Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: Italian. I'm Italian. Hey. Am I?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Hey. This is House Education on Tuesday, March 17, Saint Patrick's Day. We are gathered as a committee to continue our discussions on updates to act 73 to move us forward with the goals of act 73. So. Last week, had some language put on the table by representative Taylor in an attempt to sort of see if there was if that did anything for anybody. I'm not sure that it did, But I thought we would just at least start off if folks had any follow-up questions for Chris or for legislative counsel on the language. Is it any at the moment? Oh, yes. Sorry. Reporter Brady?

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: I was

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: gonna go there Friday, but I

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: think we're out of town. I just have one leg

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: in front of me. Actually, that's good. I was trying to understand the difference between that concept and the contracting concept that you put out with your mouth and what is similar or different.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Maybe wise in most respects.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Do you mind if I take a shot to answer that? I'll play too. All right. You can correct me. So I think that Representative Taylor's language maintained choice as it exists today with maybe some guardrails on it. But the language was to essentially, I would say, do two things. One, maintain choice and two, not have SUs but have SDs. We frequently have the conversation about Canada to coexist in a world legally. Some of the language in there was to say, well, it's part of the policy of the district, whatever the district has to create a choice policy. And that sort of within that, they could potentially exist. I think that's why we looked at the language that opens Title 16. Correct. Which says, have different ways of accomplishing the goals that are in the constitution to provide an education. I would say mine is different in that it sort of says not choice, but designation. But respects the idea that we need to continue to have independent schools as part of the mix at the high school level. And to say that, you know, a school district may contract with an independent school or any public school to pay tuition to them in order to educate their kids. So I would say that's the main difference is one is about choice. Although I would say that within a district, a school board, we don't have any rules against school boards having a choice policy within their district, whether it's Chris's policy or my policy. Chris's requires a choice policy, Mine does not, but there's something that says a school district couldn't say within our district, kids have choice to go to whatever school they wanted, every grade they want, or they could say we had high school choice or they could not. I think that one of the issues that is the same is that if you are paying tuition to a school, that is a fixed cost, whether it's through contracting the designation or whether it's through choice. And just like today, if you are partly operating and partly non operating, those non operating tuition grades are a fixed cost so that if you need to cut your budget, you can't cut those fixed costs. You have to cut the costs of the stuff you have control over. I would say in a world where we have a foundation formula, it attempts to address that by providing an adequate amount per student based on each student for each grade at each school. It doesn't allow you to sort of take from this group of money. Let's say let's say you, you know, a district gets a single budget. And it's got fixed costs, it has to pay. And it's got the rest. And under today's world, you can kind of rob from this, but you hopefully in a future world with a foundation from you wouldn't necessarily need to because by virtue of the foundation from your each student would be weighted and be funded adequately. Similar to what they do in Burlington, where they say each student has a weight, that's how we determine how much money goes to each school. The school then determines how it wants to spend it to serve those kids. Chris, you were first. I

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: think one of the big differences between the contracting and the language, and Beth, please correct me if I'm not articulating this right way, with the language that Peter put on for designation or contracting, you're relying on the decision of the school board to say which schools you can go to, whereas in mine, you're not relying.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Right, yeah, may take choice, parental the New York border where students are tuition to multiple schools, whether they're public or private. But the school board just say, policy is you just tell us where you want to go and go, let you go there. Think the answer to that is they probably could for those who are using the monopoly. So in a way it's like choice, but it is choice technically.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Sorry, who's next?

