Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Folks, this is House Education Wednesday, March 25. The committee is going to spend some time with legislative council this morning to go over, get a better understanding of the Chapter 11 processes for creating merger study committees and their work and sort of how the processes move potentially in visual form. I think we promised amazing gravities.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Not I what I need.

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm Beth Quimby, Office of Legislative Counsel. So I did prepare a chart. All I did is cut and paste a language from the statute. And I did that very specifically because there are so many words that have meaning. I was finding it hard to summarize accurately without leaving out details, so I just cut and pasted. So there's a lot of words, but I think that they are all important. So there is a study committee membership chart forte. So if you're looking at it thinking, why did she organize it this way? I don't know. This is what you got. So I will preface all of this by saying you can make changes, permanent changes to existing law, or you can make temporary changes to the process you are trying to create in your committee bill, or both. None of this is set in stone. I mean, this is current law. So if you made no changes, either in perpetuity in the green books or in a piece of session law in your committee bill, this is what would be applicable to the field if you said, Okay, talk amongst yourselves in foreign study committees. But you have the ability to change it. I tried not to bog us down with references to statute, but this is all from section seven zero six. What I'm scrolling through is what we're about to look at in the chart. So we've got the type And this is where I think And I just talked to your chair, and just to spoil things a little bit, what I am going to be working on, assuming there are no emergencies before third reading, if you're

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Oh, it's me.

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think it's Bill. While you guys are on the floor in joint assembly, is starting to work on a list of all of the decision points that we've talked about or that I think I would like to flag for you, and you can ignore them or tell me I did a good job. The way Chapter 11 is organized and drafted is that the study committee is being formed starting with a meeting of the minds. Two or more school districts have decided amongst themselves, or they've been petitioned by their voters, to voluntarily form this study committee. And so they're already on the path to some sort of decision making process. And that includes starting with what type of union school district the study committee is exploring. So there's unified union school districts, remember? I'm going to stop sharing for a second. There's unified union school districts, which are school districts that are made up of two or more towns that are organized to provide pre K through 12 education. And that can be any combination of operation and tuitioning for any combination of grades. It could be all tuitioning, it could be all operation, it could be some tuitioning and some operation. There are also union elementary districts and union high school districts, which are also school districts that are formed by two or more municipalities, but they are organized to provide education in less than all grades. And the name elementary or high school should give you an idea when you're looking at the name of a school district, which grades they are organized to provide education.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: As we go to prepare our work, I would say our goal, think it's been the goal of the AOE, the governor, or whatever bill we've talked with, is to create unified union school districts, pre K to 12. So whatever language should probably reflect that, because when you start creating districts lower than pre K to 12, you start increasing the number of SUs.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: Sorry to ask, can just

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Maybe you're even Everything you just said, the different kinds, is that written down somewhere?

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. I'm trying to think of I mean, it's so here, let's look at chapter 11 and the definitions. So I'm gonna make a note that this is a policy decision for you guys on potentially adding language to clarify that the goal of these study committees should be the formation of unified union school districts. Districts. I'm going to flag that as a policy decision. Okay, so definitions. We've got member district is going to be important. I've got that at the bottom of our chart. We're not going look at it right now. Okay. Unified Union School District. A union school district organized to provide for the education of the district's resident students in all grades pre K through 12.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay, so I see where you were kind of branching out and saying it could be this, could be this, could be

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: this. Yes. Okay.

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Unified Union School District just means it's organized to provide education for all grades. It doesn't tell you how they provide their education. And then right below that is Union Elementary School District and Union High School District, meaning a union school district organized to provide for the education of the district's resident students in fewer than all grades. And the way you figure out what a school district is, is by its name. It will say, Such and Such Union Elementary School District. And you know that it is organized to provide education for its resident students in less than all grades, I think some union elementary school districts might go up to eighth grade and some might stop at fifth grade. I think there's a variation, even though elementary school and high school education is defined as a certain subset of grades. When you see the designation of Union Elementary or Union High School, just know they're organized to provide for

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: half the grades. So concrete example, when the merger happened, where I

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: taught Orleans Central Supervisory Union,

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: the six elementary school districts got together, merged together, we became Lake Region Union Elementary Middle School,

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: that's the last name,

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: and Lake Region High School maintained, it was Lake Region High School School District, and those two new districts were within the Supervisory Union.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, two districts, two separate So,

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: name, by elementary, middle, kind of told the story

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: of who we were providing.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: So seventh and eighth grade, that's considered elementary?

