who gets to tuition, who doesn't get to tuition, where do you live? When we're thinking about drawing maps, one of the things that people might fall into, and I heard folks talk about this before is, well, why not just make it available to everyone? And I would just caution folks. And if you look at the total elementary spending for private and out of state schools versus the total elementary public, you have close to a $10,000 difference in per pupil spending. And I think other states have experienced this. Texas is struggling with this right now. Their joint fiscal office, whatever it is called, but you can look this up and I can provide a link for folks. But they have proposed a universal voucher system. And that is already proposed to add an additional billion dollars of impact on their general fund. And up to 2,030, they are anticipating being $4,000,000,000 in the whole for their general fund. And that's on top of their education spending. And that has been seen across states in The United States that have gone to universal voucher programs. So I think if we go back to where we started, which is how can we be both fiscally and socially responsible, we need to first get our arms wrapped around this situation. Next slide. I think sending it back to you. Yes. And so I know this has been coming up in the community, but before making a decision about SES, establishing one system of rules and standards for every student that receives tax dollars. So we really see this actually helping with the conversation because all these barriers that keep coming up about whether to be an SD or an SU and what to put forward, it's really hard to create SD when you have people operating on different rules. So the first step is really this H. One, three is that everybody's playing by the same rules. And there is, I'm just thinking when I was on state board hearing superintendents come in and talk about the complexities of trying to manage these different districts with different contracts, different rules of what was going on. You would replicate that if you don't have the same rules. So by advancing what you're looking to do, it's really, I think our group is really saying, this will help. This will be part of the solution. Those conversations, these rules are already written. We have quality standards. We have district quality standards. They are out there. It's not a mystery. And you can go through them. And if it's something you don't want for schools, then you can change it. But if we have one set, it will really help a path where you can have better conversations. So when we were on the state board looking at the final plan, part of that was we were asked to change the SU boundaries. And you might be aware of this that the state board can change SU boundaries at any time. And so part of the secretary's report to the board was to wait until 2020 after Act 46 to let that churn settle down before redrawing boundaries. Because again, you have to change contracts. So all those contract changing allow that to happen and then move forward with changing SUV batteries. Because instead of trying to change five or six contracts, you might be trying to merge two or three. But just part of that process that you're all going for, really, this bill will help you get where you want to go. And you don't have an answer about what's better, an SU or a STD, but an SU is more complicated. Other options include things like you can change what an SU is responsible for. That's what Act one hundred fifty three and one hundred fifty six was. Act one hundred fifty three and one hundred fifty six really, again, tightened up who's in charge of curriculum. It mentions transportation, but it doesn't say that transportation. And I see that in my area. I live up in Lemoyle North. And even though they merged under one district, they still have three different transportation coordinators because they've never really fully merged. So things like that, so if you're having those discussions, I think they can be more meaningful once you have the overall sales and then really think about what to tighten that up. Because even if the SE could act more like an SD, what could you all change to make it act more like an SD? And yes. Yeah, so caveat, what you're contending with is incredibly complex, incredibly complex. But this particular issue doesn't have to be complicated. And it really shouldn't be controversial. It's an if then statement. If public dollars follow students to approved independent schools, then public rules and standards should also follow students to those approved independent schools. I would clarify that just as the state governs our public schools, it shouldn't be left then to the school districts to govern independent schools. It would be the responsibility of the state. But really what we're trying to clarify is that you will have a much clearer picture in order to make any subsequent changes, any subsequent decision, because it is complex. We have 26 supervisory districts. We have 24 supervisory unions. We have two interstate districts that oversee seven schools total, not all within the boundaries of the state. Have two ninety six public schools. And on top of that, they only occupy two eighty six physical plants, overseeing 88 school districts. We have three supervisory districts that tuition. We have three supervisory unions that don't tuition. I understand the complexity of it. But the rules are where you start to get to some of that coherence, and then you can start to understand fully the scope of the problem that you're contending with. Next slide.

[Neil Odell]: This is the easy slide.

[Jessica DeCarolis]: You gave it to me.

[Neil Odell]: You can read this. I just wanted to say thank you. We've got just a couple of minutes left. Really, how can we be helpful to you? How can we help you do this hard work?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Not sure I have an easy answer for that.

[Jessica DeCarolis]: How about we're at your service?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Thank you. That's probably the better way to put it. I think we all are sort of struggling with many of the questions that you raise here. And sort of, you know, it's one thing to say it isn't complex from a conceptual point of view, but from an operational point of view, things get complex. And so sort of figuring out all of that, you know, Conceptually, sure, it makes sense to say same dollar, same rules, which is the point of H eight one three. But that's an equation that requires both sides to agree with.

[Jessica DeCarolis]: Absolutely, and I think one thing to not be distracted by, and I understand where it comes from, like my husband went to private school, my mother went to private school. This is in private schools are independent schools in Vermont, And you can be for profit and you can be nonprofit. But it is private. It's a private domain. We are a democracy, but we are also a capitalist economy. And folks who choose to enter and treat education as a market, absolutely. That should be a choice to everyone. But as soon as you start publicly funding it, it enters the domain of a public good. And we need to be able to distinguish that. We have heard from private schools, not just that for the academy, but you've heard from private schools, people who are committed to education. Don't know if we pose this question just saying, these are the rules. And then you can always opt out. You can always opt out not to follow those rules, just as any private business can do. But when it comes to the public domain, my tax dollars, your tax dollars, there has to be accountability. Otherwise, suggesting that we're going to answer a question about property taxes or cost of living is going to be impossible because you are seeding insight and control over a component of the public domain. I would imagine that because so much work has already been done, you have all these rules already in place, I would I would be surprised that there wouldn't be an enormous number of independent schools who would be willing to engage in this conversation. I think that that's really

[Neil Odell]: important.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Well, I I would say that they have had the option to adopt everything you're talking about and and only one has.

[Jessica DeCarolis]: And I guess that's where it's Then a I guess the question I would ask them is what is in those roles that is so repugnant or is impossible? Why not? And if they can say, I'll point to here, here and here, this is impossible, then take a step back. Why are we asking our public schools to do that for all kids? I think it's a start of a conversation then. If the rules are too hard, why? And then if they are, well, let's engage the public school community and say, well, how is this for you? What could be changed? And would this actually release the tax burden? Will this actually create more equity? So what is it in these rules that could be changed to make it more efficient? And so I guess that's what I think is a conversation starter. And if people don't want to join on, I think they don't have to, there's no forcing, but if it was, then you could start having better conversations.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Committee members, questions? Representative McCann.

[Representative Kate McCann (Member)]: I have a quick question for you, Neil, as someone who's been a school board member for a while. We just took testimony the other day suggesting that school boards become more involved in the day to day of schools, which may include evaluation of principals and some work with curriculum. I'm wondering your thoughts on that.

[Neil Odell]: Personally, not a huge fan of that approach. A lot of the work that we it's governance related, right? I have one employee that's our superintendent, right? And that's where my focus is. Do things get really complicated when school board members try to run schools. And so I and so, you know, we are the we are the link between the public, right, and that organization that is the school. We're the liaison. We're there to make sure that the money that the public gives us is well spent. We're there to make sure that the outcomes of our students are what our community expects. We're not there to stand in a classroom and make sure the teacher is teaching the things that we think or in a way that we think should be taught. That's not my role as a school board member. I don't have the time for that, to be quite as important.

[Jessica DeCarolis]: And they're the you. It would be like asking you to evaluate agency staff. Mean, if you want to do that.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Other questions? Go ahead, Representative Brown, Representative McCann again.

[Representative Jana Brown (Clerk)]: I was just more of a statement earlier. I was gonna say I really appreciate Jess's framing about having this conversation be about accountability for public dollars. I think sometimes in the public discourse, we hear that this is a criticism of the quality of education being provided at independent schools or the dedication of the teaching staff. That's all clear. I don't think that's what this conversation is about, but it's very much about accountability for public funds.

[Jessica DeCarolis]: So appreciate

[Representative Kate McCann (Member)]: I would say we've known for a while that the data we're getting from the AOE is not something we can always count on as being the most reliable, and it sounds like maybe age 13 can put us on a track to really make sense of the numbers and get them to be in such a way that we understand where the numerators and denominators are and that they kind of stay consistently, not the same number, but the same whatever, from year to year, so that we're talking about, so we

[Jessica DeCarolis]: can make comparison. Yeah, and I appreciate that. Because I think one of the things too is we have a tendency when we think about policy as policy being precept like a mandate all the time, but policy can act as permission too. And what it would do is give the agency permission to start to really look at all of those numbers together and then report those numbers to the public in a way that the public understands.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Great, thank you all very much and very timely in terms of available.