Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Thank you a lot. Welcome to House Education on 04/21/2026. The committee is doing two things in the next hour or so. We're gonna do just a quick review to refresh ourselves on S214, and then we're gonna sort of move into we're gonna spend a little time this week. So for some of us reeducating and for some of our new folks, educating just some of the basics of sort of school governance. And then today and then on Friday, I'm having JFO come in to talk to us about, like, what is the yield and the yield bill and what are the what do all those words mean and how's it calculated. So anyway, we will begin now with just sort of reviewing our one page S214. I'm talking with the speaker's office about sort of what order or what to do with all three bills we have here. So we've got immigration protocols, we've got libraries, and we have this one about pre K in the NGK. I think we may, if we're feeling comfortable, vote out the immigration protocols one today because that we are amending it, and so it should go back to the Senate. So that's important to get that one out. The library one what they have is no. Be back. Library one is what we got today.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. Right. I was like, woah.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Which I don't think we are I don't think we are changing. Okay. And we're going do more about the other one tomorrow. And then we do that as well. We don't want it to be all education all the time on the health board. All right. Well, thank you for being with us, Beth, to just do a quick review of S-two 14. It should take two to three minutes, I imagine. We're much more looking forward to your presentation on school governance.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: St. James Office of Legislative Counsel. So we're gonna walk through S two fourteen as passed by the Senate. As soon as my computer cooperates. Here we go. So S two fourteen is an act relating to the provision of pre K in geographically isolated school districts. So this is an amendment to Section eight twenty nine of Title 16, which is the pre K statute. And on line seven, these three asterisks represent all of current law in 08/29. So this bill does not amend anything in current law or change anything in current law. It adds a new subsection to the very end of the statute that says, Notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, the NEK Choice School District may provide pre K to eligible pre K students by paying tuition pursuant to this section to one or more pre K programs operated by a public school in New Hampshire that is located in a school district within 25 miles of the Vermont border. The Essex North supervisory union shall be responsible for administering enrollment procedures and managing pre K tuition payments pursuant to this section and state board rules. The superintendent may apply for and receive a waiver from the agencies of any rule provision that is in fact billed for the NEK Choice School District or the New Hampshire program by demonstrating that a substantially equivalent provision is offered. This is language that was drafted and plunked right in here as a collaboration between AOE, DCF, and then consultation with the school district with with any K choice school district. It would take effect on 07/01/2026.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: It came up earlier and I have forgotten, but what, why, or what kind of waiver might be sought?

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Was it a

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So because this language was the result of folks going home, getting together, and then bringing it forward, I wasn't privy to those conversations. My understanding of the need for this language in general is that the way our pre K, the way the publicly funded pre K statute is written is that you are only eligible for Act 166 bonds, which is this statute, if you are pre qualified. And pre qualification means you meet a whole bunch of different criteria, including Vermont licensed teachers and following the Vermont Early Learning Standards, among other. Those are Vermont specific. New Hampshire schools have their own licensing and learning standards. And so this is just a guess, but that would be some of the provisions were waivers. If you're a New Hampshire teacher and licensure is substantially similar, perhaps that would be something you would seek a waiver. That is my understanding of why the folks in this school district are having trouble accessing publicly funded pre K in New Hampshire right now. Whether that is what is exactly contemplated by the folks who put this language together, I can't speak to.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That makes a lot of sense. Does anybody have any further questions? The

[Emily Long (Member)]: 25 miles, do you know if that was any specific reason why it's 25 miles?

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I only have one page in here. I think there was slightly different language here in different versions of this draft. So I do believe it means something. I don't want to speak out of turn. I think that would be a question for the folks who worked on this language. I think generally speaking, the goal with this language, which is really something for your Senate counterparts to breathe life into, was to allow students in any K choice to access pre K in the public schools they would be going to in K through 12. And so that 25 mile perimeter, my understanding is that was a general sense of where they would have been going K through 12.

[Emily Long (Member)]: Thank you. That helps. I've only been bringing up because that's a long way.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah. Just everything's a long way.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'm just saying, if you're an NEK choice, it's not.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Please go ahead. Is the NEK the only area

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: in Vermont that we have to worry about tuitioning across the border? Is there anything, say down south or is it just the NEK?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So in this case, this is only the NEK School Choice District, which is a distinct school district. They operate no schools. And so I think it's sort of to recognize that they are a unique situation, that there are no public schools in which to operate a public pre K.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Is there anything else that we need to consider as far as area? Is this very Is this gonna be super localized or is there another district or SU that we should include in this, not just any I

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: would say this is pretty super localized and really the only place where people ask for it, frankly. Just

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: in the answer though, to the sort of other part, that's nothing to do with this bill. Caledonia is a place that has a lot of questions about Massachusetts in terms of things that

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, we still have, we definitely have on all borders, state borders, we have schools of tuition to our public schools out of state.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Do you think can on of a sudden? Yes. That's what I prefer.

[Leland Morgan (Member)]: In our area, same thing. Grand Isle County, some people go over Plattsburgh.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Okay, okay. And they don't have issues with tuition. But it's high school.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, it's not a pre paid grade. Let's go over into that. Thank you, Brian. All right, unless there are any other questions, we'll set that aside for the moment and we'll go into my favorite course that I've taken here, School Governance 101.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, and I keep giving it. One of these days we'll get it.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I bring, this was an idea born from discussions that are being had elsewhere in the building over education transformation, that it's good that we're all well grounded in what's a school district, what's a supervisory union. In the bill we just looked at, it spoke about both a school district and a supervisory union, for example.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: School Governance one hundred one, I have not made any updates to this presentation since I gave it to you January. So to the extent that there were typos I identified or mistakes, I haven't fixed any info. So we're going to start and remember, I'm a lawyer, I'm not a clip artist or graphic designer.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That's all of me.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to get rid of this box. It looks great. We're gonna focus on the shaded in shapes. So supervisory unions, red, school districts, blue, schools, black. What is a supervisory union? First thing I would point out about super And this is the definition from Title 16, part of the definition of Title 16. Supervisory unions. So we're using the term education governance loosely in our conversations about education transformation in H95, etcetera. Supervisory unions are not governance units. They are administrative, planning and educational service units created by the state board. Their boards are publicly elected in that their boards are made up of their member school board members, but they are not separately elected just to serve on a supervisory union board. They have no Supervisory unions have no taxing capacity. They do not set under state law. I think that there are variations in how this is carried out in the state. But according to the black and white letters in Title 16, supervisory unions and superintendents are responsible for the procedures, and school districts are the policy folks. School districts set the educational policies for their school districts. I think there are some supervisory unions that see all of their school districts and all of their kids as one. And even if they are separate school districts, the supervisory union is leading the charge on setting SU wide policies. But under state law, it is a school district that is ultimately responsible for those policies. So supervisory unions are made up of Supervisory unions can be made up of multiple school districts or just one school district. So over on the left, you have a supervisory union, which has multiple blue squares in there. Those are school districts. So that's a supervisory union. It's made up of more than one school district. A supervisory district is a supervisory union that is the administrative planning and educational service unit created by the state board for one school district. Supervisory unions have specific statutory duties. They're supposed to be setting the supervisory union wide curriculum. They handle the receipt and disbursement of federal and state funds distributed by AOE. They're responsible for professional development, special education services, and a lot of what we think of as the business services, procurement, management of construction projects, negotiation of teacher contracts, transportation. They're your central office. There are other duties. I did not specifically enumerate them. Anything with an underline is a hot link, and it'll take you right to that statute. Are we all straight on the difference between a supervisory union and a supervisory district?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think we should ask a question though. If the committee, can a supervisory district also be a supervisory union? Yes or no?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: It's just like the Whiskey It's a Whiskey Bourbon. It is. Rhap along is correct.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Say it louder.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: It is a supervisor. Yes.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So in order to avoid confusion, when I'm talking about school districts or supervisory unions, I try really hard not to say SD. What does SD mean? Or supervisory district. Right? The same letters. That can get really confusing depending on the context you're using it in. Because if you're talking about the duties or the powers, they're going be two different things.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I would say for the most part, other than when talking about specific legislative language, we don't really use the term supervisory district much.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: School districts. These are your education governance units. This is the definition in title 16, which is basically just a list of all the different types of school districts. So town school districts, union school districts, interstate school districts, city school districts, unified union school districts, and incorporated school districts. And then this is the kind of important part there, each of which is governed by a publicly elected board. There are at least one of each type of these school districts in existence today. You still have at least one, maybe two incorporated school districts, which were chartered essentially by the legislature. The new ski is the one that I can think of, and I think there may be one down in the Bennington area. So there are several different types of And those types of school districts are dependent on certain things. What's the number of towns the school district serves? Is it one town? If it's one town, then it's either a town school district, a city school district, or an incorporated school district. Because by definition, a union school district serves more than two or more towns.

[Leland Morgan (Member)]: Just for what is Milton considered? One town. My thought

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: would be it's an SD, but also an SU because it's the only, it's just one town, and we do policy, we do procedure, but it's just one town. That's my SUS state because it's one town. And then it would be within the supervisory district, which would just be a building and be

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: on the electrical.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: How That's why I'm not is that

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I would Well, now that we're in sort of the subcategories or I'm not sure if it's incorporated or not. Don't know the answer to that, but it's at least a town school.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Town district. Town school district. With a school district, but could also be a part of a supervisory district because of the graphic on the previous page.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I have a whole slide about melody. Perfect.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I'm gonna keep watching.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You're right. You're right.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Perfect. Okay.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Multiple accounts. So the incorporated school districts, I really think there are only one, if not two, and that's Windham's Key. The charters for all I don't think there's any charters left other than Winooski and maybe one in the Bennington area. Everyone else, if it's a single town, is either a town or a city school district, is my understanding, Which means they have articles of agreement or some sort of bylaws or some sort of governing document that they created independent of the legislature. The legislature created the charter for Wind. And there were many, many charters that eventually we will need to clean up because they're still on the books after Act 46. There's an entire appendix. There's a Title 16 appendix that's all charters. And there are some charters that live in title 24 appendix, which is your municipal charters. And some school district charters, there are provisions that are baked into the city or town. Super fun to untangle eventually. What are the grades the school district is organized to provide education for? So if it's organized to provide all grades pre K through 12, if it serves multiple towns, it's a unified union school district, which is what you asked in September, your study committees to consider forming. If it is organized to provide some subset of all grades and it serves multiple towns, then it's a Union Elementary School District or a Union High School District, depending on the grade range. And there are some towns that are town school districts that are organized to provide elementary education, and then they are members of a union high school district for the high school education of their resident students. That union high school district may have tuitioning, but the town school district itself is not organized to provide for the education in nine through 12 or seven through whatever it is. So there is a large variation. You can't tell just by whether it is a union elementary school district, a union high school district, or a town school district, what grades it is organized to provide education for. If it is a unified union school district, you know, it's all grades.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Right, Emily?

[Emily Long (Member)]: Oh, no. So explain then, I'm not going to say a word, I'm going to say, so explain a modified unified union story.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: A mud? A mud? Do

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: we still have one or two of those?

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I knew I should have brought my little orange book with me. It's one. Think a modified union I'm gonna butcher this, and perhaps rep Long can correct me when I get to the butchering part. A modified unified union school district is almost all of the towns that are members are part of it for pre K through 12. And there is one or two towns that's a part of it for only some subset of grades. And then they are either providing their own education or are part of a union elementary or high school district, whatever that is. Is that really- Or now tuition.

[Emily Long (Member)]: And that's my district. It's Windham. They are part of the Union High School District, so that's why they're part of the Unified Union School District, but they got permission to remain separate State Board of Education and the agency to operate their own separate elementary school because they were geographically isolated. Since then, they have closed their store, but it's still a modified unified union state district. Might be another one or two. Mansfield isn't anymore in Nebraska. There is

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: a unified union.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Sling Valley was also a mod, but Orwell came in. Right.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So it does, it's even more complicated than my slides would suggest. Oh my god. No, it's a great point. It's a great point. Another reminder that there is a lot of variation. And then how a school district provides for the education of its students in whatever subset of grades it's organized to provide for. They're either operating, tuitioning, or a combination of both. You can't always tell Some town school districts tuition, some town school districts operate, some unified union school districts tuition everyone. So you can't tell just by the type of school district it is, how they provide for the education of their open students. So here are some of the powers of school boards. Again, this is a hot link to the statute. This is not everything in the statute, but these are kind of the big topics that I think we have in this room talked about the most. So they are school boards are responsible for setting policies of the educational policy of the school district. My favorite one here is, May take any action that is required for the sound administration of the school districts. They shall have the possession, care, control, management and property of the district. They keep the buildings in good repair. They have the discretion to administer early education programs. May relocate or discontinue use of a schoolhouse or facility subject to applicable law. They set the budgets. They can execute contracts. And then this one, shall exercise the general powers given to a legislative branch municipality. Notice that that language does not exist in supervisory unions. So union school districts. These are just the two different types of Not the two different types. They are two types of union school districts. So uni elementary and union high school districts. You've got town A, which is its own town school district, and it operates pre K through six. Town B is its own town school district. It operates grades pre K through six. And Town C is its own school district and operates grades pre K through six. And then Town A, Town B, and Town C are all members of the Union High School District that operates grades seven through 12 in a building that just so happens to be located in Town C. And then the Unified Union School District is real easy.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I just would point out that each one of those districts has a school board, an elected school board.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Over here under the Union Elementary and Union High School District, how many school boards are represented here? