Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: You're live.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay, we're back at House Education on Wednesday, April 1. We are going to do a run through of the changes that we have made. Understanding of course that the guidance, the groupings and the C sub map are sort of that language is still to be incorporated. What you will see is not, it won't be a document that's printed yet, but one thing is the allocation of the appropriation for CSIS startup, up CSIS and facilitators and study committee grants. So actually,

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: the money for everything here comes out of the general fund,

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: it would be an adjustment to the current appropriation for school district transformation. That's what I got to say at this point. So, let us, probably nothing to share on the screen, we're just gonna kind of run through it or what works best visually.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel, I'll take my lead from you. We are still working on draft report one that's covered in my red pen, you'll have to

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Have you report one posted?

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

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: This is a math question. Got it, okay, yeah. Why don't you go ahead and put it up on the screen? I know the answer to that. So I also will update the committee. The pre K language that we heard yesterday, we will be folding this in as well. Based on the testimony that we've heard, it's probably going to be slimmed down to the intent section of that and then the fall for the studies. No. That frankly is to be done at a later date once the funding gets better figured out. Agreed. Yeah, I talked about it also. Okay, see how we do here.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, so we're in our amendments to chat. Remember, reader assistance headings are really helpful in this bill. So we're in the cooperative educational service areas. The next few sections, everything under this reader assistance heading started as just the change from BOCES to CISA, but now we've made some policy changes as well now that you are setting CISAs in law. Page one. Page two, so I'm not going to necessarily go over line by line unless you want me to. Okay, so stop me.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Anybody shout out to stop because I'm also staring at my screen.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Only on page two, we've added a new definition of seesaw here. Not included in this asterisk is the definition for supervisor union to make it clear that everywhere throughout this chapter that we're using the term supervisory union, it also includes supervisory districts. Section six zero three, establishment of seesaws is where you set those boundaries. And so when I come in tomorrow, these boundaries will reflect the small changes you made for the Seesaw Regions today, but it will look largely the same. So the Champlain Valley North Region Seesaw is formed of the member supervisory unions of, and then what trying to do is list the supervisory union and its member school districts. That's going to be a mess when I have to come in a year or two and change it all because now the landscape looks different. I do think it's helpful to have it all in one place. So if someone says, who's my what's my seesaw? It's easy to find it for all levels of users.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Great. And

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: then, obviously, if it's a supervisory district, there are no member school districts, so it's just the supervisory district that is listed. Are you happy with the way so it's the Chittenden Central Region seesaw, the Champlain Valley South Region seesaw.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: This is a question over the article itself.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The name? It's just a question of whether you like the way the name is appearing.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Could it be a region? I don't know. Could take out region.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, so that is a question. Map had region on there.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: I like Chittenden Central Ceesaw, Ceesaw, Ceesaw.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Know people are gonna use these terms

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: a lot, but shorten them. Yeah, yeah.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's what we Region?

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

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: that works for me.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. So remember, no questions right now about any of the composition here because I updated it at all based on our conversations today. So just scrolling through the seesaws.

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

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I am let me make a note of this. I am gonna have to come up with some language. I'll decide where it goes, and I'll make my pitch to you tomorrow morning to just make it clear that VTLC exists as it already exists, and it doesn't necessarily need to do anything extra.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: We could force a name change onto it if we wanted. We're asking a lot. I will just say, and I know you've noted this before, but while you're removing the word region on page six, you have Southwest and Southeast.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yep, over. Yep. I just wanted to make sure. Yep. And this has not been edited yet. So we're go

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: back to

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So it's shot at the ones, and they rely heavily on the editors. Yep.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Page four. Four. Did you say four? Four. Grand Isle Supervisory Union, which is composed of a member of school district of the Champlain Islands United Unified Union School District and South Hero School District, not Albert.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think Beth said this is all going to change overnight based on the decisions that we made. Okay, I got it cut. I just I

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: have been working on that map with you all afternoon, not changing these words yet. Perfect.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Thank you. Yeah,

