Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Welcome to Addison Education on 03/24/2026. First meeting of the committee for a new week. Some housekeeping. We have as much dispensation as can be given to a committee to not be on the floor. That is with hopes that we can move forward. We're gonna look at some new language that I worked with legislative council on and no surprises from what I sort of previewed last week. Just to sort of premise sort of where we are. We have been spinning our wheels for a while, unable to sort of come together around one thing or another. So this what I have presented is what I talked about last week. It's actually not all that dissimilar to sort of the path that the Center of Education Committee has been discussing, if you will. And I would say probably it's reflective of what we heard from the redistricting task force. So what we're going to look at is sort of voluntary a path down voluntary mergers, however, with mandatory discussions required. The idea here is to sort of say, alright, based on something, I just sort of throw out there based on my math as a way to divide up and then I feel like we can do to work on that stuff at a certain point. The idea here is that well, two things. Mandatory discussions about mergers, not mandatory mergers, and CISA districts laid out with the creation of CISAs. The two hopefully should be able to interact in that. What they wanna do is is have facilitators out there choosing these discussions about merging. We could potentially use CISAs as territories for those facilitators, while we are also creating CISAs, which they seem to be good around. We then are able to use existing statute, chapter 11 of title 16, because it lays out a process that's all there. All the work has been done. It's not creating anything from scratch. And so we can really take advantage of that. There's still a lot to discuss, obviously. We see that I certainly know that we're not getting a unanimous vote on anything out of this committee, unlike what we have been doing, which has been fabulous. But what we need is but I guess I have been recognizing both this committee and the body as a whole, regardless of party, a certain to come, let's say, concern about mandating your larger districts, whether it's a, no matter what party you are, going back home, so then you, I support us being forced into a new or larger district, it's expressed to me, makes people uncomfortable. This goes towards a voluntary way of doing this. It doesn't force us to reinvent the law. We've got a process all laid out. It keeps Vermonters in charge of their destinies in many ways, which has been expressed as well, that that is a major concern of people from all walks of life. But I will say it doesn't answer a lot of other questions. So that's what the language that I've been revamping while it gets posted is all about. This is draft 3.1. All right, let's take a journey through this.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: St. James Office of Legislative Council. Draft 3.1, I've put a little key up at the top there, and then there is some outstanding policy decisions that I didn't highlight for you, which are mainly just around who belongs to what seesaw. But there is green and yellow through what we're going to talk about today. So the only changes I made to the Cooperative Educational Service Areas Enabling Law, which is Chapter 10 law, is on page seven, Line five, this is section six zero four, powers of seesaws. So previously, this red provides services in the following areas, and we've changed that to offer services in the following areas. That's the only change since draft 2.1.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: The significance of that is, if we mandate a cease and provide a certain, is a way to reflect not every district needs the same services from a CISA.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And we're gonna jump, we're not touching, the rest of this is the seesaw change language and then some of the substantive changes that we made in the last draft you looked at to the types of services seesaws are offering. And then you have not made any final policy decisions on who belongs to what seesaw yet. That is something that will need to be flushed out, and I will make sure it's in green for the next draft so we don't forget it. But we're gonna jump to page 19. Actually, sorry, page 20. We're gonna jump to page 20. And the next reader assistance heading, which is Union School District Exploration Information. So we walked through some of this language last week, but most of what we're going walk through now is in yellow and green because it's new. So the overall concept has not changed. Seesaws are required to employ not Oh, do you want me to share my screen?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Oh, I'm sorry. Was just