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: I guess I'm sorry, trying to understand sort of the foundation formula piece, and I know somebody's issues exist in our current system, but I don't think it isn't, the premise of the foundation of foundation it is not a voucher. It is not a bucket of cash that is attached to that kid that moves with them wherever they have. It is estimated the cost that it will take to educate each kid. And the district is going to get the lump sum money, the budget, for all of the kids in their district. And so when they go to then budget in their district, if things are more expensive because there's a higher needs population and some grades coming through, or they've got class sizes that are small and it's starting to strain against what is now being given to them in the foundation formula, the kids who are being central school based on tuition, that is a fixed amount. So then they still have to manage within what's left in all the other places. So it might mean, and it could only mean, I guess, again, the most dire circumstance, if you're talking about reconfiguring buildings, could be closures of schools. There's only some schools in that scenario in which they could close, or cutting funding or changing opportunities or programming within public schools, but not the tuition. Because again, isn't literally the money glued to the kid's back. It's the amount per kid it's going to cost going into a budget to the whole district. So I think that our concept of that is important

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: And keeping that in mind, I

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: would say that the foundation formula attempts to adjust that or account for that, just as Burlington does. By providing the adequate amount of money to educate each and every one of those kids based on what it costs to educate them. But in

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: the case of Burlington, can make operational changes at every school and every level in that system.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: Yes. Oh, no, no. There's part of

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: it where it's, okay, that money is just there and

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: you can't impact it.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: So they can only do it in the They similar part of the can do it everywhere. Very important.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I guess with foundation formula, is, yes, they are fixed amounts. If you're paying tuition and as conceived in Act 73, that tuition would not exceed the amount of money that is that student's weighted foundation funding amount. Yes, it is still a fixed dollar amount under any scenario that we're talking about. Today, Chris, Peter, that is a fixed cost that does not allow you to sort of take from one to the other. But again, the hope for is that with the foundation formula that you don't necessarily need to do that because the weight of each student is reflected in that way. But no, everything you said is true. But again, I think the foundation formula is different. Because the amounts are greater for greater deed students and less for lesser deed students. It's still the same issue for a scenario.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: It just don't the part that you spoke about was causing schools to close. I don't fully agree with that, that what I put on the table and the use of the Foundation Form eight is going to cause schools to close any differently than going to a bigger school district or any of these other options.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: I don't know if they think it's going to cause. I think it changes the decisions a district can and can't make depending on the configurations of that district.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Guess I would say I agree with that. But how is that any different under any scenario that currently exists or could possibly exist? Beth, then I'll just Jenna.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: Just to clarify, maybe, and maybe we don't have verification yet because we're still thinking it through. When you were talking about in your language proposal, the designation and contracting, and you said, could a school like Grand Isle say, can you tell us where you want to go and we'll make it happen? But the contract has to

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: be a two way. Does

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: your language differ from what's currently in statute regarding debts? It does a little, but because you can designate now and school districts choose not to.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah. That's right. Two is way a contract is a two party system.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: It's not just tell us where you want to go and we'll make it happen. They might not be able the receiving school. That's right.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: A receiving school would say, we do not have capacity.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: Thank you.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: I just want to make sure that I understand that under the scenario of Representative Taylor's proposal, in an SD with full choice, which is essentially what they have. In my experience, in a region that has many different operating structures within a short, close geographic location to each other, Folks who can take advantage of a choice to go farther or to choose a different school will do it, and the others who can't will go to the closest school possible. And if there are enough students making that kind of a switch, that has a potential absolutely to close schools. Because if you lose students out of a school, which I'm not trying to talk about something new. This is something that's happening right now. If you lose students out of a school because parents choose whether they're paying on their own or whether it's a full voucher or whatever. A school that sees a decline in enrollment for whatever reason, they have to make up for that. And when they make up for that, they typically will start cutting programming. And the students who still can't choose are still going to go there to that school, even with less programs. And the ones who can choose and want more programming will take advantage of that. And I'm just going to continue to say, I'm trying to make us create a system that is a high quality educational opportunity for every student, accessible to every student. And this bill does pick up.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: I'm sorry, can I just ask what's going to happen in your district under the proposal of going to 27 districts? What's going to happen to your system down there?

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Know I get to your question.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: So you just talked about how you have a lot of different choice models down there.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: I wasn't talking about my district, but I was talking about my region.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: In your region, have a lot of different choices down there. What's going to happen to those choices if we go to the 27 districts? You have a lot of different models of school choice down there.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: I'm asking, are you talking about representative?

