Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Unidentified Committee Member]: All right, you're on in.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: This is House Education, Wednesday, 02/25/2026. We are walking through what currently exists in our miscellaneous education bill, and we'll talk a little bit about additions to it. But it's more of a reminder to get us prepared to deal with it. However, we might next week. That's really why I called this all together. So if legislative council wouldn't mind just sort of walking us through it, that would be great.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel. I'm just signing into Zoom. And

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: what's in here currently? Some of it, I feel like we resolved some of it we have not. We haven't even revisited it.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'll do something I never do and spend some time in the statement of purpose just so you can see what's in here now. So you're creating the moratorium, the exemption of the moratorium on new approved independent school applications. When it's a therapeutic approved independent school, it experiences a change in ownership. Half of this bill at this point is the interstate compact for education that you were once a member of, haven't been a member of for many years, this would adopt and have Vermont rejoin. We have skimmed that language before, but we've never really done a deep dive on it. And then what's new to this draft is the BOCES to CESA change, which is an excessive amount of pages, but all it is is replacing boards of cooperative educational services with cooperative educational service areas. And then the fourth discrete topic in here is language you have not seen, but we've kind of danced around. And that is essentially a hold harmless provision regarding when class size minimums, not necessarily when they're going to be taking effect, but when failure to follow class size minimums or comply with class size minimums could be held against state school.

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Does that basically mean we're taking a pause on there'll be work towards

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We'll like to get through to the next section. Sorry.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And this is just my first attempt at putting something together for you. Is the process where we get to decide if you like it or how to change it. What would you like to do? You wanna just go through the whole thing or go right to the new stuff?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: No, let's So let's start

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: at the top.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, section one is the approved independent school moratorium exception. So you've got the independent school moratorium that was added in the budget in 2023. And then last year, your miscellaneous ed bill added subsection B regarding an exception for a change in tax status. And this year's miscellaneous bill is proposing to create another exemption. So the moratorium on approval of new independent schools would not apply to changes in ownership for a therapeutic approved independent school. And if submission of an application for initial approval is required as a result of a change in ownership, and the school at the time of the change in ownership was already in a therapeutic approved independent school, then the moratorium created pursuant to subsection A, which says no new initial applications would not apply to that specific situation, and the state board and agency would be required to process the application according to applicable law.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yep. Go ahead, Emily.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Yeah. Setting aside all your language and looking at you, because it's just easier for me to do it.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, this a lot of words there.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: There are. And I guess here's my want to make sure there in my mind, I want to make sure there's boundaries around what you can do once this applies. So my understanding of the request is because there is a therapeutic school who wants to continue to be a therapeutic school, but has changed ownership. So essentially, an independent school selling to another owner of a therapeutic independent school. Does this language have just the boundaries around that specific thing? So what I'm asking is, can they get new ownership and then change?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, I think that's a great point. And I don't know that the language contemplates that as drafted. Think you could easily insert. So there's a requirement that in order for this exception to apply, they have to have already been a therapeutic approved independent school. So I think we can just add similar language, like maybe even just at the end of section 19, say something like, provided that initial application, the section shall only apply if the change in something to the effect of the school stays a therapeutic approved individual.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Yeah, don't think that- would

[Unidentified Committee Member]: be great. They have to go to the state board of ed house to approve it too. Couldn't they Having the language in there would slow the fire part.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And I think you want the language because this is all a matter of interpretation of rules. And so the less wiggle room you have, the more likely it is you will receive the outcome that you are

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: expecting. So

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I missed the testimony when we had the special educators in talking about, I know some of the questions was sort of about this specific issue. What was the sense of the committee from that testimony that this is important to do, wasn't really on their radar?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I mean, I would say I it's, I hate to speak for them again, but I remember them speaking to the fact that they think that there's a need for actually more independence, more therapeutic schools in general. In some areas. In some areas.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: That's absolutely what I got to

[Unidentified Committee Member]: But from

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: the angle was just trying to speak to these students. This is a completely different angle, I don't remember hearing beyond saying, Yeah, well, we don't want to lose an independent school. No,

[Unidentified Committee Member]: but going That's what I'm building on. This, actually, if they're saying there's a need for more independent, more therapeutic schools, I can imagine that they would be fine with us just allowing an independent school base to continue. Is what we're really doing. Being sold

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: and therapeutic. You mean the lines of society?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yes, from my understanding of this particular circumstance, is that the one that is being purchased would otherwise close. Now the buyer of it, I don't know if it's an in state, out of state entity, just go ahead and mention that.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, I've used my pink pen to make a note. The next graph will

