Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Alright. Welcome to House Education on 02/27/2026. You know, for the next fifteen minutes or so, I I just wanted to follow-up on our discussion yesterday about regional high schools and middle schools, and just to sort of share a little bit more about kind of existing law so that people you you sort of interpret it how you like, but to me, the the the ability to sort of create these without being part of the same district has existed for quite some time. That's not necessarily been used. Think I can only think of one, we're gonna talk about joint operating agreements. I Only one has ever actually happened, which would be Twin Valley High School. And I looked over to the bench to see if anybody knows of any other. Anyway, so I thought it would be just kind of a good piece of background to learn and understand as we sort of think about what it would take to incentivize this or force this.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel. So I think what I'll do is just put the law up on the screen, and we

[Unidentified Committee Member]: can talk about it.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: As I was doing some prep for this, I noticed a couple of things that we can talk about.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: in the school district's chapter well, let me back up so you can see that in context. So we're in the school district's chapter, chapter nine in title 16. You've got stuff that we will clean up eventually. The heart of this chapter is really in the powers of the electorate and powers of the school boards. There's some other important stuff, but those are the sections we refer to the most. This is where school branding lives. Hazing, harassment, and bullying is here. We put cell phone use here. But then subchapter six is contracts between districts to operate schools jointly. So there's two statutes applicable to this situation. First statute, five seventy one, by a majority vote of the voters present and voting at a meeting duly warrant for that purpose, This is want to flag this. A town school district or incorporated school district may authorize its school directors to enter into a contract or contracts with other towns and parties for the financing, construction, maintenance, operation of a competent school or schools to provide means and facilities for the convenient and adequate development education and training of the youths of such town. Can Youths.

[Emily Long (Member)]: They're all thinking.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You can see it looks like this language was added in 2021, while in 2022, I would hope that Utes of such town would be a hint that perhaps it's older than that. This language was actually redesignated when you rewrote chapter 11 in 2022. It used to be part of the Union School District chapter. And then because Union School District chapter is really about how to form and run a Union School District, this statute in May was just bumped up to the chapter above it, which at that time was chapter nine. And so, this law was actually originally added in 1949. And according to the Green Book, which I have determined is not always accurate, because it's my job to make sure it's accurate, and I'm a human, This law hasn't been updated since 1949. And so right now, technically, the enabling language, I don't know what's happening in the field, but this is only applicable to town school districts or incorporated school districts, which are those school districts that were created by a charter, not union school districts. Now, whether that's actually being followed, I have no idea. But if you were asking me to guess why that is, every single policy reason aside, this law was written in 1949 and union school districts were not as common as they are now. And it hasn't been updated since then. Okay. I also believe, based on some of the notes and annotations in here, that perhaps some this language was related to the ability for jointly operated schools prior to our interstate districts for those interstate district areas. But regardless of why this law is there, it's here. And then the second piece is the board that would operate this school. So the control of joint contract or consolidated schools set up by two or more school districts. This statute just says school districts. And if we're referring back to the master definition of school district in Title 16 school districts includes all different kinds of school districts, so there's a little incongruity there, shall be vested in a joint school board from the forming school districts, and the members of the joint school board shall be chosen in the manner provided for in, means coming up, a joint contractor consolidated school board shall be referred to as a joint board. The joint board will have the full authority to act on all matters pertaining to the finance, location, construction, maintenance, and operation of the schools set up as joint contractor consolidated schools, including the selection and hiring of teachers. The joint board shall consist of members chosen annually from the duly elected school boards of the school districts, each school district board electing a member or members to the joint board from among its members. And then subsection D is all about how you determine the number of members on this joint board each school district gets. I don't think we need to go through the math that's here. It's all about apportionment related to enrollment. This statute was enacted in 1949, oddly enough, in a separate act, then Section five seventy one. It has been updated a couple times over the years, but just looking at what the amendments are. Oh, in 1991, in this section, the term school districts was substituted for towns and school district for town, wherever those words appeared. So that does, I think, have a substantively reflects potentially the change in how many union school districts were operating. But the other changes that have been made do not appear just on reading the small annotations here to have any real substantive import to what we're talking about here today. All this to say, this law exists, and I have no idea how it's being used.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Emily, go ahead. Thank you for bringing this up, all of you, because it makes me remember a situation, and I've completely forgotten about it. In Newfane and Brookline, towns that I, one of the towns which I represent at the time was represented by my district both were, Newfane and Brookline wanted to merge and close the school, and they formed a joint contract school. And I'm just going on my memory, and I can't even remember now how many years ago

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: it was, but there's at least 15, I would say,