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: got it. All right. So moving on to subsection B, bylaws. This is the requirement to have bylaws, which were previously articles of agreement, and then some changes to what those bylaws should include, mainly just to account for the fact that this is no longer a voluntary process and that you all are in charge of their membership. So there's no method for termination of a BOCES or withdrawal from a BOCES and no procedure for admitting new members. That would happen through the legislative process. So I think technically, maybe for another year, you could consider some sort of charter change process. We haven't done that here.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Hopefully, it's getting hard for just there. There's that.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Because I know this question will come to me because I'm just learn this from part of the original proceeds, the memo and all the bylaws and all of that, that they work for it. When this law is passed, that will change to its status.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm contemplating some session law that says any BOCES or any seesaws that are in existence on such and such a date, their articles of agreement shall satisfy the requirements of or whatever.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Even better. Thank you very much.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I assume that is the direction you wanted to go in in order to keep them. Board of directors. We have not changed anything here related to board of directors. Membership is still at the supervisory union level, and we still have this language in here about Seesaw board of directors being appointed by the SU board, and it's either a member of the SU board or the superintendent or designee, and that is current law. We've struck through this because you don't need to put a limit on yourselves, but you did arrive at that magic number seven. Powers of seesaws. So in addition to other powers granted by law, a seesaw shall have the power to provide educational programs, services, facilities, and professional and other staff that in its discretion has served the needs of its members, including professional development, curriculum coordination and development and transportation. They've got to follow state and federal law. And then at a minimum, CSEC shall offer services in the following areas to its members, special ed, business and admin, and union school district creation consultation facilitation. Executive director, body politic, corporate, you have not made any other policy changes. The rest of everything under this section heading or reader assistance heading is just that name change from BOCES to Seesaw. But the grant program section four, page 19, line one, I think does deserve some attention.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Alright. So we have the 10,000 that exists in law. And we actually had appropriated money to that, there's 60,000 still there. So, we're going to need more than that because the 10,000 was really geared towards creating the articles of agreement. So we had testimony from Vermont Learning Collaborative, which he sat down in the Southeast, of start up, an additional start up funds of $5,000 to cover other start up costs and membership in the national organization, which was $3.50 of that. So that's a total of 15,000 times seven, potentially seven.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You don't need start up costs for VTLC. It's only 6.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Good point.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Just occurred to me.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: On top of that, to incentivize getting rolling fast, I have proposed putting in there $50,000 per CISA for the hiring of their executive director. The rest would be sort of covered within the way they do it, which is through fees and through membership dues.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: So there's only one executive director for the whole state, for

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: the whole set? No, one per set. Yeah. Because it is as best as a division of the state, and needs subject director.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: How would we change the existing seesaw to help us?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yes. Coming up. So that would be another 300,000. These numbers may sound big, but the money that we have appropriated to education transformation is much higher than this. And then we'll get into the facilitator funding. Down a little further.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I think you could leave this grant program as is. It's got 60,000 still in it, is my understanding. You've got six Seesaws. We've already changed the language to say that the grant the money goes to AOE, they already have the money, to award grants to the Seesaws created in sections 3A, and I'll put in there with the exception of ETLC. And CSOCI will be eligible for a single $10,000 grant. Grants may be But we were going

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: to change that $10,000 to $15,000

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think you need to do a whole separate appropriation. Yeah. Okay. So we can change this to 15.

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

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You wanna change this to 15?

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

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And then do a new appropriation. Okay. Yeah. Sorry.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Why are we changing? So based on testimony that we received, three years ago, we created the startup grant of 10,000 From the CISA that already exists, they said, you know, to start up costs should be another 5,000. So we're gonna up to 10 to 15 to cover that. So that's that's the change.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. And is it okay if I work with JFO to make sure I get the appropriations right? Whatever

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: you need from them.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So we're gonna keep scrolling because these are all those conforming changes anywhere where we had the word BOCES or or the Cooperative Education Services, we're making a change to Seesaw. Section 11 on page 25, we start all of our new subs language. So we're still in the CESA reader assistance heading. Section 11 on page 25, line 15, is the transition language. So within thirty days following the passage of this act, each member, SU, shall appoint a person to serve on the board of directors of the applicable CISA pursuant to the law about board of directors. And then within forty five days following the passage of the act, the superintendent of the SU with the highest aggregate average daily membership of each seesaw has to call the first meeting, they elect to chair other necessary officers, and they're off to the races. Do you want to add anything else related to this