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: have no language.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Any other discussion on this section?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: The only other would throw out there for the community to contemplate, I don't have any real opinion on it. If you really want to hem it in further, you could say, as long as that, if we want to limit it to just the non profit world, but that may be sticky in terms of like saying who gets it, who doesn't, based on whether their doctor's asked about it. Are some of the therapeutic stools for Preston? Many of them are.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Do we know of someone that's requesting this?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: My understanding is that the one that is closing down is for profit, and the entity that would like to take it over is not profit. I don't think we should get that restrictive to go

[Unidentified Committee Member]: nonprofit, you might get yourself in a situation where nobody wants to purchase it

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: and it hasn't closed down. Well, then yeah, and then I started thinking like, it really getting put in control of that, as you say. It on my, I don't want to get a pump out of my mouth. Great, thank you.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, so section two is adoption of the Interstate Compact for Education. So you would be adding a new chapter. So everything in section two is new language. You're adding a chapter, chapter 35 to title 16. This is the same chapter that the Education Compact lived in when you belonged to it prior to the early nineties.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Is there any I don't want make you go into walking us through this detail by detail. Was there anything in this language that raised any questions for you? Nope. It's pretty

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I don't believe it's changed much, if at all, since Vermont was a member. I'm happy

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Well, to there's unintended consequences that you see here.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I have not identified any. I will continue to think about that as we work on this bill before you vote it out. I have not identified any.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: It all seems like it's about the operations of the commission itself. Correct.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: My understanding is that we, Vermont has not been a member for decades at this point, since the early to mid '90s. Yet, we have continued to send, I don't know the right word, liaisons, trustees, commissioners, whatever. And I think it is legally tenuous for those folks to be participating because we are not members of the compact. And so if they are taking any action on behalf of the state, are they authorized to be doing that, etcetera? So I actually see this if you want to continue to participate as actually being quite protective of your ability to continue to participate. But I will continue to think about unintended consequences.

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Excuse me, sorry.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I believe there's a membership fee.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Which sort of, on the other side of things, we should point out, we are paying and really not, really don't have any power or

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: of drop us control. I remember that we, my recollection was that we paid it, but not necessarily every time and every time. We paid money. It's very off. You might be a little more formal. Yes. Okay.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So again, I will continue to think about unintended consequences. If you read this and you have any questions, you know how to find me. So we're going to jump to page 15. If you haven't come to visit me in my office yet, I have candy and goldfish available.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Real or edible?

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Wow. I

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: would now that you've, I maybe now I'm going to think about getting a pet in the office. Section three amends all of chapter 10, which is your formerly BOCES chapter. Now you're, what are we saying? CeSA? CeSA. CeSA.

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Like on a playground.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's second, the next thing replaced boards of cooperative education services with cooperative educational service areas. And then there are a bunch of conforming changes anywhere else the term BOCES appeared in Title 16 or a couple other sections. That, let's see, swole to section four, starts on page 25, line five. This is the transition report. Sorry.

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

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: to interrupt. But I want it I'm still right up at the very top. And I just want an explanation of why it says cooperative educational service as opposed to education.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, I thought that was the word we were using.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: I don't know. I'm asking. I literally am just asking. It changed from education service to educational service. And I'm curious how we

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: want Maybe we need to go to the national organization's website and see what the term is that is most used or what was used in the redistricting task force.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I just can't remember no AL on it, the education.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: I thought

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: it was just education. Okay.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: I'm not.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: This is my recollection.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: I could be wrong.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Hope it's still true. I will verify that and make conforming changes, but it's an easy one to do. So same changes, so we can just pretend it says education for the sake of this discussion. So if you jump to page 25, section four is this is the session law from Act 168, which created BOCES for the report back. And so just updating that language to reflect the correct term, no substantive changes there. Same in section five on page 26, the BOCES grant program. Oh, look at that. I need to make that SESA.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Are you looking at the redistricting task force or at the national organization website? We got appendage in here. I got Cooperative education service areas. Education. Oh.

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: There you go. That's what we call it.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That's a fantastic

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: article. That's a fantastic

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: national So organization, this is really, but we may as well just do this once.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Do you remember what the national organization is called? I'll just Google it right now.

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: It's the AES.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: American Educational Service Association

[Unidentified Committee Member]: of Educational Service Agency.

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Oh, Association of Educational. It's not Okay,

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: that's definitely a, yeah.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: The director of that was very clear that it's called Many Things in Many Places. Kate, what were you basing your assignment?

