Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: You're live. Okay, welcome back to House Education, Tuesday, 03/24/2026. The somewhat slimmed down committee for the moment is going to, we're lucky to have a couple of superintendents who have been through the Act 46 process and can talk to us a bit about lessons learned and advice for us. The context here is that as this committee tries to find a path forward on continuing to get to scale in this state, we are sort of looking at the processes that already exist in law that both were the Act 46 processes and then the processes that were learned from Act 46. So we've been talking a little bit about that in the committee with lots of questions about makeup of study committees, budgets, how much time is needed for a study committee to work. And of course, we are in a new context in which we've been through Act 46. A lot of folks are familiar with the process, but we thought we'd have a couple of veterans come in and talk to us about their lessons and their advice to us as we go forward. I don't know which of the two of you would like to go first. I don't know if you've decided, but it really doesn't matter to us. Bill, would you like, you're both muted. Bill, would you like to

[Bill Kimball (Superintendent, Maple Run Unified School District)]: go first? Sure. Thank you, Representative Colin.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: Just introduce yourself, that would be great.

[Bill Kimball (Superintendent, Maple Run Unified School District)]: Yes. Good afternoon members of the House Education Committee. My name is Bill Kimball. I'm the superintendent of Maple Run Unified School District serving St. Albans City, St. Albans Town, and Fairfield. I think many of you know me, so I'll skip my little background. But just quickly, I would say that I've been a superintendent for the past fourteen years, and I've served two different school districts slash supervisory unions. Prior to being here at Maple Run, I was the superintendent at Washington Central Supervisory Union, which is now called Washington Central Unified Union School District. Prior to that, I had been a central office administrator and educator for the past thirty three years. I I thought today I'd give you a little tale of how Maple Run merged and where we were and how that became possible for us. A strong motivation for Maple Run's merger was the tax incentives. We were able to stabilize our educational tax rate prior to the waiting change in f y twenty The year before the merger our education tax rate in St. Albans was a $1.45 and we went as low as a $1.38 and a high $1.46 in the next eight years. Although that was our education tax rate, the increases the taxpayers saw in the actual tax rate came from the CLA. St Albans is growing economically and that has negatively impacted our CLA or SCLA. For the first eight years we did not have an educational tax rate higher than the pre merger rate. This fact did not resonate with our property owners as they were more concerned about the total impact of the property tax, not the details of how the education funding form impacts the tax rate. The success of our merger was due to the board leading the study of combining the schools and the community participating in the process. I was told by some board members who were not in favor of the merger that the community changed their position. We are now in our ninth year of Emerge system and are implementing aligned curriculum instructional systems. For the first three or four years, we only had the capacity to focus on aligning business, human resources, and technological systems because we came from a system where boards did not agree on collaboration or even want to. It was the system where long standing principals worked with their boards, and there was limited involvement from the superintendent or central office. This system merger changed that through my predecessor's relationship building with the principals and strong leaders on across several boards. Also ensuring there was minimal change to the schools during the first for first few years laid a foundation of trust in the new board. When I consider merging systems that are not within the same supervisor union, I see many business, human resource, and IT issues that can be more complex than within our current setup. For example, two different school districts' supervisor union units might operate on separate financial technology systems. Taking, for example, payroll, merging these systems will require a significant amount of time to ensure everyone is paid on the correct cycle and under different master agreements. When we merged at Maple Run, it was the first time we had a common master agreement for educational support professionals and teachers. Having different agreements means we would need to pay different indices, which makes managing a sim single financial system much more complex. This is just one example of merging systems that didn't originally that would make it much more complicated when we combine across existing school districts or supervisory unions. For our example, we were all within one supervisory union, so it wasn't anywhere as complex it could be looking forward. Another point I want to point out is that parents and residents care about their local schools, as we all know. In Maple Run, we invested in Fairfield Center School's physical plant by putting nearly $4,000,000 into the building to address deferred maintenance by using the reserves that came into the system from the merger. This built trust in Fairfield that we could we would not close the school even though the student body there could fit in our other two pre k through eight buildings. The merger committee and the merger board were committed to keeping Fairfield open through its actions in helping the school grow. In our district, Fairfield Center School is our most efficient and most cost effective building delivering the highest return on investment. Why is this? Several factors. Class sizes range between eighteen and twenty six students per grade level from grades three through eight, and in the kindergarten through two, they're in the high teens. The community loves their school and actively supports it. Additionally, student needs are generally fewer, although some of the intensive needs are those of the same of our other two pre k eights. Under act 46, we were only able to merge similar school systems. In Franklin County, most of these like systems have already merged. If we wanted to go further, we would need to consider how to merge different types of systems. I believe it's possible that it will require more discussion at the local level than it did in Act 46, not less. This will take more time to identify what we share in common instead of focusing on our differences. The issues related to grade levels served within a school and school tuition will be challenging to resolve, as it has been for you and the committee in your discussions. Based on our experience, merging systems require time, resources, and the development of collective culture. The latter is the most challenging as it takes time to build relationships rooted in shared care for children and a willingness to learn what is similar rather than what is different. I observe a similar issue in the community I live in. I live in the town of Volkut and in the previous school districts and supervisory unions I serve. Thank you for your time, and I'd be happy to answer any questions or wait until after Julie gives her testimony.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: I think we will do just that and have Julie go first and then we'll go to questions.