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Middle. I'll tell you where

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: elementary middle school. It's not the following.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We probably shouldn't get yeah, we could squeeze it because middle school could be six to eight.

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Or nine. Title 16 does have a definition for

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Am I

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: sharing my screen? Can you see what I'm doing right now? A little squishy. Secondary elementary education means a program of public school education adapted to the needs of students in pre K, kindergarten and the first six grades, one through six. Secondary education is a program of public school education of six years adapted to the needs of students who have completed their elementary education, so seven through 12. Those are the definitions for secondary, high school and elementary education. However, the fabulous example that Beth Quimby just gave, the Lake Region Union ElementaryMiddle School District is organized to provide K through eight. The high school district is organized to provide nine through 12.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: And we do have a pre K

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: program that people can feed into. So I would say for the sake of this conversation, you have a policy choice to make on whether you are providing guidance or setting expectations. I think those have the potential to be two different things. For what kind of union school districts, the study committees that you are requiring to be formed shall explore? Are you going to give them full range of the options, but encourage them to explore Unified Union School Districts? Or are you going to say it is a Unified Union School District or nothing? Or a Unified Union School District, and if you make these findings, then you may explore a union elementary or a union high school. The world really is your oyster as far as the policy choices you can make there, as far as how prescriptive or not prescriptive we get. But I think that, again, example that Beth Quimby gave is a great example of a union elementary school and a union high school district. They're two separate boards. They are two separate municipalities, which means there's two separate tax rates. Because they are two separate school districts, they are not a supervisory district. They are a supervisory union. And they're both made up of the same task. Yes.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Go ahead. It's not defined. I'm still on the definitions page here. And I don't need you to go back to it. But I'm just going to make a comment that in all of these definitions of union schools and unified unions and all of that, there do exist some modified unified union school districts, which I'm not I I happen to live in the boundaries of one. And it's not a great system that once these are complicated enough, once we add in modifying them, it becomes even more complicated. So I guess my comment would be that the more we can keep things less modified, I'll just use that term, the better. It is a complicated system. These are tough enough. When you modify them, they're even harder. So I'm not

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think that goes to the goal here, Yeah. The goal of pre K to 12 unified school districts. Yes. Nobody wants to complicate things further.

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And I mean, chapter 11 is set up theoretically so that at any point in time, school district in Vermont can explore forming a new union school district with any other school district in Vermont, and they need zero direction from you all. It is an execution of the law responsibility, which is not a legislative responsibility. And so the chart I have, I just took what is in current law. It doesn't specifically address modified union school districts, which I don't even know if we need to get into the examples of that. But if a modified union school district wanted to explore forming or joining another union school district, that's for them to figure out in the field. So I don't know that you need to provide. I think that what you have works for the field. And I think depending on what your goals are, what you may potentially want to really be focused on when we're talking about who is represented on the study committee, depending on the type of union school district joining the study committee, is do you wanna deviate from that process? Not necessarily, have we accounted for every weird exception that is out in the fields? Does that make sense? Okay.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I started with this point of saying, Chapter 11 is written in a way that when the study committee is formed, there's an assumption of what type of school district they are exploring. I have made a note that it is a policy decision if you were gonna be prescriptive. Right now, it sounds like you are leaning towards requiring exploration of formation of a unified school district. So that's great because we start with So first column is the type of school district being proposed, then the type of school district on the study committee, and then the study committee membership. So we're start I need to share it because

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Oh, sorry. Thank you.

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yep. So starting with the goal of a proposed Unified Union School District. If it's an existing Union Elementary or Union High School District. And now I'm over here.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Should remember that this is within the context of who is on the Merger Study Committee. Current