[Emily Long (Member)]: and found it to be very cumbersome, and chose pretty soon after that to form just a single district. I almost think that which is also in my region, had done a joint contract for it. They are not alumni in the state. But there are two in my area. One was officially abandoned. Now that Newbrook School was born, but now it's merged into single K-twelve district. But it does have history in my area, anyway.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think the other sort of bigger one, I checked with the rep from that area, Twin Valley High School. That it operated jointly, I think, up until into the 2000s. And then I think also found it somewhat cumbersome and merged into a unified board. Did you have more? So, I just wanted to sort of bring this to light to sort of say, first of all, just educate everybody that there is kind of law on the books already. I think we've probably determined that it has not been used a lot since 1949, which, to me, indicates one of the It just sort of highlights the challenge of incentivizing or even providing enabling law for schools to get together. But the challenge of just getting it done because it's all done by humans and humans are busy people, and in these cases, it's usually lots of volunteers. And that it takes a lot of motivation. Just to sort of add to the discussion then about like, do we to me, it goes to the this is why we need sort of larger districts with larger governing boards or just to the further discussion about how do we incentivize regional schools. Do have you any questions about sort of this in general? You probably because we have already created newer larger districts through Act 46, you probably wouldn't see much of this happening. But you do think about schools nearby here and other schools that are actually in separate districts that, you know, could merge the of the areas identified in the task force report. They are all separate districts. Obviously, with the ability to either close a tuition or to operate jointly. It's out there for that purpose and that reason. Thank you. It's there. So, as we continue to have these big discussions, I'm also trying to recall in my head, bring this to your sort of the things that we also need to either want to have had requests to or need to follow-up on. And one is the discussion over, fall by necessity and sparsity. So we had presentation from the State Board of Education committee that was working on this. And if you recall, they basically said the ball is now in your court. And one of the reasons one of the reasons is because nowhere did the work that we asked them to do, did we require that they now do rulemaking with it. And part of the Envision Foundation Formula is continued weights or grants. I think we're talking grants here for schools that are sparse and sparse and small by necessity. But we need some guardrails around it. And so in my discussions with folks on the state board, they sort of had said, it would be good to have some of this in statute to sort of give us narrower parameters for our rulemaking. They understand that they can do a lot of the rulemaking, but there's just a lot of policy decisions that they have requested, we wrestle with, and perhaps put in statute. This is all, as Beth would say, policy decisions on our part as to how much we wanna do of that. But I thought that I'd have Beth walk through what was presented to us and sort of say over and over again, well, it's really your decision. But areas that we might wanna consider as statute and areas that might be better suited for rulemaking, understanding that ultimately it is our decision and it is a policy decision, not a legal decision.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. So

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: As you said, this is just an issue we need to we're gonna have to revisit when we come back.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Do you want me to pull up the state board's memo?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: If you wouldn't mind, that would be helpful. Yeah. Is this something that we do a criminal bill on?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Like, that would put this in statute? I mean, how what's the next step? Like, because he gave a recommendation, so do we

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: how do we proceed? Well so, I mean, there's a number of ways. We have a miscellaneous education bill, but we also you know, if if we can ever get to an agreement on amendments changes to act 73, it can be part of that as well.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think what would be most comfortable for me, because this is not my work product, is to just use this as topics for your discussion. And then I can chime in whenever it's most helpful to you, bless you, on process, etcetera. But I don't necessarily know that you want me walking through their memo. But so this is the state board's memo, work accomplished by the small sparse school committee. There is also a PowerPoint. I always look at the memo and not the PowerPoint, but I'm happy to pull up the PowerPoint if that is easier for you.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I don't know what would be easier for us. Why don't we just go ahead and work through what we have here?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So the memo is what I've got. And so what is here is I think the substance of what they're talking about starts on page two with the general framework. The Small and sparse is already distinguished. Those thresholds are in statute. And so what the state board was tasked with, and now what you are grappling with, is what does it mean to be small or sparse by necessity? And under Act 73 in the foundation formula, you only get a small sparse schools grant if you are both small and sparse by necessity, both of them. And so the state board is suggesting that a definition of by necessity should distinguish between schools that are small or sparse because of geography or isolation and schools that are small are sparse due to local organizational decisions, preferences, or policy choices. And they're distinguishing between the first one would be eligible because it's by necessity, and the second would not be by necessity, and therefore funding would be ineligible.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Would you also put this memo over the head, maybe the PowerPoint up, the best name for today?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Make sure they say their state board work.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yes. I