[Julie Regimbal (Superintendent, Missisquoi Valley School District)]: Great. Actually, thank you, Bill, for teeing me off. Thank you for having me. For the record, my name is Julie Regimby and I serve as superintendent of Missisquoi Valley School District. I have been here for eight years. Previous to that, I served in Franklin Central that became Maple Run for ten years, both as a director of special education and as an interim superintendent for about a year and a half pre merger. And so I was part of the team that merged in Maple Run and went through negotiations and so forth. And then I was hired here the year of the state board mandated mergers. So the Franklin Northwest Supervisory Union, which at the time served Franklin, Highgate, Swanton and Sheldon, as well as the MVU Unified School District, middle high school. That district hired me knowing that that merger was imminent and it was a part of their choice. So I won't reiterate what Bill said, I will just underscore the difference between a voluntary merger process and a merger process that was not voluntary and that was fought. So that is my experience with those two processes. The Maple Run process had a study that was facilitated by someone who was very familiar with education that was well schooled in what was expected of this merger process. It was a very important part of shepherding folks together and getting people to understand what was needed to really examine the pros and cons of a merger. And that tax incentive was the reason Fairfield decided to give up school choice. It really was the difference. Where when I came to Franklin Northwest, they had done a study, but it was not a formal study with a facilitator that was trained or understood education, it was mostly led by the previous superintendent and a team of folks, but it really did not lead to a study of merging. It really led to a process and a report that justified them staying as a supervisory union and maintaining the status quo. So for me, I think having study committees that have formal facilitators that with very specific outcomes, I think is a very key to the success. When I came here, it was very politically fraught. My first week on the job, people were getting in buses going to Eden and state board meetings and protesting the whole process. Half of our towns joined a lawsuit to fight the merger. And we administratively, I entered knowing that this was the political climate. And so I really had to have a neutral stance and listen to the will of each school board. And none of them had the same will all the way through the process and facilitate the whole process of the merger. We had a foot in two different futures for most of the year. We had to build budgets for staying a supervisory union and we had to build budgets for a merged district at the same time. I want to reiterate what Bill stated. If it is complex to do that in a single system that is merging in of itself, we had the complicating factor of Sheldon being removed from us and being assigned to Franklin Northeast Supervisory Union because they had school choice and the state board could not merge them with as a like system. So we had over 2,000 students and now we have 18, just under 1,900 students because of that shift. You then are looking, Bill and I are right next door to each other, Ms. Siskoy and Maple Run have shared a tech center, should a merger study happen there and there's a new board and people are trying to gear up, you would have two similar systems in terms of preparing kids pre K through 12, but all of the logistical business curricular instructional, all of those systems would be different and you would have people in two systems running schools while the new system needs to gear up and hire and restructure and staff. So that on ramp I think is very important to pay attention to. Another thing that we really focused on with the resistance, we had petitions for a lot