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: going without sharing. You want me to share? Okay. So the requirement for each seesaw to have a facilitator, at least one facilitator who is responsible for organizing and facilitating study committees to study the advisability of forming a union school district, that has not changed. The concept that the facilitator is grouping school districts into those supervisory unions has also not changed, but we've added some further details. So the first thing we've added also involves a policy decision, and that is on or before blank. Each facilitator shall group school districts within the seesaw's member supervise reunions together, form study committees to study the advisability of forming a union school district. When do you want that drop dead date to be? That's just an open policy question for you. You don't have to put a date in there. If you don't put a date in there, then you leave it up to the facilitators to determine for themselves on what timeline they are working. So staying on page 20, line 14, this is new language. Also involves a policy choice. Using the suggested school district groupings contained in section x, I have put in parentheses there the Conlon map, as guidance, the facilitator shall group school districts together according to the following criteria. Do you want to talk about that or do you want me to talk about that?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I'd be happy to talk about it. So the average, you know, we talked about 4,000 students. I guess one of the concerns is that if we shoot high, we're gonna miss the low hanging fruit of smaller districts coming together. I just could see a former study committee, and if you go, wanted to, those who were discussing this, the idea is to allow for more flexibility into who comes together in a voluntary merger situation. I think part of the concern was if you say 4,000 and you get a group of people coming together and they're like, we don't want 4,000, but the whole thing falls apart. What we're trying to do is encourage this to happen. So hence the greater flexibility.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Do you wanna speak to the map reference or would you like

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: speak When as we're done talking here, again, do have a piece of paper with lines on it that is for everybody to kind of look at and help me redraw the line. So what it what it is, this is the map that I put on the table, which did break up districts into two to 4,000, overlaid with the current recommendation from the redistricting task force, which I think was the VSA regents, they need those lines also, because you'll see that some of those are chopping some of pricing at school districts into pieces, some areas, and there's only five of them, and I think five is too few. So I made a piece of paper. But once you can look and say, you know something, I think this should be here, I think Chittenden County should be divided into a greater number of CESAs or whatever, and I would shoot for a goal of seven. So it's a worksheet for everybody to take a look at.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So eventually, because we're not attaching a map to whatever bill you pass, we'll have to spell out in a section what the map says. We'll have to put it into legislative language. If you choose to stick with this language on lines fourteen and fifteen that require the facilitators to use that map as guidance for their groupings, we'll have to put all of that into legislative language in a section for reference, which is why it's green. Okay, so the facilitator shall group school districts together according to the following criteria. We've just talked about that we've moved from the last draft from approximately 4,000 to between 2,004 ADM as practical. Have not changed your requirement that the school districts are required to be contiguous. And have not changed the fact that school districts on the same study committee may be members of different supervisory unions. We have not changed the language that requires a school district to participate in the study committee it is assigned to, And we have not changed the requirement that the study committee is required to follow chapter 11, sub chapter two. What comes after subdivision three in all of subdivision three's parts are some either more specific direction related to what's the process that's already in chapter 11 or exceptions to or deviations from. So subdivision A, we're keeping the same. In the interest of time, I'm just going to jump right to the new language. Subdivision B is new language for you all today regarding study committee budgets. So current law in chapter 11 in those sections that I have referenced here or not withstood talks about study committee budgets and that the budgets are apportioned to school districts based essentially on their ADM. I think or I think the chapter uses outdated language of equalized peoples. And then it talks about if the budget is anticipated to be $50,000 or greater, you have to get approval from the electorate for that budget. If it's less than $50,000 you don't need the approval of the electorate. And if you think it's less than $50,000 you keep going and you realize it needs to be more than $50,000 then you have to go to the electorate. What subdivision B says is, notwithstanding those provisions of law, the study committee formed pursuant to this section shall be funded through appropriations made by the general assembly for this purpose, which you have not done yet. Provided, however, that if a study committee's needs exceed the appropriations provided, it may elect to increase its budget according to the processes and procedures of current law.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: So does that all add up to general assembly somewhere we're gonna find the money up to 50?