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: law. Thank you. Interests of the existing Union School District shall be represented by its member districts on the study committee. What's a member district? Member district means a school district which can be a union school district, that is a member of a union elementary school district or a union high school district for certain grades, pre K through grade 12, and is a distinct district organized to provide for the education of its resident students for all other grades, whether by operating one or more schools or paying tuition. So a union elementary school district could be made up of a bunch of their member districts could be Let's say it's a union elementary school district. Maybe its member districts are a bunch of union high school districts or a union high school district, and a town school district that is also organized to provide Anyway, I don't want to get into specifics, but just this is the definition for member school district. When a study committee is looking at forming a unified union school district, then the interests of the existing union school district are represented by its member districts. So if a member district is a union school district, then it is represented by the union school district. And if the member district is a town school district, then it is the town school district. If the existing union school district does don't have any member districts, because all towns for which it is organized are members of both a union elementary school district and a union high school district, which is the example that Rep Quimby gave, then the existing Union School District shall represent its own interests on the study committee and the towns within it shall not participate on its behalf. If a town is a member of both a Union Elementary School District and a Union High School District, is not independently organized as a district that is responsible for the education of students in any grade, and does not have a town school district board, but notwithstanding other provisions to the contrary, to the extent possible, the boards of the Union Elementary and Union High School districts of which the town is a member shall make a reasonable attempt jointly to appoint a member to the study committee who resides in the town. So the union school district is representing its own interests. But in appointing members to the study committee, this is saying, to the extent possible, those members should represent the different towns.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: So it says if the town does not apply San Francisco. Again, I'm trying to think concrete example. So let's say Kingdom East, where I live, is a school district, elementary, it's K-eight, that's on top of eight. But if on the study committee, a town nearby like Kirby that doesn't operate, that

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: what we're talking about? No, we're not talking about operation at all. I think

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: its core, this is to say

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: for education of students in any grade. So it's different. So responsible for education of students just means it's organized by education in those grades. It doesn't tell you how So it is

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: the tuition, so they are providing the education. Correct. Yes.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I guess, Cor, this is just to clarify that this is a process that is about school districts coming together, not about town.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: It's on the study committee. Okay.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Surely though, when the school districts come together, if they're going to do their job with any authenticity, they will be talking to the people,

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Sure, oh yeah. I mean, how they do it is that, I would just say just that the people on that study committee will be from towns in that district.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Is there any language that we can put

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: in that is like, you have to have

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: one meeting in every town that

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I would I would leave that up to them to do.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: I think the less prescriptive, more likely The hope. Because when you do that people in consideration.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I would trust local people to make those decisions as the best way to organize the meetings rather than us deciding for them.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Yeah, I just wanna make sure they do the right thing.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: What you consider to be the right thing, I'll just say, having been through this, I'll just tell you, people were It was much easier for people to come to a central location with a large facility with all the amenities that come with that than to be out of the hinterlands for one of these meetings where none of that existed.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: The hinterlands being the small towns.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah. Because remember, there wasn't at that point in time, there wasn't high speed Internet. There wasn't you know, it was it was far from many people. What the right thing is, I would leave up to them.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: So we're talking about study committees, and we recognize you're explaining how the study committee is made up of the members of the uni school district. What I guess I'm trying to process in my head is if there's a uni school district that has I'm just going to throw an example out, a concrete example out.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Helps me think better.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: One large town and three small towns surrounding it. And that district will be sending or members to the study committee. And they're joining others around them on that study committee. There is no prescription of who or how many, or is that a policy decision we will need to make?

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So the baseline, sorry, the internet here is Yeah, that's helpful. So membership on the study committee shall be the same as the proportion of the school district's average daily membership. So it's proportional. Okay, great. That helps a lot because that's the first question

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: that always comes up. We're going to be dominated by large communities, and we're not going to be dominated. All the small communities will dominate us. And so there's always that. So this helps. Thank you. I would say that's a

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: policy decision you can deviate from, should you choose to. Okay. So that's Union Elementary. If we're still in the proposed Unified Union School District, if it is an existing Unified Union School District coming to the table, and this is an important distinction, there's a whole separate statute for enlarging a current district. What we're talking about is a study committee to create a completely new municipality. So the existing Unified Union School District will represent its own interests on the study committee and the towns within it shall not participate on its behalf. To the extent possible, though, the board of the existing Unified Union School District shall make a reasonable attempt to appoint members to the study committee who reside in each town within the district. And then I think for the sake of time, I don't think we need to talk about membership on a proposed Union School District study committee if we're not going Okay. That

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So in sort of a path we are headed down with a facilitator bringing people together for a required study committee, we now are So I have put on the table that the study committee is to be looking at a K-twelve configuration, because I think that's been a goal of everybody all along. We now understand how representation on the study committee will work. I think we just need to maybe have legislative councilor think if there's any sort of pitfalls in that. Like if we only have three, let's say it's an area with three unified union school districts talking about merging into one, are there any issues like you would have a really small study committee?