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: don't want to get any credit for an emphasis work. So this framing is starting point for defining a school as small or sparse by necessity is where the school cannot reasonably increase enrollment or consolidate without creating undue hardship for students, specifically in terms of travel time, safety, or lack of feasible alternatives. And there is a Oh, that is not a hot link, so The let's proposed framing aligns with what courts and legislators and other rural states have used in Vermont's demographic and geographic context. So ultimately, this is all a policy decision. This is their recommendation for you is that by necessity means they cannot reasonably increase enrollment or consolidate with creating undue hardship for students, specifically in terms of travel time, safety or lack of feasible alternatives. What does undue hardship mean? I think that is a subjective potentially term. And then the criteria with which you're looking at whether the conditions are created that may lead to undue hardship for students would be travel time, safety, or lack of feasible alternatives in their recommendations. Again, whether you'd like that list or not, you want

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: to add to it, subtract to it, amend it, is I think policy choices for you all. So just to process the question, let's say we adopt this suggested definition into statute, and then the next step, it would go to rulemaking, and it would be then up to whoever we delegate to do rulemaking, which in this case would be the state board, to sort of flesh out some of those subjective terms that we have in there?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. As with all delegation of rulemaking authority, I would encourage you to be very specific in your intent and guidance that you are providing to the state board, most importantly in any written legislation, but also your conversations around it. I think if you were to put the term creating undue hardship for students in statute, I think that is vague. I think that is potentially unhelpful. If that is your policy objective, though, then let's use it. So these are the possible criteria that the state board is recommending.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think you're right. It is important to probably restate why this was asked of the state board originally. And that is, I think it reflects that small schools in sparse areas can be more expensive to operate and to therefore provide an additional source of funding. But this is really to sort of create the boundaries within which that would be so that, you know, it is not there sort of to incentivize keeping open schools that are not small by necessity by virtue of many things, such as they might be right near another small school that and both can accommodate the population of the other.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Is proximity to another school the only factor that we are considering in what it means to be necessary?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: No, I think that's at the heart of question is at the heart of what we're discussing here. You you can have schools that are, by the way, crow flies close together, but there's no road linking them or there's a mountain pass or so all of those things.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Speaks to proximity. I'm saying like, could there be other reasons that have nothing to do with whether you can get to another school?

[Emily Long (Member)]: Like what? Can you give an example?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Like that the entire cultural identity of the town is surrounded on the fact that this is like the jewel piece of their entire village.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I would say that this does not speak to that because I think they're looking for measurable or at least more sort of specific educationally, what's best for the child oriented measurements.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: And this is all, this criteria is specific to the additional money for the grant.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That's right. It has nothing to do with whether the school should be open or closed.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: It's just about Do you get this extra funding?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: But even in your sort of definition there, what's best for the child still remains somewhat subjective as to who thinks what is best for kids.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: It's all of us, that's what policy decisions are all about.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We're gonna keep going, but you're gonna lose me in five minutes. Okay. So that was just

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I apologize. I forgot that you had $11.45 as your cutoff.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: But Matt could probably throw this up on the screen for you. Okay, so these are the four pieces that they talk about and they go into more detail. So you've already set in statute how to determine if a school is small or sparse. And then the by necessity piece is what you're fleshing out. And so what they're saying is that a school may be able to demonstrate by necessity by one or more of the following. Consolidation will result in average one way travel times exceeding four to five minutes for pre K through six or 60 for seven through 12 or travel overturning and then as frequently impossible or unsafe. There is no nearby school sufficient capacity to absorb the students without significant additional capital investment. Closure or consolidation would impose substantial increases in costs to the district or taxpayer due to tuition and transportation or capital needs. The population density and projected enrollment of the school's catchment area are such that the school cannot feasibly reach sustainable enrollment in the foreseeable future.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Again, I just want in context, these were all suggestions that this working committee of the state board came up with for us to consider.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And so the first one there is travel time or distance threshold. And you'll notice they've couched all of this as possible criteria. So average one way student travel times, and then they have differentiated between elementary and high school. So forty five for elementary or sixty minutes for grade seven through 12, or road miles to the nearest school of the same grade span exceed 10 to 15 miles, depending on terrain. And then they give you a rationale, and they do the same thing for safe transportation, some possible criteria, rationale, lack of feasible consolidation options, possible criteria, rationale, community population trajectory, possible criteria, rationale, closure consolidation would impose substantial increases in cost, possible criteria, rationale. And then they have some implementation considerations, which, so the entity responsible for determining whether a school meets the criteria for small or sparse by necessity and the frequency with which such terminations will be made. I believe Act 73, let's look at it. I have it up. If you take no further action, Bear with me.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So this is Act 73, Section 37 creates Section forty nineteen in your education funding chapter, the last chapter in Title 16, the small schools, spark school support grants. And you'll see right in here, there's already assumption baked into Act 73 that the state board is making an annual determination. So if you take no further action, this is the law when, if the contingencies are met and it's not changed and the foundation formula would take effect, the state board would be making this determination on a no basis. And what they are suggesting to you is that's a policy decision for you. Who should be making this determination and how often should it be made? And what I wanted to flag with you is that there already has been a policy determination made in Act 73. And so if you make a different one, you may need to amend this.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay. Thank you. I am confused by the request of the state board for us to further define things. I'm not confused from why they would like us to do that. I'm just confused, where does it fit in in the process of all of this? And then sort of brings up the you know, I think their request was genuine and based on making the work of that group of volunteers easier and better defined. Period. And so, I think we have a decision in front of us to take action or not take action. Just again, to reiterate, as Representative Quimby said, this is all about whether you qualify for additional funding. Sorry,