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Yes, if we go to the twenty second Well, guess if we go to a bigger district model, what's going to happen to your system now? To the ability that they have now.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: That's actually irrelevant to what I'm suggesting. I'm not talking about maps, I'm talking about opportunities for kids.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Me as well, there's an opportunity that they're utilizing down there of choice.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: What's gonna happen to that opportunity?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Some are.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Yes, absolutely, what's gonna happen to that opportunity.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I just would This may be not necessarily I would just put out that from a technical legal point of view, a school district's choice policy could be status quo. They have to open up choice. Conversely, under my proposal, they could open up choice or not. So that's something to think about, you know, if we get for any of this is, you know, do you put guardrails on choice within a district? Can we take that hourly school boards? You're up, Jana.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Actually, I think my question is more of a down the road question that might not actually be that helpful right now.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: Josh, you're up. Certainly, I wanna circle back to your

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: concerns about

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: under Chris's proposal, one of your concerns seems to be that families may choose an opportunity further away that another family can't take advantage of. That It's not always further away. It

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: is literally just simply the ability to take advantage of choice or voucher.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: So Chris's proposal keeps everything how it is today. It actually adds in some slight constraints compared to what we currently have. So under your argument, we would be doing that right now. And I don't see that happening under the current choice tuitioning environment we have in the students.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: So I'm talking about students, I'm talking about school districts that all, they're a K-twelve district and they all go to the local school and the local high school. They don't currently have the opportunity to choose, they go to their designated school in their district, some of them have inter district choice, depending on the type of thing.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: And that's what Chris is still proposing.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: He's it's the attendance zone.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: The attendance zone. He's not expanding He's keeping it exactly as it is now. I

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: guess I have a follow-up question. Is that being present? Because I think we're giving these new school boards the ability to draw their own attendance zone policies. We're putting that decision in their hands. Is it what we have today? Is it less? Is it more? That's why I said last week, this has the potential to actually not change the map at all. If everyone decided they wanted to keep

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Delivering education the way they do today, they have the possibility to do

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: it. Right.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: But this concept is all that although there isn't a map proposed with this language, this is proposed with the intent that there is a map that has much larger districts, and we start getting that efficiency. So that is the intent of this, is to be in conjunction with a map that does much of what the administration is looking for as far as efficiency scale. But what you're

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: saying is keep attendance, but within those larger districts, the current attendance patterns would be what remains. So Milton would still only So far that we not get the opportunity to get a choice, but the islands would still retain that opportunity. It's not expanding it to others within that district. It's keeping it where it currently exists.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: I recognize how you see it. I just can apply it in my head. And I'm not going to name districts, but I can apply it in my head and say, either we'll stay the same or we're going to expansions. That looks to me the market.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: Under Peter's, they could say a thing.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I would say it could. I would argue that it is a little less likely because you don't have choice sitting there side by side with somebody who doesn't have choice. Thank you. All right. So sensing we find ourselves where we should continually return and find ourselves. I am going to perhaps look okay. We're gonna start thinking about what can be put on the table that can get enough votes to leave here that is moving us forward. Think, I'm sure, so we're all getting the same emails, right? And I'm probably getting the ones that are about Waterford, which I should just say on the record that maps are still very much loose and influx and that everybody's input about what works and what doesn't for their account will at some point in time be taken into account. But what we are hearing, I think quite loudly out there is I have not received a lot of love for state mandated newer, larger districts despite the fact however I may feel about this. I would say that we are hearing and perhaps officially in the VSA's sort of policy step towards act 73 goals. I think I said there's a certain faction people there saying, let's try to make it happen without doing that. And let's try to save money without doing that. And I'll be honest, Chris's of newer, larger district, my goals of newer, larger districts, the governor's goals of newer larger districts, I can talk about all the good things about it, but it's not without their challenges such as leveling up salaries, which is something that I'm always concerned about. K. So where's where's Peter taking us to here? A long walk. We don't seem to be getting anywhere. Can what we are talking about be accomplished through a CISA system that makes one of the responsibilities of the CISA to bring people together to form newer, larger districts. That's kind of the concept I'm putting on the table. If we can we all seem to agree that CISAs are something that needs to be part of this. We, I think, mostly agree. I think we could all agree that we need newer, larger districts if they're brought together on a voluntary basis. I think that we could mostly agree that we need newer, larger districts. What I'm saying is, is there a way we can perhaps kill two birds with one stone by a, having CSAs and b, making the CSA one of the CSAs responsibility to bring people together for to discuss newer, larger districts. Now, you know, this is not a this is what we saw suggested in the VSA steps. Short of that, I don't know what could possibly get get through this group of people. And I would and I I keep saying to people, this group of people is a microcosm of the legislature writ large, which is a microcosm of the state writ large.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: I ask a clarifying question about the CSUNs and newer, districts within a CSUN. So if a CSUN say we have five seesaws, throwing that out there. Within one seesaw, we have the ability and it works out to maybe seven, eight districts underneath it that we get. How is that different from a supervisor union right now?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay. So, great question. ASEAS is not a governmental body. Its job is, I would say, like they're like consultants or service providers. I'd say in this case, the job of the CISA is to hire somebody or whoever the executive director is. Part of the responsibility of that CISA is to bring together the districts within that CISA to say, we all need to be talking together to form newer, larger districts where groups of you or all of you are brought together under one governance structure. But this this does step back to sort of the act 46 methodology. The one thing we could do is we could put in parameters. Maybe not a map, but say your job is to bring people together in groups of three to 6,000 students or whatever numbers we wanted to use to to to make that happen. I think think I would say 4,000 seems to be a number that while on the high end of one group, it's at the low end of the other, and it's kind of an area where it seems to be a little bit of a sweet spot. So we could say, okay. One of the responsibilities of the CISA is to bring people together, bring districts together, and start having formal conversations about merging into groups that represent roughly 4,000 students. That's kind of what you get there. And these would be districts. These would be to create districts, not to create supervisory units. The CISA is not a governing. It is a power. It's not

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: it has no power. So, really, we would be basically just handing it over to the CISA instead of just doing that here and saying what we're trying to do with 4,000 student districts and implementing

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So, answer to that is yes. These would not be state imposed newer, larger districts. For better or for worse, I don't know anymore. But what I would say is, you know, at least the cost of getting a CISA up and running quickly is probably not big when we think about the overall costs of consolidation in a state mandated newer larger district methodology between leveling up and just all of the lawyering and all that that goes into it.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: Beth? Question in regards to the foundation formula. Because as I read, remember Act 73, the foundation formula does not go into effect unless there's a new district map. And the foundation formula is something I definitely want to see go forward. So by doing the CESA proposal in alternative to making a new map, does that mean the foundation formula won't go through? And do we need to, if we want that to happen, amend the ways to implement the foundation?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I would say that in our conversation today, are now reaching the spitballing stage. Yes. And so we could put in it that this is not similar to what the Senate is proposing. If you are unable to get there by this point in time. Then this happens, whatever that happens to be, that becomes state closed for larger districts. The foundation formula, I think one of the concerns that I hear from many members of this committee is with the foundation formula is we got a lot of information we don't have yet. CESAs can get started as soon as we pass a bill and throw somebody out. I think Emily was next, then Josh.

[Emily Long (Member)]: What you threw out there is asking the CISA, is not a government requirement people, facilitate a conversation with its members, because the members are the ones who have the ability to The members of CISA are the ones that have the ability to make decisions around that. The CISA itself would be a facilitator. Exactly.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I can solve that. And we could even consider saying, while that's getting up and running, we have people employed who are even starting those conversations sooner. To me, it's I don't know that state mandated or larger districts can get out of any part of the legislative process as we get ourselves bound up over choice issues, designation issues, concern over governance being less local. You put all those things in together, and we don't have folks to move anything anywhere. So what I'm trying to do is put together a concept we could all say, well, if nothing else, this sure gets us started. Joshua's next.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: Back to Beth's conversation about the foundation framework. So it's contingent on districts, but we could amend that and make it go into effect in lieu of anything else coming out of here today. So to your point, we could suggest as a policy decision,