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: of

[Julie Regimbal (Superintendent, Missisquoi Valley School District)]: things. One of them was to privatize Franklin School and stop being a public school. And again, that 5% of voter threshold is a very low threshold. I understand that it's perhaps not one that this body has anything that they can do anything about, but I could, while we didn't have a successful vote, it was a very big detour of time and energy to prove to the community that it would not be in the interest of students or taxpayers to privatize that school. Franklin School has about 130 students, pre K through six, As far back as records go, they've had about that many students. They are one of the highest achieving schools in the state and very efficient. And similar to the Fairfield story, we have done a lot of investing in that school. We used our best funding to build an addition onto the schools so that they had preschool space. For example, they did not because of when it was built. So that 5% I could foresee with a study merger, if 5% of a community can just spark a merger study, I could foresee two boards engaged in a process and then another town or another community or supervisory union all of a sudden wants a merger study with one of the partners, I think there should be some clarity of 5% of which body. Is it one district? Is it a town in a district? Can you be having three or four of these things going on at the same time? I don't know. Dance partners, I could see a lot of people looking around. So that 5% is I know probably something you can't do anything, but guardrails would definitely be helpful. Another big piece for us were crafting articles of agreement, mostly because of fear of closures or shifting the models of education around from what we currently have. And we really had to work hard to create articles of agreement that met the law and would be palatable to our community to vote on. And we did do that, but it does hamstring things like changing grade level configurations or anything if that matter. Unlike Fairfield in our community, none of our schools have enough space to take the students in our other schools. So we're not looking to do that, but I can imagine as a state, those articles of agreement that will come out of a merger study and process, I think you may wanna think about what you wanna encourage or discourage in that process and think articles of agreement and whether there's models or rules about what needs to be considered, because they're an important part of that community trust. And I guess the last thing I would really say is I am not recommending that your committee consider forced mergers, but I would really be remiss if I didn't note that Missisquoi, which is a highly efficient, we spent $12,173 per long term weighted ADM, we have pretty average test scores that used to be terrible. And so now we're really moving toward the average range. We're pretty efficient, we're very effective. And yet this district would not be a district if there wasn't a state board process because they fought against it tooth and nail. So I just think that that's an important thing to note. I will say that the spirit of the board, when they realized it was inevitable and they came together as a new board, they had a unifying spirit. And I did not see that in every district. I saw that in Maple Run, and I saw that here in Missisquoi, that once people realized that this was happening and it was inevitable, they came together and they wanted to do the right thing for their community and think of all the students in their broader definition of community. And that's really why this merger has been very successful. And again, happy to answer any questions.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: Thank you. This committee is looking at language that would sort of use the same process, be mainly voluntary. We have not discussed a forced process at the end. But given everybody's familiarity now, think within the school community of how study committees work or how Act 46 works and what articles of agreement are, and that we had forced mergers and the sky did not fall, and in some cases, people are really glad it happened. I guess given all of that, can we shorten timelines, especially for like the study? What we are talking about doing is mandating study committees, but not mandating mergers. And the question is, how much timeline should they have in order to issue a report saying we wanna move forward with articles or we do not believe the merger is advisable?

[Bill Kimball (Superintendent, Maple Run Unified School District)]: Can I answer that first, Julie, and then you go ahead? What I'm concerned about is the thoroughness of that study committee and the perception of that, was able to take public input. And I understand the pressure to do that quickly. My experience with merger committees was at Washington Central, not here at Maple Run, Julie was here then. And the conversation and input is a valuable piece. And I talked with our board chair last Sunday night knowing that I'd be discussing this. And she was the one that said having that expert facilitator and running the merger committee was a really big help. And I think that's a really important piece. There was also resources that were provided to make that happen and for study committees, as well as the time the community really came out and pushed Maple Run into where it is currently, where not all the board members that were on that study committee were in favor of it. And that was a big turning piece, but it was that community input that did that. So I would wanna caution us to make sure we can get that part right. I don't know what you would add,

[Julie Regimbal (Superintendent, Missisquoi Valley School District)]: Yes, I think the professionalism of the facilitator is important, not only in writing the report because you're correct. The contents of the report, I think are pretty well known at this point, but it is the community input part that is so key. Also, think having access to good data is important. And the agency of add, as we know has had some challenges with data, but I think that that would need to be a place where study committees could get that information. Sure, some of it could come from the school districts involved, but sometimes apples and oranges are compared or the ask is not clear from too many people involved. And if it came from a single source, I think that that would result in cleaner reports.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: I guess, I think about the fact that everybody now knows the stumbling blocks. So let's just say, we said, okay, here's a mandatory study committee, Masiskoye and Maple It seems to me like the two of you can get together and say already, okay, we use completely different software for financial stuff. Can we overcome that? We have different curriculum. Is that something we can overcome? So a lot of these things, you kind of already know what the problems are. It seems like that could help short a lot of the discussion because you may end up with a like, you know, it wouldn't take too long to get to a no, fully understanding that this is different than last time, because last time was largely SUs turning into SDs. Correct. This is really, in many cases, SDs coming together, if possible.