[Unidentified Committee Member]: this just goes back a little bit. So is this because procedurally Act 73 didn't sort of fully or explicitly delegate rulemaking authority to the state board on this particular topic? Like, is that where the sticking point is?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I can't speak to whether there is a sticking point, and if there is one, where it is. I will say that And then I need to run. Section eight of Act 73 asks the state board to submit a report to you all with proposed standards for schools to be deemed small by necessity or sparse by necessity. And then you don't touch that topic again until we get to the language that I just looked at. And so I don't know what your intent was with this. It could have absolutely been that in everything that happened, we thought that was all that was needed to operationalize the state board making an annual determination. And that is a policy choice you can make, and we can talk about how to make sure that that is what happens, at least in the black letter of the law. But I do think there is a delta here between recommendations to you all and then the state board being required to make an annual determination. That's really helpful.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: They fulfilled exactly what was asked of them. Right, yes.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And if you don't make any other changes, they will be asked.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yes,

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: to make decisions.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: You, I know you too, Raul.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you, you're welcome.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So this is more about homework for the next week. Let's all try to become well versed in this memo. And I'll try to get better versed in what it is we could and should do. We have a request from the State Board of Education, I think fairly clear. Are especially interested in the small by necessity. Sparse is pretty well defined. That's if they're looking for some boundaries in the small life necessities. So, to sort of think about that, it's very easy for us to just sort of leave it up to them, but that can be something else. And we have a request from them to consider carefully. At one, we have testimony to do with special education funding. We've got a meeting at two. We probably won't do much more after that. But I think it's fair to say we're gonna have to hit the ground running next week. And, it's gonna be fisher cut bait time. And I think that if people can see a path forward for themselves with additional language or whatever it might be, I would say building upon what I put on the table, or if you've a different pathway, that's okay too. Let's be ready to talk about them. With caveat, we do not have legislative counsel during the off week. So I know some of you have already been in consultation, sort of trying to get yourselves where you need to be, but let's be ready to put some stuff on the table next week that can help move us forward. And be ready to talk, ready to have your whatever responses you might have, thoughts or just absolute sort of honesty about yes or no, go, no go. Let's do what we can.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Can ask a clarifying question? When you are saying next week, do you mean next next week?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We're back.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Okay, so we're not coming in Wednesday.

[Emily Long (Member)]: No, week, All

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I'm saying is that

[Emily Long (Member)]: next week, it's homework week. I've had some homework.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We're now the assistance of legislative counsel. But just, you know, there's just a lot of taking a long walk and thinking about it part that has to go into this. And I'll just kind of repeat myself. If we do nothing, we have the system that we have and all the problems that go along with it. Probably whatever we do is either going to not move the needle much if we sort of just take small steps. Anything beyond that, we are going to anger a certain group of people, and that a certain group people differs with whatever route we take. We're not going to be popular with a certain group of people. If we want to lead transformation and change for all of the reasons, whether you are a person who the fiscal concerns are the most, or if you are a person for whom preparing for continued declining enrollment or if it's school construction or if it's creating or maintaining opportunities for kids. I can't remember where I was going with it, but just be sort of, whatever route we go, it's it's gonna be hard. And I realize it's a political year, that's something to take into account for many of you, I'm sure. But we're not gonna get anywhere if we're not brave and bold to move forward with this. And I know as hard as that is, I would always point to the alternative of doing nothing, buying down tax rates for the next however many years, or absorbing significant property tax increases, while being really unable to address all the challenges that we have in education.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yes. Ross. Sorry. Total sidebar. You've probably already done that. This but I'm just throwing it out there. Visa sent a rebuttal to the Friends of Public Education. You might have already done this. Just put it on the record.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Oh, now put it on the record. Okay. Yeah, I'll have a question about Humbly. Humbly. Yeah, great. No, all that posted. Thank you for that reminder.