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Well, I was on our regional something, It was talking about how they had been around for fifty years, our regional education service center, as part of a cooperative educational service.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: don't care what you picked.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: I totally

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: understand this is not your call.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: And I brought it up, so I just wanna say, I don't care which it is. I just don't want us to have to change

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: it again. Exactly. No. We let's let's pick one and go with it.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Because there were two ways of saying this,

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: so I don't care which direction. Okay. So I would say I'm a little hesitant to use the word agencies. I've got a bigger bureaucratic name.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I thought it was areas.

[Rep. Kate McCann (Member)]: What'd you say? Yeah, Rob said areas.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. I thought we were debating educational versus an education system.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: We were, but never met

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: here and the word agencies up there.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I do remember you were very clear in discussion the last time we talked about this that you wanted area and not agency.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay, so we are only debating the AL.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Well, you can change your minds.

[Rep. Kate McCann (Member)]: No, don't let us talk.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: I don't have to make the whole change in them. Oh,

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: should we need to stronghto this? Sorry. Way

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: here. We're not voting on this today. Why don't

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: we just let it think? Okay. Everybody has to give it a big faint over the rage. My

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You're

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: the chair of attorney. You go ahead and decide.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's just no one asked for a floor amendment. Oh, god.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We'll have to be easy to justify our face. Do

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: you want me to make any changes prior to town meeting?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Okay.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, so we're on page 26. We've made conforming amendments to the BOCES grant language, and then we get into a bunch of conforming amendments where BOCES is mentioned elsewhere. So the duties of a supervisory union board, section seven is related to contracts, and then we've got retirement stuff, and then we've got healthcare and bargaining. So all of these are just amendments to the same statutes that were amended in Act 168 to add BOCES, only now we're changing the term. And then we get to page 33, the last section, substantive section, section 13, which is, for lack of a better way to put it, the hold harmless language. Do you want to pause and talk about anything related to both seesaws? No. Okay. Section 13, what I've done, and I think there are many ways you can do it, this keeps the language in one place, but technically you could add separate session laws, but someone then would have to know that both of them existed. So what I've done is I've amended Act 73, Section seven, which is that prohibits the from ordering or the state board from ordering consolidation for failure to comply with class size minimums until the general assembly establishes essentially school construction. You to don't order consolidate. You don't want the state board to order consolidation if it's going to then churn up construction costs that no one can afford. And then, so I've added a new subsection subsection here, another kind of exception to the class size minimums that says, notwithstanding, and these references are the class size minimums themselves and the recourse for not following it. So notwithstanding those pieces of law, a school's failure to comply with class size minimum requirements shall not count towards the three consecutive school years of non compliance that enables the secretary to recommend action to the state board until the state board adopts updates to EQS to reflect class size minimums or And then I just arbitrarily picked a date, July, whichever date shall come first.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay, so we'll talk quiz time. Jana, why are we doing this?

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Why are we doing the language that Beth just read? Where you are talking about school construction aid being a necessary prerequisite before school consolidation.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Anybody else wanna chime in on the question? Because I'm not presenting this on the floor. What's my answer? The answer is, let me do the school construction.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So I everybody needs to understand what we're doing here. It's not a big thing with lots of consequences, but we should all understand what we have with you. We have a bit of a conflict in that the law, the statute that we passed in Act 73 says the class size minimums. The law starts 07/01/2026. The rules to be developed by the State Board of Education have not been developed yet. And the point is, should we sync those up? The reason to do this to say, okay, let's hold off on enforcing class size minimums until the rules are all in place. We don't have to do this. For one year, over the 07/01/2027. Right. Well, well, it could be until the rules are in place or 2027, January 1. So that's why we're doing it. We don't have to do it. But that's the why. Yes. Go ahead.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: I'll just say, I think having heard from folks asking you this question, like, why the heck can't you put this into a pipe when the rules aren't even place. I think we should do it in alignment. It doesn't make sense to have conflict like that. I'll just add one more thing. This has created quite a significant amount of angst right from day one when we first started talking about it. I want clarity as much

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: as possible. And this is effective budgets?

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Correct. It's effective decisions whether to put up whether you close your school or not. I can give you an example.

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: It's also already affecting jobs. People are getting let go because of this and not coming back to the next year.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah, Chris, if we did not sync them, are there any ramifications if we did not sync them?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Well, it comes down to more of having trust that, so we have a statute. We have a power given to the secretary to address this. Without building out the rules, I think that it's sort of open to interpretation, sort of how the secretary works with schools. It's sort of like, there's a lot of, what's a class? All the little stuff that somebody's guessed, is a combined classroom of 35 kids, but with two teachers different than two separate classrooms. For all those little things, which we could say, just let the AOE decide that on a case by case basis and trust that everybody's gonna work together, which, you know, I'd be just as comfortable with that as doing this.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I guess the main reason I ask is because it was either the superintendent's association and the school board association, care about which one wanted these implemented sooner than later. We had testimony.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yes, but we say one of these, you can classify

