Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Committee Assistant/IT (unidentified)]: Alright. You're live.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Welcome back to House Education on 03/17/2026. Just reminding the committee that while we struggle to find consensus, we need to struggle less so that we can try to make some progress given certain legislative deadlines. And while we don't have a fixed firm deadline, I think our goal would be to get something out by the end of next week. Just wanna set that out there.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: Yeah. Out of committee or out of the house?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Out of the committee. Okay. I don't know. House would be great, but out of the committee would be best. Just some sort of Well, I was going to do a little exercise with this, but I don't think I will. But I think it's sort of say that it's like, let's all say what we want to happen. But I think that we all want the same big things. But we all want to do it in different ways. So I'm not sure it would really make things very productive.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Can you wait? Sorry. Can I ask? Yeah. We all want the same big things. What big things are you assuming that we all want? Can I ask that?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Increased equity and opportunity, controlling costs. You want to throw something out there? What's it? Stability.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Consistency. I guess that goes under quality.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Consistency of expectations. I'm

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: going to temporarily change the topic to another thing that we all agree on is that we need regional high schools, Bigger regional high schools that accommodate more kids.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: I'm not 100% sure I agree on 100%. Like everyone in that region needs to go to the big regional high school. I will out there, I'm still trying to say it would be small high schools.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yes, well, think that that, you know, I would say that that's again, going to be a local decision.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Okay.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: So I think to combine the two thoughts, you can still have a regional high school. If the region doesn't close all the high schools, kids could still go to those other high schools. It doesn't mean just because you have this, it's going to be a decision based on that governance model of that district. If there's a big regional high school, does everyone have to choose it? Or can they

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: It depends on whether you have choice or not. But it's going to be a local decision.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: And maybe there's some sort of problem with that, is that I think some of the smaller high schools want to exist with more stability than just at the will of the local

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: government. We all want what we want. So that exists under the current system. So then why don't we just stick with the I guess, Leanne, I would ask you then, what do you want? What would be the solution?

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Would want I think the solution is to move towards the regional high schools and have certain regions, perhaps those that already have an existing high school, maintain the option to remain their own district so that they remain their own governance if they're not wanting to let go of their high school. I think that we will find that Vermonters will surprise us and are starting to see the benefit of moving towards these larger regional high schoolers. And there will be room for those small places that want to say, No, we are not in province.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: This all does is always going to come back to the fact that we are a statewide funded school system, and so we can all want what we have. But if that want to have costs other remanters to have to subsidize it, that's where it gets challenging.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: But we've saved hundreds of millions of dollars because most move towards the regional high schools and we can't make a little flexibility for those that don't want to move towards the regional high school to have something that maybe does cost a little more money? Or can we put the parameters on it that you can continue to have these small high schools if once we figured out a foundation formula, you can come in at something within that algorithm.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We're getting way into the future world. If we ever get there, I would foresee those as being if they're within a district, a bigger larger district, that would be a district decision.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Right, and so that's where I sort of can't get on board, because if that becomes no longer a local If it's a new district that is not going to share their value, and they could be shut down at any time based on sort of the zeitgeist of the moment.

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

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: would say that you are somebody who, regardless of how we get there, newer larger districts, is not something you can really get behind.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: I can get behind if there is room for those that don't want to join. I think that most will want to

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: join. Joshua?

[Committee Assistant/IT (unidentified)]: Well, it's

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: too, with the foundation for a mill in play. Depending on how those movement patterns that naturally happen under your thought process, there will be schools that may not be getting enough funding because they went from that small school may have kids going to that regional high school. Now the community's going to have to decide because they may have to

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I don't want to start playing out every future scenario where I was with the newer regional high school discussion was actually to say, we still don't have a way to spend a half $1,000,000,000.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: But the decisions that we're making now are kind of setting the foundation for that future state. So we do have to be at least mindful of how the decisions we're making today are going to create a reality for tomorrow. We can't be like, that's down the road.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Sure. So if we circle back to creating CISAs, where the job of the CISA is, among their jobs, is to bring people together to create newer, larger districts that would largely be voluntary. I don't know where I was going with this. I guess if and when Beth is available, we do have some language that we could put on the table that sort of would talk about this. I'm not sure who would say anything more than what we've already said. But just to sort of look at statutory language that includes our previous BOCES language, some things we're going about. Here's what I'm gonna say. I'm running out of brainpower. My vision should be better. So I'd like to open it up for further conversation. Emily.