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No, because the law doesn't say it's one member. It says that membership is proportional. So I think that the study and I believe,

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: hold on.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I realize this is confusing because all these terms are going on with Butworth. The real point here is that we've got existing law that we can use.

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Existing law says section seven zero six subsection A says, with the advice of the superintendent or superintendents, the boards shall establish a budget for the study committee's work and shall determine the number of persons to serve on the study committee. So it is totally up to the study committee itself how many people, how many humans butts in seats. And then that has to have proportional representation to the ADM of the districts at the table. And then depending on the type of district is going to dictate where those appointments are coming from. And if there's any, to the extent possible language about representation of the individual towns that we've got in school districts. So to answer your question, I think under current law, yes, you could have a very tiny study committee because they decided it should only be three people.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That's their decision. Yes. I appreciate that.

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And some of this is going to depend The last draft that we looked at, which is still the current draft, has the facilitator grouping study committees based on the Conlon map or a map. The evolving map. Evolving map. Okay, the evolving map. And so you will have an opportunity to see like, oh, this makes sense in my head. But when I'm looking at it as a study committee getting together, do I need

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: to make any deviations from the law? Right.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: And I

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: think it's going to be very important that the ability of bringing people together and I think we have it as it's a guiding document. It's not a hard and fast document. I Because a group of superintendents could work with the facilitator saying, you know, it'd be better if this, this, and this were the grouping.

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We just ask for the facilitator to document why there was any deviation from the map and they'll report back to you all. And again, that language, can continue to play with that language. I don't remember where we were.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Alright. Any other questions here? Is anybody yeah, please.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Question is we're talking about pitfalls of moving this forward. Whether this unified union school district, pre K through 12, is mandatory or guidance, I think could be a pitfall. Because again, on

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: the

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: ground, as people are coming together, is making something mandatory going to be a pitfall to keep people from coming together and doing this work? Just a question. Am I having it in guidance with flexibility saying

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah. I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on it. As I think about what the goal is here, it is to But

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: we mandating exclusion of low hanging

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: fruit that might be out there?

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: Is it

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: going to say, well, I'm not

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Or just the idea that it's being mandate,

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: being a pitfall to the work going forward? I assume we could write fuzzy guidance language rather than hard and fast that would say that the goal is pre K 12. However, non pre K 12 unified districts

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: can be considered. In the same way that the guidance on the map, if they don't follow the guidance, they have to basically explain or report why they deviate. Well, I

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: think it's important to note that, correct if I'm wrong, please, Chapter 11 continues to exist, period. So therefore, they can still get together to do that.

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: A great decision point to flag for you all. Do you want to continue to allow? So chapter 11 says you can only formally participate on one study committee at a time. So if you are requiring formal participation, I would say technically the law says you can't then go out on your own.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: I

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: guess, and I'm really just thinking out loud here, would like to have every attempt be to be a pre K to twelve, one. And then if that study committee says, We do not recommend moving forward with this, the process at that point ends for that group of people, that group of school districts, if they can then start the If they want, can then start

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Voluntarily. Voluntarily merging.

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: What if that group of school districts is able to identify they don't think a unified union school district would work? Okay, all right.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: If you can noodle that a little bit, if they fail at one or fail to come forward with a proposal to

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The term Chapter 11 uses is it is inadvisable.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: If they decide it's inadvisable to move forward, then somehow fast track your ability to come up with a different idea. Leanne, first and then Josh.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: This might be getting a little bit too into the weeds, but I'm thinking about the whole CBA issues involved with this. And some of our districts have pre k within their CBA and some don't. So that would be like a detail that would need to be taken

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: care of additionally is that they Yes.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Well, I think that CBAs, salaries, all of that are one of the major funding blocks we have when it comes to mandating bigger, larger districts.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Well, right. But the difference here is that pre K may not even be unionized yet. So isn't that an additional I don't know what I'm talking about. Never mind.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: What would be the net 46? Okay.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah. Well, I think that one of the reasons of bringing people together who know one another well is they might say this merger is inadvisable because bringing together the CBAs is going to cost $5,000,000 I mean, CBAs are one of the things that a merger study can be looked at.