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: as our legislative council would say, that we can make. So if that is something that you would be you would be you can't find a future legislature to anything. Would be aspirational. I think from a lawmaking point of view, I know that there are folks who would who say we just need to move to the foundation formula, we can't get agreement on anything else. I have some real issues with that. I think that that would be dangerous.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: And I'm

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: saying to her point, it doesn't have to be tied to anything you want or nothing if you chose. Correct.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Procedural. Yes, I've accepted. Yes, okay. Politics point of time. Right. Just procedurally, was sort of

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: Another procedural idea as we spitball as these CESAs because, again, deciding the boundaries of the CESAs could be problematic. Could these conversations for voluntary new larger districts happen between CISAs group, that your merger would not have to be in CISA number one because there could be a school district and there's this school district across in CISA number two really is a much better partner for us. So we want to get together with them.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: I think we could- If

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: you're bound within those pretend five CSAs, that can cause some conflict.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I would say nothing in this fight. Address we that, I'm sure. And no one would want to prevent a common sense merger from happening just because we drew an arbitrary line. Thank

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: you. How do you want the process to look of suggesting what these proposed CSUC lines are?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Well, I mean, I would say let's work with what we have and one thing we have is a recommendation from the task force. Boundaries that we already have for the DSA areas.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: I would propose the CTE area instead.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I guess the question is how many CISAs should we have, do we have? I would say, I think the five is problematic just because we need get that whole chipped in Franklin out of scenario that's probably- way too big.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: I said propose the CTEs, but actually I would propose combining CTEs. So we went three CTE areas within a C cell, could then be two to three, which could then be five CTEs across, sorry, five CSAs throughout the state.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, we can do fine. I worry that the numbers may be too big in the county area, maybe to adjust there. And I think we also, I think it'd be important to be cognizant of the fact that we have CSA that we would need to sort of

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: accommodate. Everything we do moving forward is gonna be sort of dependent on this one CSA that already exists rather than asking for an adjustment there?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Well, guess the question would be, does it need, if we say, and again, I'm not, I hope all of you realize that when I answer back, I'm not trying to argue with anybody, I'm just

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: trying to continue for thought.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think to Beth's point, there would be nothing that would prohibit any CISA to say, we should get those folks over with us. I mean, I'd say the lines are, they're not walls, they're guidelines.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: Josh? So Leanne, are you, just to try and make sure I'm following your truth, you're saying that you, instead of maybe following the VSA's map or anything like that, you're saying used CTEs to guide where the CSAs Yeah.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: I'm saying use the CTEs to guide where it goes, except the one thing that I might address to what I've been thinking is fine, because there's

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: Two CESAs.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Which one? Over half. Yeah, because of the population. And these could be changed. Looked at the BOCES map as based on the redistricting tax source and it's kind of a mess because of the BOCES that they already have and like this one actually goes up here and these go down here and it's very confusing. This was the redistrict that both these regions by the redistricting fossil.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Hope it got up again for us all.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: It is. I got it right off of their packet. I thought it

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: was just five. With their five.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Literally a five. On the research unit.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: And everything Yeah, one, two, three. Windsor and Windham, Florida are essentially one.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I'm sorry. I'm looking at all of this

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: now. Oh, Yeah, this is fine. It's just that there's all of these that

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: are like You gotta make it one.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Maybe the dark

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: out. You gotta make little color coding.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: Sorry, seems to be good. Think it's just where the arrows are, it makes it look a little wonky. But everywhere else it makes

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: sense. This is why when I was thinking about it, I was thinking this makes more sense, even if it's undoing one of the OCCs that already exists a little bit.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I don't think it is.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: It is actually.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: I think combining these into the districts or supervisory unions whatever may be a path. But I also like letting them decide. Because what I was noticing is I can do a lot up in the NDK, but once I get past there, I have no idea. This seems to be done by locals.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: So even that map doesn't reflect the actual poses that exists? The Redistricting Task Force does not stick.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: It doesn't look like it would require a whole lot of changes.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: But I've talked to so many people and so many people think that putting this centered around the CTEs somehow makes sense.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Great, so thank you.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Well, can I officially say this is what I think we should do about? I guess I

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: would say, would you please make sure that at some point in time, potentially, we would take a very close look at your map to make it somehow accessible to all of us.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Can I just walk it over to Matt?