[Emily Long (Member)]: So I don't want to get into voluntary forced because, frankly, I think if we stay focused on the kids, we're going to do what's right eventually with incentives. But I wonder if the model that you're describing about CSOs and redistricting under that umbrella could also under that umbrella come regional, middle, and high schools. And I'm saying having conversations, facilitating conversations in regions, the CISA region I looked at the members of the CISA that exist. They're all supervisory meetings, except there's one supervisory district, the same. The rest are all supervisory meetings. I feel like it has to happen at that level, to be able to talk broadly about how we can join together. If we start talking to each individual school district within that SU level, it becomes more and more challenging if we have to think about a higher level as we're having these conversations. But I really don't want to drop the middle high school opportunity out there. Because I think it merges very plainly with what my hope is for the future state of CTE, which is it's in every high school, programming is in every high school, and it's available at the child.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: So, I checked that for a second. I guess, is it helpful for us to, as we think about how we can sort of productively move through this CISA discussion, talk about the shared services piece of it, while we all sort of continue to mull around in our minds how the additional portion of discussing that traditional concept might work. And that seems like a simpler starting place for me. So we're talking about CSAs accomplishing a couple of different purposes, like your shared services model that we've heard testimony about and the task force recommended, and then also the newer layer of whether they can be a container for those discussions about what future consolidated school districts might look at. And I'm just wondering if and when we start looking at language, if it's easier to start with the first thing as we all continue to brainstorm what that second layer might look like.

[Emily Long (Member)]: Thank you. That helps. I'm also going to throw out that I feel, having been doing this kind of like Doctor. Higgins, one of the things that holds us back always is the fact that we don't have an e finance statewide. And I really mean the statewide common school information system, the e finance and student information system. I feel like if we're going to talk about redistricting, we need to be serious about making sure that we get that in person. God, can't believe how many years I've been

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: saying. Scary.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So what would you like to talk about with shared services? What would you like

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: to direct Well, that I think, is that coming back to

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: you? She'll be here, ten minutes.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, but yeah, I feel like there's

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: a list that exists somewhere.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Oh, there is.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Yes. There

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: is. In the report. Think to the larger point, we need to look at CSIS as not just the tool by which we could potentially move toward newer, larger districts, but first and foremost, sort of in the immediate future as a way to save money while we move toward a future world through shared services.

[Emily Long (Member)]: So did you want to talk about what those specific shared services might be?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: The floor is open.

[Emily Long (Member)]: That's what I was actually going to talk about because I live in supervising area, an area where we have one. I was just talking to my superintendent, who was really pretty excited in the conversation I was having with him about having more opportunities through the CISA for special ed. We talked a little bit more, and I'm going to really paraphrase and mess this up with what he said, but we talked a little bit more about other opportunities that are opening up in this newly formed CSOT, which is really just beginning. Well, I should say it's beginning as of both CSO. It's not like we haven't been doing a shared services. But now, with the system in place, a lot of it is still coming. He mentioned about transportation and said he was hoping, he was looking at that to see if that was an opportunity. That wasn't quite available yet, but there's a lot of conversations going on. But special ed was really big, because in rural areas it's really hard to find stuff in smaller schools, smaller districts, smaller regions, rural regions.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think that like everything we do here, everything's got a good point, bad point. CESAs are going to come with a level of investment that has to be paid, but so does everything we're trying to do at transformation. The assets are really big. So, period, because I could just sort of say, well, I could see us heading down that well, it's just gonna cost us a bunch of money. The shared services part of that that we keep talking about has potential. I think we're seeing this just the start of the potential down in Southeastern Vermont. But that wasn't mandated. It's sort of like what I've been saying before about moving to newer larger districts that are state mandated. This is just my opinion. I have only one vote on this committee. Believe Act 36 has been a proven proof of concept. Not everybody agrees with me and I respect that immensely, but we're also seeing that it ceases our, and we have a proof of concept already. We've also seen it work about the rest of the countries. So maybe it's time to supercharge it.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, maybe worth mentioning that parallels in the healthcare system around regional services, so not just education specific.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: In the CESAs that exist in your areas, you see you said they're already doing one. They're already doing those special ed services. So do all those They're