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: There is that came out of ASK 46, and we added to when we redid Chapter 11. Subchapter three of Chapter 53, which is the contract compensation and sick leave chapter in Title 16 is the transition of employees. And it talks about transition of employees to a new school district and also a new supervisory union. So there is provisions in the law for how those collectively bargained agreements are treated, how seniority is treated, all of that is accounted I guess my question is, is it

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: more or less complicated when

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: because feel like there would

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: be a difference in the level of complication if they already had a CVA that they were part of courses.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I guess I've never heard of a CVA that didn't include teachers that are working within a school district.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Okay, okay. Yeah, I don't know. I

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: guess I more meant like a Are there any districts that don't have

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: pre K program? Sure. Right, so that would be But we would still be asking them now to add a pre K Never mind, this is too

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: complicated for me. I don't even know that.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think the fact is that any teacher that is teaching within a school building is covered by a CBA. That is true. Regardless, I don't think that they differentiate whether they teach Pre K or third grade.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Clarifying on that, providing for pre K through Oh, sorry, Josh. 12 does not mean you actually teach the program. You can provide for it through tuitioning, through private pre Ks, that's getting great. Doesn't mean everybody has a program in the building. Gotcha.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: I'm trying not to forget that, so I was like, So hypothetically, you have this study committee that has four current districts of some sort underneath it. And they find it advisable to merge. However, there's one district out of that floor that is like, no, we don't find an advisor. We don't want to do this, but they're saying it wouldn't be. Can they remove themselves from the whole process? So that's a great question.

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So it all depends on if that school district has been identified as necessary or I believe Let me see the right word. Advisable.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: Yeah. By who? Study committee. So the study committee has all the power to force a district that is part of that study committee to merge. Even if they don't want to,

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: it's ultimately the voters

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: of the towns. Yeah.

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The Sorry for the dates. Depends on the membership.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: So it's a depoter of all of the districts?

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It depends on the type of school district that has a seat at the table.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: So potentially, you could have it where three districts are gonna choose the fate of one district. Well,

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: maybe.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: That's why I said potential.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: They're they're

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: put on the ballot against their will. Right. Right. Right. But

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: but it's important to remember that when it is the way it currently exists, any district that votes if if you've got five districts in voting to form a unified school district, if just one of them votes no at this point, nothing happens. Everybody has to vote yes.

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. For the advice for the necessary districts.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: Yeah. Right. And then it goes to the vote of the communities from that point? It's vote of

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: the you you remember, it's not about towns. It's about districts.

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It depends on the district.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: The the voters of the three towns, one town that exists within that district. Yeah. So the first vote is by the people on the committee to see saying whether this particular district is advisable or not. Or necessary. Or necessary. Should that committee or group of members of that committee say that they are not or they need to exist they do not need to exist and to be part of this, then when they make that study that says we should merge, then it goes to the electorate of that new larger potential.

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: If the majority of members of the study committee vote, it is advisable to form the union school district. Then the report first goes and draft articles of agreement first go to the secretary and state board, and you need the state board to approve the make an approval before anything goes to the electorate. So there is a stop along the way before it goes to the electorate. Then once state board There's approval by the state board. I'm reading right from section seven ten of Title 16. The voters of each school district identified as necessary or advisable shall vote whether to form the proposed union school district. So if you have three town school districts and one union school district that are members of the study committee, then the three town school districts each individually have to have a majority of their voters approve it, and the majority of the voters of the union school district also need to approve it.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: So one of the, let's say the union school district, the bigger one, doesn't vote, If that vote fails, only matches where it passes in the other three town districts,

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the whole thing unravels? If that Union School District has been identified as a necessary school district to the formation of the Union School District, yes.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: If they are not

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: found as a necessary.

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: If they are advisable members and they vote no, then the Union School District forms assuming all the necessary members voted yes and the advisable school district goes on its way as it exists. If the advisable district votes yes, then they become members of the union school district.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: So there's a way out for a district that does not want to be part of this thing by just that they're doing it. And then the whole thing falls apart. Or if they're advisable, if they vote no, they go on their merry way. If they vote yes, they join.

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I struggle with answering yes to that question because of the use of the word town.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: Mean district.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We've got to say district. Yes, the answer to your question, I think, is yes. That if it's advisable and not necessary, formation can happen. They don't have to be part

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: of it. And if it's And

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: if they're necessary, and that town school district notes no, the whole thing.