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: Or email it to him?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Are they both the same?

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: No, one is the ones that came out of your district passport. So I think you just want yours, right? What else do both?

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Another procedural question.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I'm gonna stop, you need to go.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: To wave a man, miscellaneous head, and then I'll be back. Thanks for coming.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: Okay, she's keeping us well.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: And I don't wanna have Don't feel you need to rush. We have

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: a snare

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: at the end of the

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: We keep throwing out the number five because that's what the task force Yeah. And I personally But agree with procedurally, we do have in our current BOCES, soon to be changed to CESA legislation, a limit of seven.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Correct. So again,

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: we would have to say seven's it or amend that current legislation. So, will. But it could be seven.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I would just go down the weeds procedurally. If we are building momentum here, we probably just pull it out of the miscellaneous Ed altogether.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: But it's actually existing statute already that limits it to seven. Right, that's correct.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: But we change it just once instead of changing it twice.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: I'm not saying you change it in the miscellaneous Ed bill, I'm saying it has to be changed in the original language If at some and maybe we don't wanna have 20 with CISAs because I think you lose your efficiency. But maybe seven we came up with the If it's CTE, it's like 15.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I'd say we No.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Because you're combining multiple Or

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: you could combine them and you could have You

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: could have You you could Yeah. Set headlights.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: You do six because you're gonna split up that Chittenden County area.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: But just keep in mind that we have a statute that's no more than seven, and don't forget that we have that as we're looking at it.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Chris? Listen, before you talk, because I'm anticipating what you're saying. No, no, whatever we do here is gonna be unsatisfactory to many people on this committee. We're not moving fast enough. This is still moving too fast. Whatever. I just want to acknowledge that for everybody. All right, good. Thanks. Go ahead. I thought you were going say this is way too slow of me to type Jake.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Just with this model, right? So, CECL would be mandatory. Yes. And how would they be funded if the districts underneath them have not been formed and they're supposed to be doing that and how

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: All does that all right, well, number one, this would not be the sole responsibility of a CISA. I think in the language that we've looked at previously, it's sort of like, that CISA has to be operational to do three of six things. We might make this one be one of them. Might be special ed, which is probably gonna be the most popular one.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: And finance is very important.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: And finance, transportation. There were the other ones with our-

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Administrative services.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Administrative services, whatever it might. Resources, I think.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So whatever it might be. So I would say, this is part of the work. How would they be funded? To, I would say TBD, but we are going to need to apply millions of dollars anyway to ed transformation as currently foreseen within Act 73 before you even start getting to leveling up salaries. In other words,

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: just the

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: like, urging finance systems, hiring lawyers to figure out real estate, whatever any and all that might be. So, money will have to be invested regardless, this would be investing that money sooner, with hopefully some payoff sooner as well. I know we can't answer this question because we don't know what future districts might look like under that model.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: But won't there be leveling up of salaries anyways? Yep. Regardless of Yep. Right? So we're gonna incur costs regardless. Yep. And

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I'll stop there. Yes, and I'm happy to have a leveling up of salaries brought up all the time because it's always been a concern of mine. That's going to take a while before that happens because that all has to be negotiated. So that's like a years away kind of thing. In the meantime, hopefully, CSATs are already saving us money in the areas where we have seen CSATs save money.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: What point this process to be to be?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Well, this is another highly complex, potentially expensive challenge that we have in front of us. And the answer to that is, depends. Under my map, for example, I tried to make districts that were small enough so that they could somehow use the act 46 methodology, decide among themselves how they wanted to do representation. I don't actually know that would work if every district created my map, because if you want to keep a board limited to nine people and there are 22 towns in that district, not everybody's getting represented. So the voting board question is one that is TBD under any scenario we come up with except really big districts, in which case absolutely required. And it is something that we sort of drift away as an issue to take up, but it's actually a really big deal because it's gonna take time and money and understanding and town clerks and gov ops and mapping software, all of that to actually turn into a reality. I