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: transition? I'd say nothing occurs to me,

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: very little is occurring to me.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So now we're in our new reader assistance heading of Union School District Exploration and Formation. Section 12, facilitator. So on or before 10/01/2026, VTLC shall employer contract for the services of, and then I think there may have been some policy decisions made here that are just Yes. Not

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: interestingly though, forgot that they were an existing CISA, which takes us from seven to six. Right. So based on the recommendations of the folks at BTLC, we would be doing one facilitator per CISA, and this is just sort of like breaking up the state into regions to do the group discussions. So we've got seven of those, and then they recommended a lead facilitator who could assist them as well as oversee them. These would be would be. So, the other ones would be in the field doing this work, they would have an overlying facilitator. So, and I've sort of checked this number out with a number of people, $50,000 per. And I would just say if you think about some of the areas where it might fall apart fast, that in many cases, the money won't be spent. And in other cases where. Could be a lot of work involved. Well, they may be thought to rejigger things. Anyway, 50,000 per consultant facilitator, 60,000 for the lead facilitator. That is 411. And then we asked BTLC to come up with charges that they would have as administrators of this. And they came up with 32,000. Which is less than 10%. But they broke out based on sort of like reimbursing mileage and all this little stuff.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: And I would say

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: less than the €50,000 proposal for everybody else to get a

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: executive director as well. Oh,

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: yes, yes. So

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: I'm just saying it seems fairly reasonable, because I'd arguing for support for them.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So then the other So the other funding would be the incentive to hire the first executive director of 50,000 each. The testimony we received was talking about a compensation package much higher than that, which hopefully would pay for it. We we hopefully, the services will pay for it, but this is just to say, get it rolling, and here's $50,000 to help out.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: But you're thinking it might

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: be be a higher number.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: But I'm no. I'm just saying that this CISA formed without a $50,000 incentive that everyone else is getting. And I wanna make sure that I mean, I know you've had conversations with them and I have not, and that they're okay with this. They're very excited. And I will just say, I recognize that this is even lower than the 50,000 is going to each other that's being formed just to get them to form when we didn't have that. Yes, absolutely. They will be administrating all of this. They're literally getting paid for work they're doing here. So that's, they're missing out on the $50,000 I'll acknowledge that.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Absolutely. Yes.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: How do we know how much someone in that position should be paid? Is it like bargaining?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: These would be consultants who are working every hour at a consultant rate.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: So they aren't being hired as an employee. Being hired as consultants. How is that rate? It's just whatever rate they charge.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think it'd be negotiated.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: So can we negotiate them down? Yes.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think that there's sort of a general understanding that consultants cost this much. These folks hire consultants all the time.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Yeah, and I would just say there's a huge amount of work going into this that is quite a number of hours, but there's also meetings, evening meetings, and I'm not sure who would be doing it, but we often would I'm thinking back to Act 46, we don't remember it. We would offer freshments and have to sometimes pay for space to own these in large groups. I'm applying caution here about the cost of this process of study committees and worry less about negotiating down as opposed to whether this provides sufficient support of the costs of the study committees even outside of itself.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Okay, I will just point out that on page 26, line nine, we do have the term employ, so BTLC shall employ or contract for the services of. I think that that's holdover language from when we were contemplating the CSOs themselves hiring or contracting for someone, taking into account that union school district consultation and facilitation is a core function of seesaws now and statute, so it could have been theoretically an employee. For the purposes of this language, do you want it to just say contract form? Yes. Okay. Study committee are required on or before December 1. Two things need to happen. The facilitator needs to group the school districts together into the study committees according to the guidance you've given them, which is using your section 13 guidance and total ADM, the aggregate ADM of the school districts forming a study committee shall be a minimum of 2,000 students as practical. School districts shall be contiguous. And remember, that is a reference to the school districts on the study committee, not the end result.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: It's not about towns being particulars, it's school districts. And

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: school districts on the same study committee may be members of different SUs. It's a may, not a shall. And then the second thing that needs to happen on or before 12/01/2026, is that each study committee has to have its first meeting. And then here we have the language requiring everyone to come to the table. So notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, a school district shall participate in the study committee it is assigned to by the facilitator. A study committee formed pursuant to this section shall adhere to the processes and requirements of chapter 11. Subchapter two is just specific to the exploration and formation. The rest of the chapter is about how to run a union school district once you have already formed it. So we're going to indent one level in and talk about some things that may deviate a little from chapter 11. So a study committee formed pursuant to this section may identify necessary or advisable school districts that are not members of the study committee or are not members of the CISA or both and shall work with the applicable facilitator or facilitators to adjust study committee membership as necessary. Here's another money section here. Notwithstanding subsection seven zero six b as it applies to study committee budgets and subsection seven zero seven a and b, study committee formed pursuant to this section shall be funded through appropriations made by the general assembly for this purpose, provided, however, that if a study committee's needs exceed the appropriations provided, it may elect to increase its budget according to current law.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yes, so when you and I were talking about that, I threw a number out.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Did I write it down?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yes. 10? 10. Yes. So this would be to cover, I think, many of the things that representative Long talked about, as well as potentially legal helper or something. Yeah. Did we

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: I guess I'm gonna ask, you might answer it, Beth might answer it. What was provided to study committees in Act 47?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I don't know.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: There was a merger facilitation grant. I can pull it up if you're patient.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: And I'm saying it because the process, because we're following the law that we were in Act 46 while she's looking up to say, we're following the same law as we did under Act 46. There were community meetings outside of even Joshua Dobrovich and committed to work together and writing articles of agreement, which for some was simple and for others was really really challenging and complicated, attorney fees, those sorts of things. And I'm not suggesting another number. I'm just saying I wanna make sure whatever we're appropriating here doesn't fall back and not allow the process to be folded. Just not, I don't know.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Think those are good words of caution. Hopefully this will be, because the process has already occurred, hopefully this will be somewhat from the authoritative agreement point of view, and the legal things will be less invasive. Agree. With all of that, just want to make sure they work well with that.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: You want to know if it was more than that? Do you

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: want to know it was an act 46?

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

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm not reviewing all 64 pages of it right now. I was easily able to identify the merger support grant, which happened after formation. After formation. And the transition facilitation grant, which they were not eligible for until after voter approval of a plan of merger. I don't think there was any study committee money in Act 46, whether in Act 49 or previously in 01/1953 or 01/1956, I can't. Interesting.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: I'm going to have to go through some of my questions. From talking to folks trying to pull some institutional knowledge and history on this, I got last week someone who was involved in several of them said Act 46 pulled language from Act 153 that said districts could be reimbursed for up to 20,000 legal and consulting services. And that amount would then be deducted from the 150 ks transition grant to offset the cost of the transition to the free merchants. That's and consulting. Right, she just said. It's legal and consulting.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We're We're already funding

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: it. Again, I'm just expressing caution, I appreciate that because that rings a bell. Thank

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: you That's for letting us helpful.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: And we might be fine. It

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: can always be adjusted. I think that the Because of how long this process takes, I think for the big money needs for formation after, you know, like, when you have to merge systems and all of that, that'll be that'll be a a job for the next legislature, depending on how many of these happen. So let's stick with the 10 for now.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And we talked about this being a grant program run through.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: And the 10 would only be for merger study committees. So I don't want give $10,000 to a merger study committee that gets together and says, never going to do it.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: That's why it came at the end.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: It came at the end because it a reimbursement model.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: If you didn't form anything, you're going to get your money pretty bad.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You want it to be reimbursement? Up to 10,000? Yep. I'll take a look at the language from was it 153?