[Julie Regimbal (Superintendent, Missisquoi Valley School District)]: I think that that's partially true, but it depends on the system. So uncovering the differences between Maple Run and Missisgoi, that are much more closely aligned, Sure, we have different financial softwares that we're using, but that's a logistical hurdle that can be managed. But if you are talking about Franklin Northeast and Missisquoi, now you're talking about an SU that has choice in some of its districts and not choice in the other and their curriculum is much less unified because of their system. Uncovering those differences may take a little bit longer.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: Yeah, appreciate that. And of course, the different systems, whether you're K-twelve or K-eight and non operating after that, and how those could or could not come together is always going to be a challenge. I would say within a district, might be able to sort of have both operate at the same time or say we are all choice within our district. Because I'm not even sure up there, you don't have anything besides public schools available for choice anyway.

[Bill Kimball (Superintendent, Maple Run Unified School District)]: No. No. It's down. It's yeah. It's

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: So it's different it's a little bit of a different kettle of fish.

[Bill Kimball (Superintendent, Maple Run Unified School District)]: Thank you. It is. I would wanna interject as well as one of the big issues that that's different between the two districts while that we might be in a foundation formula is our master agreements. Right. So that that's gonna be a tough one because everyone's gonna wanna come up the we have a higher indices than Missisquoi, So we're gonna have to figure out how we true that up and how that negotiation goes forward because there are gonna be costs that aren't representative in the financial and structural system that we currently have as two separate systems.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: I almost see that as one of those things, which I think is, I think chewing up or leveling up is a big deal. Yeah. I could see a group of three superintendents coming together saying, you know something Leveling up is gonna cost this much. It's simply not worth the cost to merge, or at least you'll a better sense of the cost benefit of it quickly.

[Bill Kimball (Superintendent, Maple Run Unified School District)]: Well, that I mean, Ryan Harity gave you that that now for the Lemoyal County. We've got it a little bit roughly, but I don't want to say it's accurate for Franklin. Yeah. But we know that there's a quite a bit of a lift there to go. Yeah.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: Yeah. I'm sorry, Committee. Have dominated here. Questions? I don't know if

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Education Committee)]: I'm fully missed. Let me preface it with that. But one of the things I'm wondering was would it facilitate all of the sort of leveling up of before we did this we just went to a statewide contract?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: Yeah, if we had a statewide contract that would be one of the issues taken off the table. Right. So

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Education Committee)]: how much would it cost us and how long would it take to go to a statewide contract?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: I can't answer that. I suspect a long time and a lot.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Education Committee)]: And again, I'm getting a book in that with adults hoping for that.

[Julie Regimbal (Superintendent, Missisquoi Valley School District)]: A

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: statewide contract doesn't need to say everybody gets paid the same. They can say this part of the state has a differential because of this or this part of the state has differential. But negotiating all that, I think would be I'm not sure anybody's got the capacity for that currently.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Education Committee)]: Well, and there's a lot more than just the dollar amount

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: in contracts as well. Absolutely,

[Julie Regimbal (Superintendent, Missisquoi Valley School District)]: I think one of the factors would be knowing a little bit more about the foundation formula, as we are a lower spending school district per student than Maple Run, Franklin Northeast of course is even less so. The major difference there is salary. So if we knew that there was a target coming out of a foundation formula of say the 15,000, a study committee could look to see the feasibility of that. So some of that, I know one is predicated on the other, but that would be helpful information for communities to come together to see, given this foundation formula future, is this feasible for us to come together with the salary schedule or some combination between the two?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: That's a great point. Many of us come from the perspective of the foundation formula not helping us level up. So I think that's an important point. All right, just wanna thank you both and I'm going to assume that you are offering us to be a resource in the future, should we have any further questions.

[Bill Kimball (Superintendent, Maple Run Unified School District)]: As always, as always.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: All right, committee, know we have to probably go back to the floor because the roll call hasn't started yet, but maybe that's what we'll do as well. Thank you all very much. Thank you. We'll adjourn here. I do not see us coming back to the floor or coming back to the committee after this.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Education Committee)]: Is that a final release from

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair, House Education Committee)]: going back to this? No, good.