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: know we haven't seen any language. Who's making these decisions within the seesaw to decide these mergers and to help facilitate these mergers? We've had big discussions about we wouldn't ever want to put this onto a school board to do because nobody would want to do it. What's the difference between that and then

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: CSUN? Great question. Again, the CSUN's job is just to facilitate the conversation. The question is, between last year, this year, everything else, have we stirred enough awareness of the problem so that that facilitator is actually going be able to facilitate conversations and move the work. I would call this an attempt at a non mandatory imposition of newer, larger districts. If we wanna put in language that aspires to, if you don't do it, this, we can. So, the only people making the and we would have to pull in. We could think about like, all right, then what's the process? If everybody comes together, then do you automatically turn into Title 16 of Chapter 11? No, Title 11 of Chapter 16, which is the sort of form a study group that you do all the things that you do to put it to a vote. Well, what happens if the vote goes south? Or do we come up with a different method of doing it that says you make a recommendation to the State Board of Education the State Board of Education creates that. Or do we say everybody comes together, ultimately report comes back to the legislature, the legislature charters everybody.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: I just we're hovering on an Act Board six two point o.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yes.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: And I don't think Vermont deserves another Act 46.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Well, I think that no matter what we do here, it's an Act forty six two point zero because that was newer, larger districts. I think many out there would argue that's the way to go because it's more

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: voluntary. Then it didn't achieve what it was supposed to achieve.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That we could spend a whole day debating. God, we disagree with that significantly. A little bit of a disagreement. The funding. It probably didn't go as far as we'd all hoped it

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: would in terms of bringing people together. Because it had to go mandatory.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: But that happened prior to even the law passing the changes.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: And it ultimately had to be mandatory for some areas.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: What did you mean a few minutes ago when you said if the vote goes south? Can you explain?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Well, so depending, and this is again, as Beth would say, it's policy decision, depending on how we designed this. So we now we have now created CESAs. One of the CESAs required jobs is to bring to this to facilitate discussion among districts to form newer, larger districts. At that point, some sort of process has to take place. We do have a process on the books, which is the process that's laid out in title 11 of chapter 16, which then says, if you would like to voluntarily form a district, you form a study committee, you come up with articles of agreement. No, I'm You then put that to a vote of the electorate.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: The vote goes south, that's the point.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Oh, I see. Oh, just the expression? It goes down. It goes again, If like it

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: the people

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: were If it fails, coming to I okay. So I guess my follow-up question to that is if it fails, that's the vote. The people have spoken. So

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: that would be, I would say, one of the big risks. It's still gonna be a part of this.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Right, I mean, is a risk, but it is also democracy. So like I was talking to another legislator a few weeks ago and he said, you know, but the people in Caledonia said, sorry, what was the other town? Worcester, but they voted wrong. And I found that that was such an odd statement because it's not a scientific thing that there was a right vote and a wrong vote. Is the vote and that is important information.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Right, so in a world where if we were all funding our school districts individually, I would say that they're sure if you wanna spend as much money as you want and it only is raised on your taxpayers, great. That's not the system we operate under. So when they vote to keep those schools open, if that doesn't allow for savings, we're all paying for that.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: But the redistricting task force found that holding the schools didn't necessarily equate to the savings. I don't

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: know if that's true or false. The school district, which school district in this case said it would.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: Was consolidation of school districts, not closing of schools. You didn't discuss. I mean, it's hard