[Emily Long (Member)]: already doing shared services around staffing.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: So do those special ed teachers work within multiple districts that all have exactly the same contract?

[Emily Long (Member)]: So if you're, yes, they're hired by them. I'm not on that board. I'm only telling you what I hear. So I think if we want answers to these questions, we've really got to bring them back.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: I would like to know how contracting works within a CISA.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We did actually do things. Did ask. They're hired by the CISA, negotiated by the CISA.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: And they all make the same

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I would say that within our bill on BOCES, which we are now going to call the CISA law, have language that divides that sort of contract parity.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: So I guess what I'm wondering is if you work like this many days in one district and this many

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: in another, you're making two different pages?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: No, you're hired by the CSIP.

[Emily Long (Member)]: Okay.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So, it's a fee for service model. So, the CISA might be charging $300 a day for that person to be there, to pay that person salary and benefits based on a contract. Does

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: that mean that CISA can then put them in any other school in the entire CISA that they're needed in?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: They can work in any other school? Yeah. Yeah, I think that they're probably suspect that there are guardrails, maybe even in our thing, that they are supposed to be supplemental dots, if anything. Right. And say they're hired to do a special job, like test kids, and they're in their school, and then tomorrow they have to head over across the river, then sort of things, right? I think where it gets, it may get complicated, I don't know, but if you were to have the CSIC create the specialized autism program to serve that district rather than sending students out of district. That's where they save money.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: So do they work within do they work within like a certain bargaining agreement that teachers are still

[Emily Long (Member)]: in too?

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: This I guess I would,

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: all right.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I'm gonna go back and read the law that we have on the books.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: I have so many questions. But

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: the answer is yes, they can collectively bargain. They may not, but they have the right to return.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: And they're part of one of the retirement systems.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, we have that in there too, right?

[Emily Long (Member)]: Question that you posed about the cost of having mean, this is a pretty big CISA. It covers quite a bit of a month. And I don't know what the cost was to set it up, but I know we got a $10,000 grant from the state to do it last year.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Cost way more than $10,000 It

[Emily Long (Member)]: cost way more than $10,000 but I don't want us to make an assumption that it's going to be outrageous. I think we should figure out what it really does cost because it is a fee for service. There's a person who's hired as the executive director, And those members pay in to help offset the costs. And they pay in additionally for any service they're purchasing. But I think we need I got it off the ground and it wasn't a technical support.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: So we made the CTE districts supervisory unions. That would eliminate quite a few superintendents because it'd be a lot less supervisory unions. Could some of those superintendents then become OCES managers?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I don't know. I mean, don't remember this committee entertaining the idea of creating a bunch of supervisory unions.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: I mean, you don't remember us ever saying we should have less supervisory unions? I

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: didn't know that we were creating, that we were turning CESAs into supervisory unions.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Or not, but I'm saying like, within I mean, we're talking about less SC's. So like if we went with CTE's seventeen fifteen as SC's, and like two or three of them made up of CISA's or LOC's, that eliminates some superintendents. So I'm saying, couldn't some of the costs come from less administration that either could be those superintendents that aren't superintendents anymore or we could hire out for people that wanted that job?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So the creation of newer, larger SUs is not something that we've had on tape here. A CISA could not take on the role of a central office because

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: That's not what I'm saying, though, that a CISA should be an SCU. I'm saying that a CISA could be made up of multiple SCUs.