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: 153 is what the 26 was based on. Okay. Right. Okay.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So we've gone over the budget language. In addition to the requirements of chapter 11, a study committee shall also explore the advisability and feasibility of the regional schools. If a study committee form pursuant to the section determines that it is advisable to propose formation of a new unified union school district, in addition to the requirements and current law for what needs to be in the report, you've added requirements for the final report, including, and I'll let them speak for themselves in the interest of time, educational, financial, operations, financial viability, sustainability, etcetera. My favorite catchall language. The study committee, I'm on page 29 now, if the study committee form pursuant to the sections determines that this inadvisable, then before the study committee members vote to dissolve the study committee, they also have to prepare a report. And then you list out what they need to include in that report, including specific references to any state law or rule that the study committee found to be impediment to the formation of a unified union school district? And then if the decision of the study committee was not unanimous, what's the minority viewpoint?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, and I'll just add a little commentary of my own here. I think this is actually really important information to gather so that from a sort of larger perspective, maybe a legislative perspective, it's well known what the impediments are to merger. It might be, you know, if they come together and say the leveling up is gonna cost millions, that's why we're not doing it. Or they might say we can't merge our operating systems. But so all that is just, I think, gonna be very good information for the future.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So we're still in the inadvisable study committee. They are required to transmit their report to the board of each school district that participated in the study committee, the secretary of the state board, and the facilitator or facilitators assisting the study. And then members of a study committee that determines it is inadvisable to propose formation of a new unified union school district may form a new study committee or committees and may pursue any union school district formation option available under Chapter 11 after the study committee members vote to dissolve the study committee formed pursuant to this section. We're back out and into patient level. On or before 12/01/2027, each study committee shall complete its final report. So you're giving them a year to finish their work and transmit it along with proposed articles of agreement as applicable to the school board of each school district that the report identifies as either necessary or advisable if the study committee determined it was advisable to form a new unified union school district or to the school board of each participating school district on the study committee if they determined it was inadvisable. In honor before 02/01/2028, a school board shall complete its review and provide comments to the study committee regarding the study committee's report and proposed articles of agreement. Secretary review. If a study committee, and this is all current law, lines three through six. So if the secretary fails to submit the report and proposed articles of agreement with the secretary's recommendation, with the secretary's recommendations to the state board within sixty days of receipt of the report and proposed articles of agreement were on or before 04/01/2028, whichever date shall occur first. We added that in because if you kept the April 1, there could be this backlog. But if you tie it to the sixty days, then there should be a steady flow depending on when these study committees finish their work. So if that contingency is triggered, the study committee transmits the report and the proposed articles of agreement directly to the state board. And then the state board is required to issue findings on or before 06/01/2028. Vote to form a unified union school district. If a study committee form pursuant to the section determines that it is advisable to propose formation of a new union school district, the voters of each school district that is identified as necessary or advisable shall vote whether to form the proposed union school district on or before 11/07/2028. That's supposed to be election day of twenty twenty eight. Study committee status report on or before 02/01/2027, so for the next session, AOE in consultation with the facilitators is required to submit a report to the education committees and the money committees for the information regarding the membership and status of each study committee formed pursuant to this section. Section 13, I'm on page 32, line nine, is your guidance for study committee groupings. Pay no attention to this, it will all be overhauled tonight. But policy choice for you all, do you wanna call them group one, two, three? Do you wanna call them something else? What do you wanna call them?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: These are the hardest policy choices. One, two, three. Word is group. Just numbers. One, two. Anybody want to express a thought that I can hear?

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Go for it. Go for it.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think we're sticking with groups

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Nor, it. Section 14, page 36, line 11, study committee results and analysis facilitator report. On or before 01/01/2029. So remember, the vote has to occur no later than the election day prior to 01/01/2029. So that's about two months. Each facilitator employed or contracted by the So I'll remove employed there. By BTLC shall submit a written report to the education committees with the results of each study committee overseen by the facilitator and information regarding whether, and if so, how the following issues impact or influenced the final outcome for each study committee overseen by the facilitator, along with recommendations for legislative action needed to remove identified barriers to the formation of new union school districts. So the study committee reports where there is an inadvisable determination, this language does not have those reports coming back to you. You have the facilitator's report coming back to you. And theoretically, the facilitator would be aggregating that information. You can make the choice to have each individual study committee report come back to you. But I just wanted to point out that is not what the draft contemplates right now.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay. So, one did kind of make me curious because the facilitator could be long done with his or her work by 01/01/2029. And they moved out of state or whatever. Although I do say we do say honor before. I do

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You have the lead facilitator responsible for doing this one final report, and then it would be between VTLC to manage what that contract looks like over a period of time.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: You want to do that? Yes.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Let's check out that word, employee. Yep. Again.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Although, you may want to leave it open at BTLC, now that we are requiring union school district consultation and facilitation as a core offering, you may want to allow them to Maybe they hire the lead. I don't know.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Couldn't be. No.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. So I don't think it hurts to say employer contracts. And if the VTLC feels strongly about it, you can ask me to change it. Okay. So we're gonna have this be the lead facilitator. Does the report back? The final report back? Okay. And then the report back has to include information on whether these things came up basically or influenced the outcome. Staffing costs, and I think what we've been referring to is leveling up, differences in operating structures, geographic and topographic barriers, enrollment patterns and projections, and anything else. Section 15, page 37, line nine, SU and CSOB boundaries agency of education report. So on or before 01/01/2029, AOE in consultation with the study committees formed pursuant to this act shall submit a written report to the House and Senate Committees on Education 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. And then now we get into the appropriations language. Study committee budget grant, we've got

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: see,

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: we changed this, It's a reimbursement model now. It's 10 for reimbursement. So this language will look very different in subdivision or in subsection A when it comes to you tomorrow, but that's where the study committee reimbursement grant is gonna live. Subsection B, facilitator appropriation, is going to be Are these all general funds? Yes. Okay.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: The question is to come up the works. Now that it's a reimbursement model, where does the money come from in the first place as they're doing the work? And they have to make payments and do things. Who pays for that? It's a bunch of different issues coming together and facilitators coming together.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Current law says you all chip in, and it's proportional Okay, to the thank you.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Good question. I'm gonna gum up the works. Absolutely.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Thank you.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And then the seesaw startup.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Right. You'll you'll you'll sort of parse out which is we've heard of, which is paid upfront.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. So so understanding is that the what was previously contemplated to be the seesaw study, or I'm sorry, the study committee budget is now a reimbursement model. The facilitator appropriation is a lump sum. The seesaw startup, I'm going to work with JFO adjust the current grant program to add $30, an extra $5 for each. And then there's a new grant program for the ED.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Of the CESA. Of the CESA. And

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: that's it, I think, right? For now. Okay. So this will all look different tomorrow. We haven't really spent any time talking about effective dates.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Old passage.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I sure hope that's before July 1.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: If it's on passage and passage is before 07/01/2020, it almost doesn't matter because it's not gonna pass until

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: close to that time anyway.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Leave it 07/01/2026. People can sleep on that. An easy change for legislative council.

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

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Other date, like the contingency date things that you have. Sleep on it and be prepared in the morning.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Right, so we've worked through a lot. Act 73 in general, there's a contingency as to what triggers the foundation formula. It's envisioned that that language is all the new districts are up and operational, went on a different path here. We're gonna need to put in some other language that sort of is it like, okay, we ready for this or not kind of contingency? We'll take up that topic tomorrow, however. That being said, everybody, I can't believe it's 04:00 if we just ran through our checklist of policy decisions. We may have some more tomorrow, but just working through the maps and all of these things that everybody's input was great. Beth, thank you so much for being the map master. I just love it or hate it, like it or everybody kind of pitched it and I just appreciate it. I'll say more things like that tomorrow. Hopefully we have a vote on it. We gotta get there first, but anyway, it was a long, hard day, we've been sitting here all day, making a lot of hard decisions and having to understand some broad concepts. So just wanna thank everybody.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: We're voting on this bill tomorrow for-

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That's our goal.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Open for voting sake, I would have just gotten up. Beth, can you remind me

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: why does intent language matter? We don't have that in there, plus I know we have to pull down this pre K intent, so it feels like it would look weird if the only intent of the whole bill is about pre K. We have that language coming.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Feels like

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: we're going need an intent section.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: From a legal perspective, there's just nothing necessarily wrong with having intent language tied to, say, a reader assistance heading. In fact, I believe Act 173 did that with the independent schools language. It was a whole bunch of stuff about special education, and then there was independent schools language, and it started with intent language in the second half of the bill. So you could do that. Intent language is a policy choice.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I'll give you some thought. We

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: can look at what seventy three has for intent language as well. It's definitely going to have some pre K intel language. A couple Seemed areas fear to only have pre K intel language. Well, I'll have to look at it, but it seemed, if I remember correctly, a lot of the intent language didn't make it through to the final. I I think 'seventy three. 'seventy three,

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: so, you know, that's something else.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Maybe the house tends to be more intent language than the census or the rest.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'll have to look at it. I'll go back to my house.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Yes. I know we've had a really long day, and I also appreciate the state. I just want to make one comment that I think is the first thing that people are going to ask me, and so I'm assuming they're going to ask all of you this too, we are forming CESAs mandatory. And within that, we have guidance districts that we are forming, and it's a map. And I want to make sure, so I'm going to ask the question, I'll definitely speak to them here, that those are guidance on the line, that those lines around those colored maps, let's just say colored maps for the C tier, can be adjusted when study committees are full. And the reason I say that is because we've had a lot of conversations in this room in the last twenty four hours that talked about little issues here or there that if we can't solve in this room or in this body, that they need to be solved locally when study committees are formed. So I just wanna make sure that we're very clear. If my statement is true, I wanna make sure that we're very clear with that as we're working on the final steps before we vote.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Would you confirm that that's true? And then I'll

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: add a little bit more to that.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I can't give you a guess or a answer.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: But it is guidance only.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I would like to read you the language that you have so that you decide whether it meets your goals. So you have language that allows a study committee to identify necessary or advisable school districts that are not members of the study committee or not members of the seesaw or both. And then the study committee would work with the applicable facilitator or facilitators to adjust study membership as necessary. And section 13, which is where your guidance groups live, says facilitators may form study committees that differ from the guidance contained in this section, provided, however, that a facilitator shall include the rationale for such choices in the report required pursuant to Section 14. Instead, that's going to read something like shall provide rationale to the lead facilitator for inclusion in the report required under section 14.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Does that work for you? It does.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: I think that covers it. I feel pretty confident in that. I I just know that I wanna walk away from our part in this bill at this point in time, letting folks know that there is flexibility in this. And I think if that language covers that, would love anybody else's thoughts on that, including yours. Well, I would only add to that and say, if somebody says, well, why did you make this decision or that decision?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Always saying it's just guidance, but also we went about our work maintaining current supervisory agreements and without breaking them up. So we made our line drawing decisions based on existing lines.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: So I'm gonna ask one longer, a far better question, the next question. If we set up the color divisions, if two separate colored regions want to get together into one study committee, that's fine too. Or more. Just trying to get everything very clear so that folks know what the intent is here. And I think it probably bears repeating repeatedly that all of this is ultimately voluntary.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: In other words, a group of people can get together to form a study committee and say, it is inadvisable for us to form a merged district after the process ends, once the issue will report.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Can I have one policy piece that we have not talked about at all? No, no, no, no, no.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Go ahead,

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: go The title of this bill. I kind of slapdashed through a title on it when I brought you the first draft, and it has just been traveling along with us. Enact relating to next steps in transforming Vermont's education system. The world is your oyster.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: It's fine. In my mind, was telling you it changes to Act 73.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Think

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: depending on what you want My understanding is this bill is going to travel. And so I think this is a very broad title. If you are concerned about germane ness about anything, you may want to refer to Act 73 in the title. I'm flagging this because I do believe it is a true policy choice for this particular bill, depending on what the overall goals are for its many stops. We get something about an act relating to vocal collaboration in Act 72 or

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That's probably a little, getting a little too down in the weeds. And

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: to be fair, it's gonna include other things. Pre K.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Pre K, school instruction aid potentially.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I just really wanna sell that

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: local voice voluntary part because that's something you really Okay,

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I see our conversation sort of devolving. It's probably a good time to I am again, just going to say it's quarter after four.