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No, you can give them however much money you want.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: But if you go above whatever.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Well, this is policy choice right now, the law says it's a vote of the districts in that committee.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I think depending on the appropriation you give them, I will amend this language accordingly for when know I that we need to because they would just follow current law. So if you give them 25 and they think they need an extra $25 from their own coffers, then they would not, under current law, need to go to the electorate because it's less than 50,000. If you give them $10,000 and they decide that their budget should be $60,000 then they would probably need to go to the electorate because 50,000 hits the vote requirement. So ultimately, this language may need to be adjusted depending on whether you keep the concept of making a separate appropriation and how much that separate appropriation is. You're slightly dealing with the unknown because you are leaving it up to the facilitator's discretion. So you will not have any guarantee of how many study committees are actually formed.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: Related to that. So I'm trying to process all of this and the requirements. But at the very top, about the facilitator, study committees on or before blah blah blah date. Each facilitator shall group school districts within the CSAS member supervisory needs to

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: get their phone study done.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: That leaves an awful lot of decision making on a person. That is an employee of the CISA. And I'm curious about whether there's any language below this that we haven't reached where if a district or an SU said, I don't want to be a part of this study, maybe I want to be a part of a different one or whatever, Is there any process to deal with that?

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, it's not quite as generous as just I don't want to. There is I don't to. No, no, no, I know. It still comes back to the facilitator.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: Okay. But there's a process. Yes. Okay. Well, yes, we'll get there.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'll point out what I think the process is.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: I was waiting to say it, but then just the words were so good. But I just wanted to make sure that it feels very much at this point in time that the facility has a huge amount of responsibility here and will be a target. And we need to make sure that we've done it. Thank you.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I will wait. You have added, though, that language about using the map as guidance. So that is an additional level of direction to the facilitator that you didn't have in the last. But yes, that concept is addressed. Okay, so we just talked about budgets. Subsection subdivision c is about regional, middle, or high schools or both. That language remains unchanged from draft 2.1. And then pretty much everything else is new. So I'm on page 22, line five.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I'd like to introduce this language as this is really just for conversation. It is not there to say this is the direction we're going in. We're thinking about this. Part of it is really based on the recommendation of the Commission on Future of Public Education.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: If a study committee determines it is advisable to form a new union school district, the proposed articles of agreement prepared by the study committee shall prohibit the new union school district from closing a school unless it obtains the approval of the electorate of the town or city in which the school is physically located for the first three fiscal years of the new school district's operation. I have not included any language in here about grade reconfiguration and what school closure means. Should you choose to pursue this concept, I think that is some language that we would need to explore depending on your goals. Line 10, the articles of agreement shall further provide that after the first three fiscal years, the new union school district shall be prohibited from closing a school unless it first obtains the approval of the electorate of the union school district.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: So, sorry, I'm just wondering if a school exists but serves more than one town, that is if it's physically in a town that serves more than one town is the town that it's physically in have the sole right to people on it closing?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think that's a great question because you probably would need to adjust the language to say the tap set operated. Okay. Alright. If we choose to go down to that. Yeah. Yeah. The other choice is to just say we're not gonna exercise any control over our Articles of Agreement. Yeah.

[Rep. Leland Morgan (Member)]: So if the town or city decides not to close the school, stays stays as it is for three years Yeah. Then if the three year market triggers, the supervisor or the supervisor of the so the union school district will then put it to a vote of the entire union school district electorate to decide if they want to close the school. So it no longer is in the town's hands.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: It's in all of the town's hands. It seems like that's just possibly a three year refree for some of the small schools that might not want to close

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: versus specific part the idea is to give a newer, larger district the opportunity to operate and get to know one another first.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: Right, but suppose there still is one school that doesn't really wanna be a part of it, after three years someone else, like the rest of the district might vote to vote in because they're too expensive? There is no requirement that anybody be part of a duly merged digital process. Right.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Next, new subdivision. If a study committee formed pursuant to this section determines that it So let me back up. If a study committee determines that it is advisable to form a union school district, then they have to write a report and new proposed articles of agreement, and those are the work product that continue on the journey and are eventually voted on. Under current law, if a study committee permits that it is inadvisable to form a new union school district, they don't have to give anyone anything. The study committee themselves would vote to disband. This is adding a requirement that if a study committee formed pursuant to this section determines that it is inadvisable to propose formation of a new union school district, then before the study committee members vote to dissolve the study committee, the study committee is required to prepare a report with the following details. What those details are are completely a policy choice. So consider this just a starting place. So the names of the school districts participating in the study committee and whether participation was formal or informal. An analysis of the strengths and challenges structures of all necessary and advisable school districts. That is language that is required that is in chapter 11. And that is the analysis that is required of a study committee that determines it is advisable. We're just asking for the same analysis when it is determined to be inadvisable to form a new school district. The reasons why formation of a new union school district would be inadvisable with specific references to any state law or rule the study committee found to be an impediment to the formation of a union school district. With a specific analysis of why such rule or law was an impediment, And if the decision of the study committee was not unanimous, an analysis of the minority view of the committee outlining the ways in which a union school district promotes the state policy set forth in section seven zero one of this chapter. So what I was trying to get at here, and does not have to be where you land, is if it's not a unanimous decision, well, who thought it was a good idea and why did they think it was a good idea? So you can see both sides of the argument. The study committee is required to transmit the report to the school board of each school district that participated in the study committee, the secretary of education, the state board of education, and the facilitator or facilitators assisting the study committee. You could certainly add yourselves in there, but we're gonna have a separate section that requires the facilitator to make a report back to you all. So I was thinking maybe they could aggregate all of that information in one report, but there's certainly nothing stopping you from having those reports come to you or even made an addendum to the facilitator's report, etcetera. Anything before I move on to a completely new section in the bill? Did I miss anything here?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay. Go to the top

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: of this section.

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

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: The facilitator is employed by the CSUN, correct?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So this is an issue that needs to be probably fleshed out a little further because the goal here would be is we to get facilitators on the ground doing this work immediately. CESAs are gonna take a while to kick on. So we are exploring options that might allow us to have facilitators doing this work before the CSAs are formed. But they would do this work based on the CSAs borders.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So we're talking about hiring contractors, Like these are envisioned as permanent, ongoing, multi year. Okay. So we're moving on to a new section, and this is based it should be green, really. Page 23, section 13, guidance for study committee groupings. This is where I envision the legislative language that describes the map that you are asking the facilitators to use as guidance lists. So facilitators shall use the school district groupings contained in subdivisions one through X of this section as guidance when forming study committees pursuant to Section 12. Facilitators may form study committees that differ from the guidance contained in the section, provided, however, that a facilitator shall include their rationale for such choices in the report required pursuant to subsection B of section 15. Whether you want to allow this discretion is completely up to you. I think if you don't want to allow any discretion, then we have some conforming changes to make further up in section 12 related to whether the facilitator is using the map as guidance or the facilitator is making groupings as determined by the map. This is all this should be green, section one. So this would be where we list out and you're gonna have some policy choices on what you call these groupings. It could just be you don't call them anything. You just list towns in each or list school districts and their member towns within each

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: division.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Section 14, and I already can see this should be online too. This should be section 14, not section 15. Facilitator reports, impact, influence and recommendations on or before X. So when are you envisioning this work will be not done, but done enough that you can get a report back on it? She'll submit a written report to the House and Senate Committees on Education with information regarding whether, and if so, how the following issues impacted or influenced the final outcome for each study committee overseen by the facilitator. And maybe what we do is we do a tiered, maybe it's an annual report for a certain number of years or by a quarterly report for a certain We'll have to get creative about when you think you would be getting information back. Along with recommendations for legislative action needed to remove identified barriers to the formation of new union school districts. So again, this

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: is all

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: policy differences in staffing costs and the costs associated with moving from several different collectively bargaining agreements to one collectively bargaining agreement for applicable staff in the new union school districts. I believe differences in operating structures, geographic and topographic barriers, enrollment patterns and projections, and my favorite, any other factor the facilitator found to have influenced the final decision of a study committee. Supervisory union and seesaw boundaries. Sign up before certain date. Each facilitator employed by a seesaw shall submit a written report to the education committees with recommendations for SU boundary adjustments and seesaw boundary adjustments that take into account the new union school districts formed or proposed to be formed pursuant to this act. Facilitators may include recommendations pursuant to this subsection B in the report that we just walked through, but they can also submit a separate report. Funding is just a big old green highlight there. I've added no language. Is that what we saw? That's a policy choice.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: I think that's another committee's.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Effective date should really be green as well.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Clarifying questions?