[Emily Long (Member)]: Yeah, it is.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: That core SCUs.

[Committee Assistant/IT (unidentified)]: So why it exists? If you

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: see from not having all these administrators

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: get exported to this. I am totally confused now because it seems like at one point we were talking about less SUs or SDs, and now we're saying we've never even brought that up. I don't know. You were you. You

[Emily Long (Member)]: just said civilized. And we've moved to SDs. I

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: don't think we've moved to SDs. I don't remember that. We

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: have moved nowhere. This is our big problem. CISA is just a It doesn't matter what form of transformation we take, whatever it is, there are going to be a lot of costs behind it.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Sorry, I'm just, for illustrative purposes, can I pull up my map again? I'm trying to explain myself, I feel like what I'm saying is not insane.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: I might be able to clarify too, because this current proposal we've discussed this afternoon, it doesn't combine any governing units together. It puts the CESAs over the top of what's there now. And part of the CESA's job is to facilitate voluntarily those governing units, we'll just call them those 52 governing units, I think we have getting together. So in the short term, we still have 52. You haven't lost any superintendents, you haven't lost anything down the road, the idea would be that they would voluntarily start to merge together. And through attrition, there would be less superintendents, but you already have your CISA director. It's already all set up. That happens first, and the merger happens later under this current proposal. Right.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: I guess that would be the problem with what I'm saying is that we've already had the higher CISA. Because what I was really trying to say was that if we took these five to seven, depending on if you divided that up, new CISAs and said, Okay, this CISA that has two CTE regions is now actually two SUs that make up one CISA, then that goes from being two superintendents, or actually probably many because there's many SEUs in here currently. But it would be two superintendents now, and one of those in a future state could be a CISA director or someone else could

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: be a CISA director and they could just

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: go look for it. But like, go somewhere else. I

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: don't know, it's probably my question here is, will CISAs be hiring educational professionals? We haven't gotten to the previous discussion before we kicked our break was CISAs being the facilitators to have conversations, as Beth said, to create newer market districts.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: That could be a three year process.

[Emily Long (Member)]: Yes. Or could not. It would be hard

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: to imagine it would be.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Even once an agreement has made demurrage, it's a three year process just to get the paperwork in order.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Was gonna observe, Well, if we set those regions up successfully, even if the district merger conversation succeeds, fails, we'll still have these entities that will be collaborating on regional services, which we've heard testimony would be a good thing.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: CISA has two jobs: save money by providing shared services and getting folks together to talk about creating your larger SDs.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Perhaps they have a third job in that there's coordination of curriculum, expectations, opportunities, etcetera, to provide improved quality across the CECIR region as well.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We always have to be careful of who's the LEA. Yeah, the LEA Special is still the

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: development is a big part of CSA.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: When say premium services. Quality, governance, quality,

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: cost.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: With Beth here and time ticking away for us to adjourn, we can have Beth walk through some of the language that we've asked her to sort of create within the CISA world. If she's ready enough for that. I'm making rush around and jump from subject to subject here.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel. Do you have language posted?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We do not.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, so I'm going into my own private files.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Entirely okay. We're not ready for that. No.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's up to you.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah. Let's do it.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Are you all interested in hearing what happened to the miscellaneous and memes while I would love to do all the things? Love to hear that. I have been asked to draft an amendment to plug the fee in. Instead of just saying a fee for background checks, that would be the number amount. And it would be AOE paying the fee, not the applicant.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: This is where the miscellaneous end bill comes?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yes.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: I think that's your section. I know. AOE would pay for their new hires? Yes.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: And the applicant is not the one paying the AOU team?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: In this amendment that I am drafting. But

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: in a background check for a high school or elementary school teachers pay their own So

[Committee Assistant/IT (unidentified)]: background

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: we actually pulled up these statutes. For superintendents, the applicant pays the fee. For teachers, it's up to school board policy. So

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: it varies. So an amendment to put in an actual dollar amount for the fee and have the fee paid Yes, and

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: they're still discussing it, so that may change, but that was when I left the room where they were

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: landing. So can I ask what is sort of the motivation in

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the AOE paying the fees for their applicants versus some school boards that require their potential employees to pay the fee? Can't speak to their motivation.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: The school board doesn't want

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: stay in government.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: I don't understand why teachers would pay their own fees if it's getting paid for by the

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: You could say, why would a DCF investigator have to pay for their own or get it for free if the teacher does get it for free?

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Sorry, can you repeat that?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I'm guessing that within all of state government, there are probably many positions within many departments that require criminal background checks. And I'm gonna suspect, speculating here, that no department does the applicant pay their fee.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: At the government level?

[Emily Long (Member)]: At the state level. At the

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: state level. Right, so it's still going back to my question, why should

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That would be a question for your school board.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: The school board policy. But it can't be a state like, never mind. I can't figure out how to frame my question. It seems like it should be equal across the board. Like, our state is paying for our state.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: State's not your employer. Yeah. It's a bargaining issue. Is

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: it? I don't feel like I've ever seen current

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Maybe it could be.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Anyway, let's move on to the topic at hand here. So

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm going to share my screen, I have to post what I share. Are you comfortable with that? Yes.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: think in this case, Rob, we are probably talking about, just like in the committee, like minimalist we could do that the majority of people get off work with. I think it's the fact that it's the minimalist we could do is everything's normal. Okay, I wanna just orient you all to what you're gonna see. So what I did was I actually took all of your language from the miscellaneous ed bill that made the BOCES seesaw change, and I put it in this new committee bill where we're also going to make substantive changes to seesaws. Depending on what you do, I would highly recommend at some point that if you are pursuing substantive changes to seesaws, you pull the name change language from the miscellaneous bill so that this language lives in one place only because you're making substantive changes to the same areas of the law where you make name changes, they're not going to match. And it's going to get confusing. So I am watching this. It could happen in the Senate. It could happen when it comes back. It's just something to be aware of. So you'll see all of We're not going to talk about any of the BOCES to Seesaw or boards of Cooperative Education Services to Educational Service areas changes. Highlighted in green, Green highlighting is just reader assistance headings, so as you are scrolling, they catch your eye and you can stop. Yellow language is substantive changes to your current BOCES law. I did this last night after not the longest of conversations. I don't know that this works 100%. I think it is a place for you to start. And I, as I was drafting this, have some questions about how this would actually work in the field that I will keep to myself until you ask me to share them.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Actually, I think part of the reason to have you go through is to give us those questions. So