[Unidentified Committee Member]: One of classifieds, no.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I mean, for all intents and purposes, whether we do this or we don't, what we have on the books is fairly lenient. A sort three of rolling average reporting, and then a sort of like, let's all work together to see if we could find a solution for a couple of years. So we're now five years into it. So it's already, I don't think this makes as much of a difference, the real power and impact of having it on the books, even though it is rather slow in enforcement, is that people are using it as a guideline as they go to budget, even though it's not so. So there.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I mean, I'm not opposed to doing it, I I do remember it. One of the

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: organizations wanted to get sort of Yeah, I mean, the statute's there. I

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: don't think we're changing the timeline of the rules being threatened. I think we want them in place, we're looking for that. I'm just looking

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: for Claire for the field as

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: they're making their decisions. To be fair, when school boards and communities make these really big decisions around that are driven by cost and class size minimums, they're looking at birth rates in their communities. So they're looking out way ahead. And I just want to make sure that we're being very thoughtful in our process to make sure that while they're being thoughtful, so are we.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I also wasn't voting the other day here. Just want everybody to understand the purpose and make sure we were all paying attention to that. Since one of you at the very last moment is gonna be asked to present this on the floor.

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Great, thank you.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Do you wanna think for now, are we keeping this either or option? Yes.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So that's everything that you have for us so far. Correct. So let me just tell everybody what else might go in here. We have had a request from the agency, which Beth has been going back and forth with to get some more information. They would like the power to be able to do background checks on their staff, especially staff that is working with schools. This gets into sort of state level HR stuff, like who does background checks and can't the agency do its own background checks. So anyway, that's being looked at. I think it's for efficiency sake so that they can get their own people doing what they need to do in the field as quickly as possible. Coupled with that, we've had a request from the outside from a nonprofit that deals with child abuse prevention to say, how about also any contractor working for the AOE in a school in contact with children should at least have a minimal criminal background check, they call it level one criminal background check. This was based on a case, now a few years old, where a photographer had been in the school taking pictures. Things ended up on the internet that were inappropriate. Did not end up being a criminal matter, so the person didn't have a criminal background. It wouldn't have been caught a criminal background, would been civil matter because I think it was an expired crime, too much time in the past. But anyway, it did bring up the question of why not just do at least a minimal background check on contractors hired by the AME working schools.

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: So also looking into that. Is that something that does not exist currently? That would be new, right?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: To the best of our knowledge, does not exist currently. Those are, that's one more thing in there, yeah.

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: And can I add for consideration something? Yep. That early college is just for public post secondary institution. Early college is just? For public post secondary institutions.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Maybe a tougher dive. There is, so yes, in terms of things that we are looking at adding, I think there are a lot of questions with early college that especially rep Brady has brought up, so I think that there is gonna be a request for a study, dive into some of these issues. That's a kind of a, I would say that that's bigger than maybe a miscellaneous egg bill, given its level of consequence, but also should probably be something about what's the impact of that.

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Most people are like, hey, sounds good, let's do it. Would that affect anybody besides Orange, Gina? No, because right now, our college is only the Vermont State College University System, CCB and Orange. And Orange, okay, because that's to be in the liberty. All of those are.

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

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: I like the idea, but I can see the argument to consider it as part of that, a bigger dive into that topic. I think we need to make sure we do take that dive. This is a really big deal.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, mean, you know

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: I've asked the question, I just reached out to Principal at La Color because we heard someone testified this afternoon about how last year it was our senior class, this year it's their senior class that's decimated by early college. And I really like the breakdown. Decimation of a small school like Montpelier is a little different from ours, but like, how many kids are we talking about who went to early college? And of those, how many of those kids went to college? Because she said that 0% of them, 0% of them? The previous year, 0%, what, wouldn't have qualified for free and reduced lunch? What did

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: child choose? Wasn't

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: the think as a school, it's 18%. And then the one year she was talking about, it was 12%. And then the very next year, it was 0%. Yeah. As far as early college life. But across the board for their school, it's 18%.

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

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: That was interesting. So it's the wealth So yeah, let's all think

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: about I do think we're gonna end up with a study about early college. Obviously, as I said, Robert Brady's got a lot of questions. So let's not lose sight of that. All right, any other thoughts? Well, we're gonna hold this till next week. So we've all got a full week of time off to think about that as well.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Right. We get a little more information about the first thing that the agency was asking me to add is for those background checks for

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: their employees. Yes, the language is in here we'll have that feedback and then present it. Like everything we do it's more complicated than sentence. All

[Unidentified Committee Member]: right