[Joshua Dobrovich (Member)]: That's what I was trying to get to. Thank you for

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: But that's current law.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah. That's current law. Right. Now we could, you know, we could change that and say, majority of voters voting. If they all vote yes, it happens.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: I'm not trying to complicate things, but I do think it's important that we understand what is out there in Vermont. So we're talking about school districts, but some towns are members of a union school district, and the same town can also have their own school district. Correct. Correct. So could have your town actually divided into two separate One could be necessary, that school district could be necessary, and the other school district might be advisable. Or you could

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think in the universe of possibilities, yes. The only way you are a single parent as a member of two different school districts is if it's a member of a non unified union school district. It's either a town school district for some grades or it is part of a union elementary school district. And if the goal is for unified union school districts, then it is likely that that town is school districts that that town is a member of are going to be identified both as necessary because you're looking at K through 12 and not separate chunks of grades. That's looking at

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: it from the perspective of the study committee.

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's looking at it from the perspective of the language I have been asked to draft.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: So I'm just literally, when I started this, I said this. I'm going say it again. I'm not trying to complicate this, but it does feel like the town might not agree with what we just said because they have two separate. They have a town school district, and then they're part

[Beth Quimby (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: of a unified for different grades. Right. If they

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: presenting the complications that could arise. And I guess I have one more thing on topic. It's part of my concerns about not doing K-twelve, goal being unified pre K-twelve districts. In the end, I guess I'm going to just say it from the reason I'm saying this. For children, students, and the kids were trying to serve a unified union K12, pre K12 district is possible.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Allows for better coordination of everything from three ks to the end. Right. Further discussion? Further direction for Beth? If I don't hear anything, will say we can go to the caucus of the hall at ten and then we have be on the floor at 10:30 for the joint hearing. While there's this pause of the action, let me just sort of update everybody on what else is going on in the world, all of this. I met So, with the chair of Ways and Means this morning. Knowing this path we're going down, they're going to start giving some thought to financial incentives we might be able to create if districts choose to merge into newer, larger districts. I'm not sure if they'll come up with anything, but they would really like to give it some thought as to what it might be. There is money available. We appropriated money to the AOE for merger transition grants, including CESAs, or there's an identity, as well as for contracted services to support school boards in in a merger transition. So that exists. We we may need to put some more specifics around it, like it'll be this much. So I'll put that up there. Human services has been discussing pre K. They are going to basically send the language to us, not a build, but the language to add to whatever we're doing. We'll have it presented to us. It is all language that only becomes effective once a foundation formula is created. So it's not doing anything until then. Would call it also not language is going to rework how everything is done. So it's very similar to what we have with some additional requirements for licensed teachers to be teaching in private pre K settings, as well as just some money parity, but only once we go to a foundation formula. Commerce is tackling CTE. They have a longer timeline because they have a separate CTE bill that came over from the Senate. We have all heard the challenges of CTE. We've all heard the challenges of what the AOE would like to see and sort of what exists today and trying to find some common ground there. They're going to work on those struggles in consultation with us. It's going to be really hard. It's the whole fun of it. I just want to give everybody that update as well. Thank you. Further questions? Anything sort of specific to maps? I'm getting some feedback online, which I just will sort of try to incorporate. It's the CISA lines that I'm sort of most concerned about now, but they also seem to be the easiest thing to solve. So when we come back, let's talk about that.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Talk about the

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: cease of lines, not the other lines. And again, think that there will be language that can adjust those based on once somebody's out there feeling it.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Along with the, this would probably happen if we'll talk about CCEL lines, though. The idea that study committees would be formed from supervisory unions now I'm not saying lines around them, but that would be the goal. Say, these two supervisors you want to get together to talk about forming a single unified human skull disparate. Some of the lines on here,

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: the colored ones,

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: don't include current supervisor meetings completely. So that's something we kind

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: of look That's

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: going to be important. And I'm not saying it's right or wrong, because in some sense, they make a lot more sense currently than her, but it may make that more challenging. I need to understand how we don't come. And again, the lines are guidance only anyway. Understood. But I think just like I've always said with Max, once the lines are there, people start to feel back to those infections start coming.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, absolutely. All right, so continue to think. Let's plan to be back here at well, keep an eye on your techs.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Yeah. Keep an eye on techs.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: The we'll we'll need to be on the floor. Well, the floor starts at one.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Yeah.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We need to be on the floor because miscellaneous After debt that, let's plan to come back here after the miscellaneous debt bill. I suspect we will be going back and forth.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: The roll calls. The roll calls.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: And I also wanna be sensitive if there are things people wanna be up there for as well, that's obviously your prerogative. Alright. Let's take advantage then of this pause, caucus of the whole, joint here.