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: we start with the policy. I amended the policy because the policy was allowing supervisory and encouraging supervisory unions to form BOCES. And now, spoiler alert, you are no longer allowing or encouraging voluntary formation. You are creating them yourselves, mandatory formation. So the policy would read, It is the policy of the state to create cooperative educational service areas to provide shared programs and services on a regional and statewide level. It is the intent of the General Assembly that cooperative educational service areas are utilized by member supervisory unions, and then the rest of it is current law, to maximize the impact of available dollars through collaborative funding, reduce duplication of programs, personnel and services, and contribute to the equalization of educational opportunities for all peoples. This is the purest form of policy choices you could make. It is a policy section for you to play with. The definitions section, I added a new definition here for CSOF. You didn't have a definition of BOCES just because of the way that the BOCES law flowed. I didn't find last night an easy way to do the same thing, so I just added a definition of CSOF, which is an association of supervisor unions created pursuant to this chapter to deliver shared programs and services to complement the educational programs of member SUs in a cost effective manner. A seesaw shall be a body politic and corporate with the powers and duties afforded them under this chapter. And then we keep the title Creation of Seesaws. We keep this subsection heading Establishment of Seesaws, but then we get rid of all the language that talks about voluntary formation. And we jump right to, Supervisory Unions are arranged into the following cooperative educational service areas, whatever you see fit. This is just a template. So the way I envision this is it would be CISA number one, or maybe there's a name, is formed at the member supervisory unions of, and then you would list a supervisory union, you would say, which is formed of the member school districts of. So you would have both the member supervisory union and school districts spelled out. This is a policy choice for you all. Under current law, seesaw, BOCES membership is at the supervisory union level, not the school district level. I came up with this on my own last night. I need to phone a friend on some of this. I think there's no agreement anymore. You were creating these. So I felt like articles of agreement was not the right governing document. So I have substituted the term bylaws. I think that is a more applicable concept. My understanding is that supervisory unions have bylaws, most of them.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Chelsea, is that accurate?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, then I'll move on. I just wanted you to correct me if I was wrong. All of this to say, there's no more folks getting together and agreeing on a set of things. Do have to get together and agree on that. That's one of my outstanding policy questions. But now we're going to call them bylaws. Each CISA shall establish bylaws to serve as the operating agreement of the CISA. At a minimum, the bylaw shall state, and then you keep everything that the articles of agreement were required to have. Next, of termination of the BOCES and withdrawal of member supervisor unions because you have created them, So only through an act of the legislature could you change them because they're set out in statute. Same for admitting new members, but certainly amending the bylaws would be within their purview. Otherwise, powers and duties remain the same. And then I struck this language because I just didn't think it was necessary. Any other matter not incompatible with law the member of supervisory unions consider necessary, period. To the formation of the BOCES, they're not forming anything now. You are. So I don't think you need that qualifier there. You could, if you wanted to, you could add to the necessary operation of the seesaw or something to that. Board of directors remains the same. We're striking the prohibition on more than seven BOCES. Powers and duties of the seesaw remains the same, except I added this at some direction at some point. It is a true policy choice. Under current law, seesaws get to decide what educational programs services they offer. This language says they have to, at a minimum, provide at least three of the six. You could do one of the six, all of the six, two of the six. You don't have to list any of these. But these are the areas that I have heard you discuss the most special education, professional development, curriculum development, coordination, transportation, business and administrative services, and union school district creation, consultation and facilitation. Executive director stays the same. The body politic in corporate stays the same, so leasing buildings, going into debt, etcetera. They can still apply for state or federal private grants. The financing, budgeting, and accounting pieces all stay exactly the same. Annual report stays the same. Employment stays the same, so they're considered a public employer. And their employees would qualify, depending on the role they serve, as either a teacher or a non teacher for retirement benefits, for health care benefits, for bargaining, and the applicable laws that apply to them. But all of that stays the same. I did repeal the transition report, section three of twenty twenty four's action results number one sixty eight, which is the BOCES bill, had a report back to you all in, I believe, 2028 of the lay of the land of who had voluntarily created BOCES. If you all are creating them, that's a moot point. So I've repealed that report back. I've also amended the startup grant. So there is established a educational I need to add a word there. But educational service area startup grant program still to be administered by AAE from funds appropriated for this purpose, to award grants to the Seesaws created in '16 BSA six zero three subsection A to assist with startup costs. And then I didn't touch the money. CSO shall be eligible for a single $10,000 grant. Grants may be used for startup costs and formation costs, including a set of articles of agreement bylaws. And now we're not awarding them to only one supervisory union to manage, you have created the seesaw. So I didn't touch any of the amount there. And then the rest of this, under this Reader Assistance heading, are all the conforming amendments to the collective bargaining law, the health care law, the retirement law, where you had the term BOCES and we're swapping Seesaw. I didn't make any changes there. I cannot stress enough that this can be whatever you want it to be, and it also doesn't have to be anything, if that makes sense.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Questions? Yes?

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: The $10,000 bringing on, I would say go to the lawyer that it took to make the new agreements?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yes.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, so is that what

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: it costs a lawyer for something like that? It's $10,000

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: No doubt. We only have one. I don't know if they spent all the 10,000 or not. But it's

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: not more than 10,000.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Think if we start, if we're envisioning what we are envisioning here, it's gonna be significantly more money than that.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: So shouldn't the grant be for the amount of money with lawyers?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, 10,000 is a placeholder.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Okay. Because that's what's currently there. That could be changed as well.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Okay. Mean, we must have sort of, after years and years and years of bargaining, we must have some idea of what a lawyer for that amount of time costs. It's like

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: going to essentially be the same, right? We've only created one BOCES. Right, but I'm- One set of auto pays of agreement.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: I guess what I'm saying is would it be that dissimilar to the lawyers that got hired for the bargaining process?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Very different things. Okay. Yeah.

[Emily Long (Member)]: Yeah.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: And Under this, we're talking about doing far more. Since we are mandating, let's

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: say seizures are being created, we're gonna be spending more than that. It's fine, I was just trying to figure out what would be the actual number of grandkids.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That's gonna be one of those hard things, so it'll go around forever.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: So in that area, Beth, where you had the list of the different things, we're talking about the last one that you put on there being mandatory as one of them, and then they would

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: choose That on is what we are talking about. Yeah,

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the way it's drafted now is that a seesaw would still be able to decide what educational programs, services, facilities it offers, but at a minimum, it had to select three of the list of six. That is completely a policy choice. And I think that what we were saying was that last one is not optional. Well, I can amend the language appropriately. In addition to facilitating

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: I think I'll just do three of the follow-up. Six or whatever we

[Committee Assistant/IT (unidentified)]: But it's envisioned to be

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: completely, excuse me, any kind

[Committee Assistant/IT (unidentified)]: of arguing underneath the CISO would be completely voluntary. Realistically, you could end up with a situation where we just implemented five or seven or how many CISOs stay.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Nobody would agree to come together? Correct. Yes.

[Committee Assistant/IT (unidentified)]: There's no incentive, really, no state sponsored incentive.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: There's no stick, there's pro caret. Right. Other than the ones implicit in being larger. Correct. Now, I don't think, to counter that, would say that doesn't diminish a CISA in of itself being a positive step towards high savings.

[Committee Assistant/IT (unidentified)]: No, I actually have.

[Emily Long (Member)]: Always pro BOCES.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think I got something we can all agree on.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We'll say Chris Colombocies.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Procedurally, that's

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: my favorite word today,

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Because I totally understand why you're going to pull this out of miscellaneous stuff. This is going be a standalone. Do we need to be making that decision soon? Mean, could we post if because the miscellaneous said that we could

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: post poll, right, if we needed to or? So this is what

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think we can all come to agreement on, that we should pull it out the miscellaneous said bill, because even if we do nothing, there's no harm in still calling it BOCES for year.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, so we could just pull it.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So the benefit is right now we could just have all the other committees for at our request. She's off the hook tomorrow.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Does that make sense to She's

[Emily Long (Member)]: off the hook.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I was gonna introduce about apologizing to Kate for pulling this out.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's okay if I notice if pulling herself off. If

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: the committee is okay with it, I will ask either approach or wait, just hold that out. Is there any repercussions? I mean, was actually your suggestion, Chittenden.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I mean, the repercussion is you don't pass And that then it's BOCES until we decide to change it. Ways and Means is having me draft an amendment for tomorrow. So if you wanted to, that might be a natural place to do that.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That'd great. Thank you. That'd be good. I'll let the chair know that that's at our request. Okay.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: That's good to know.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Damn, I've got 10 community meetings telling people it's no longer BOCES. Well,

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: that passes, you're right.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: So I'm actually following the interstate compact.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: At a certain point, I'm gonna need to get a read of room.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Think about it overnight. I think we should think

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: about it overnight, as Beth suggests. And I just will say that, I can already understand the various concerns that everybody would have with this speed at which change happens, speed at which change doesn't happen. So all these things to think about as we continue our discussion, I think we'll just wrap right there. Thank you all very much. Thank you very much.