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: to imagine if you were to close Montpelier High School and Spaulding and send everybody to U32, and U32 didn't really have to spend a whole lot more money to accommodate them. I don't see how you can argue that that doesn't save money.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: About half the teachers. Those are the community members in our community that just lost jobs, like a 100 of them. And where's the savings there when a community's just lost 100 jobs?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Mean, as I have said repeatedly, there's nothing fun about this. There's nothing uplifting or wonderful. We are adjusting to a state that has lost 40,000 students over forty years. If you want, you could take the number 40,000 and convert that into the average size of a school in Vermont. How many school buildings is that? But we certainly haven't laid off that many staff or closed that many schools. Everything you're saying is true and unfortunate and all of that, but when salaries and benefits are 80 percent of a budget and Vermonters are saying we want our property taxes to go down, we want all of our taxes to go down, want them out to be more affordable. I don't know how you get there if you're not right sizing the I reason one has to right

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: guess my belief is that a lot of our schools that like the 300, 400 level will consolidate and are ready to do so. I can think of quite a few that I've talked to up in this corner of the state that are like, yeah, let's be When we were talking about a pilot program, they were like, yeah, let's do the pilot program. Let's do the regional school. But there were a couple of others that are like, absolutely not want to fight for this. And so I really can only support a system in which there is some kind of a mechanism for a school that is showing growth and academic, towards academic targets.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We are so far from talking about closing schools. We are just simply trying to figure out how to facilitate a discussion about larger governance structures.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: I know that's what people say, but then when you're like, we're still three to five years out from closing the school, that doesn't feel like a long time for those schools that are going to be.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We're three to five years out from even creating a newer, larger governance structure that we then have to figure out how manage the zone district. I must say, let's put that off a little bit.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Okay, but it is their survival. Like it's important in like ten years versus

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Right, I mean, you will never not hear me say in response to that, it is not a larger governance model that closes schools, it's declining enrollment from infrastructure and inability to staff.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: And right now, schools are closing on an emergency chaotic disproportionate way, not a thoughtful planned out statewide, regional wide even, plan. And

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: that's horrible for communities and families, what's happening already.

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Can I just comment on that? Because I'm sitting in an area where we're closing schools quite regularly, and I represent a town that just goes to school. And as much as I recognize that it is painful and difficult and challenging in a community, it wasn't chaotic. It wasn't well thought out And in

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: that

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: I want to make sure people understand that there is deep commitment to the education of children in every region of the state. And sometimes really tough decisions get made. And they are done thoughtfully and carefully. And they still create pain and a sense of loss, but with the knowledge that it was the right thing to do. And it is a vote of the community. So I just want to make sure that is all this emergency, but it is related to what you've just said, Chair Conlon, declining enrollment and loss of opportunity. And when that happens, a community has to make the right decisions for themselves, for their students that they serve. And that's happening around the state of the country. Not

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: happening itself. Absolutely. Lieutenant McCann?

[Kate McCann (Member)]: I'd like to just add quickly that when Montoya Roxbury decided to close the Roxbury School, all those teachers were absorbed in their systems. Nobody lost their jobs. So I don't Closing a school doesn't mean everybody's

[Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: out. Absolutely.

[Kate McCann (Member)]: There's gonna have to be some over round, especially like what Chair Conlon was saying, if Spalding and Montpelier came, that means our seventh and eighth grade needs to go someplace else. If they go someplace else, that opens up a lot of classrooms that need to have classroom teachers in them. There's some shifting. And there's also like people who are ready to retire. You can offer early retirement.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: There's like lots of different ways to kind of get

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: their We system dual have narrative out there. We've got schools that have 30 to 50% provisional licenses. We have got schools that are suffering significant attrition. So, I think we will need to right size the number of positions that are out there. I'm not sure. I could tell you what the impact is on the actual human beings. I'd say there won't be impact. If we ever get to any of these points, we will, because if our state continues to be unaffordable, the regions are gonna empty out anyway. We just went off on a little bit of a ramp in the road. I'm gonna say, let's take fifteen minutes, ten minutes. Let's take ten minutes, take a break, we'll come back.