[Rep. Leland Morgan (Member)]: Yes. You, sorry. So with this language, once a new union school districts form and operate their own schools, most current tuitioning towns and districts will disappear. Is that correct?

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm sorry. Ask that again.

[Rep. Leland Morgan (Member)]: So once a new union school district forms and is operating their own schools, does that mean most tuitioning towns and districts will disappear?

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, I have no idea.

[Rep. Leland Morgan (Member)]: Because if they're operating if you operate in a new district and you have a high school in there through their K through 12, in that case, they can't tuition, cannot tuition out.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I cannot guess as to the decision.

[Rep. Leland Morgan (Member)]: It's on current law.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I cannot, my answer is my answer. I

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: will endeavor to answer that. It all depends on what these study groups decide among themselves for how they'd like to operate.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: So

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: they may say, you know something, we don't feel we can operate as a school district because we have both a non operating and operating in the same district. They write a report that says that and so they just continue on like as usual. Or they may get together and say, hey, we feel we can operate this district at a larger scale with an independent school and public schools, perhaps using all of the language that Chris put on the table the other day. But that would be a decision within the district to make as part of your articles of revision.

[Rep. Leland Morgan (Member)]: And that brings you to like subsection E on page 22. It feels like it's about setting up districts to have to blame tuition and choice in writing when districts with choice don't want to merge. It feels like it's trying to lay blame.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: No, I think it is really all about self determination. This is all voluntary. What I was trying to get here is something that frankly doesn't go to the whole independent school battle, which just says, might not do it or not do it. And if you don't want to do it, that's allowed here. There's other areas that operate no independent schools or have no access to them that may want to stay.

[Rep. Leland Morgan (Member)]: You're bringing the conversation to independent schools. There is quite a few students in these tuition towns that send their kids to public schools. So, right, like it's not about independent schools. It's about tuitioning in general.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, it's about the town tuition program, just doesn't change any of that.

[Rep. Leland Morgan (Member)]: But it forces the direction and if they go in that direction, I mean, it really does try and leverage the direction, then districts to merge into unified school districts.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I would not agree with that at all. I would say it is bringing groups of people together on a larger scale to see if moving to a larger scale is something they want to do. And if they don't, they don't. Yeah, it's purely voluntary. If this group of people chooses their own destiny in a certain way, that's fine. But again, not everybody has to go along with it.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: So I'm trying to I know we've got the 2,000 to 4,000, trying to have some boundaries around all of this, something like that, but on the map, reading off of here, not anything else. I'm excited to. Yeah, you're totally fine. I'm just acknowledging. Is there a possibility that when a facilitator is grouping school districts with the CESA's membership, If they wanted to, let me just say, for example, say I want the whole county to be a part of one study committee. They. So I'm just saying the school districts. The facilitator is putting school districts together. And they have a difficulty about, well, wait a minute, I want to be with this one. I want to be with that one. There's a lot of that going on. And could they make it larger, I guess, is what I'm asking the facilitator to create beyond two before

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, I see what you're saying.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: Study committees.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think this language says 2,000, 4,000 as practical, and you don't have guidance for the facilitator to stray from that. You have all seen that no matter how much effort you put into words, we can't control human behavior. So I would say this does not allow for deviation from that or the discretion to deviate from that. Now, the facilitator is gonna say, nothing's gonna work unless I deviated, so I thought something was better than nothing. I don't know what you're going get. But I would say the language on page 20, lines 18 through 19, does not have any discretion built into it. Except as practical.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: I'm just gonna keep that

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: in mind because I think I actually that

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: mean, I literally know that there are areas that are after seeing the original Conlon map and then looking at maps in the Senate, there are areas we're struggling with, well, do I want to go in that direction or I want to go in this direction? And a study committee might be able to facilitate that conversation in a way that is a little more helpful if it was brought.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I totally

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: understand all the barriers to having it gigantic, okay? But I'm just wondering whether we want

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: treat it well out. Some of that. Let's remember that as we continue on.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: I could clarify what you're saying. So you're saying the study committee could almost have groups within the study committee discussing which way they want to go. Is that what you're saying? So not really. Guess I'm I mean, it might end up being that way, but it would be

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee) — B]: in the larger And that's envisioned because they might be having those conversations where I don't know if

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: I wanna go this way or this way. We're all in the study committee together and throughout our conversation, that decision is made to go this way or to go this way or here.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: And there's a final report that

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: may not include the whole, like Long will likely include the whole study committee,

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: just saying, the kind of study committee.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: Or at least you don't want it to be too big to not be effective, but maybe larger than that might make sense So in some

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: before we break for lunch, my motivation here, I've explained to all of you already just to say, I'm looking for something that we can feel, we can, that enough of us can get behind. It is also to recognize, I gotta tell you, thinking and ideas have been evolving as we continue to take testimony. I have now sort of become quite concerned about leveling up and what that can cost, and we certainly have that supported in the testimony we heard last week. If we sort of willy nilly impose newer larger districts, I think that that is probably an issue best, as are many of the issues of geography and all of that, probably best discussed the rule belief by people who have a better view than what's going on on the ground. They're gonna know what they're, these are areas where superintendents are already working together. These are areas where there are informal conversations going on already. This does not make us sort of reinvent the wheel. It's a process that we've been through once before because it's basically act 46. No matter what path we go down, it's all complicated. Yes, I originally said, let's go to 27 newer larger districts. That's easy to say, but when you get right down to, okay, how do you make all of that happen? And people who are feeling like they're being forced, just down to like the human being that have to make it all happen, just find it very challenging as a concept to make it happen. So hence a more familiar process, a process that has statute governing most of the processes already, one that I think reflects a lot of providers have been telling us too. So that's what's here, it needs more. The clock ticking minus is really loud right now, and we need to, we're gonna be having to work on this path, assuming everybody is, enough people here are still on board, and those of you who are like, this is not what I envisioned, I hope that you will still help us make this as best a proposal as it could be. Anyway, that's why I have what's here. Our own record, I'll excuse on the record. So I do have, is not a map proposing, this is a worksheet for the committee. It's not a V map. Which has the districts as I created them and then overlaid with the superintendent's areas, crayon, magic marker, whatever. Tate sheet. I would say that how things are divided need a little work. Like, I'm looking at going, well, if we're gonna not have a ceasefire that goes from the Canadian border to Brandon, maybe you should go from Brandon to South Burlington. So anyway, I'm gonna hand these out just for everybody to draw on and come back with some suggestions at some point. But the Senate is kind of on the same path that we are in terms of the bigger concepts of voluntary mergers. Theirs is a little more, I think, a little more prescriptive, but still makes use of Chapter 11. I don't quite have a full understanding of it, but they have a map as well. They also have, if you don't get to a certain point at a certain time, certain action takes place. I I don't know what that is or how it how it all works, but just to sort of like the differences. This is ours is really just the act 46 process actually short of, however, act 46 also said, you don't do it. State Board's gonna do it for you. The stuff short of that, just been talking with a lot of people about school construction as well. It's kind of the same, one of the same issues. If we don't continue to have sort of self governing districts, how do you do debt, how do you do bonding? So I'm trying to sort of work within the known that we have as opposed to venturing off into the unknown, which I think there's questions of capacity, not just at the AOE, which we often wonder about, but also just capacities of districts being able to do this in a sort of forced way. So just to say, do I sound different than I sounded previously? I do. A lot of it is just my thinking, lot of it is political reality, us wanting to, and me wanting us to do what we need to do.

[Rep. Leland Morgan (Member)]: Should we be expecting any additional sections or language over the next coming days? Yes, I mean we're gonna have to. Other than what we're discussing here, like in changes, I mean, is there anything else that's coming out where that we

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: don't have? Nothing that has been written or prepared and nothing that probably will come from discussions.

[Rep. Leland Morgan (Member)]: That's more of it.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Thank you. Alright, I'll hand these out.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Are we restarting?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay, so the house is on recess until one. Why don't we be on recess until one?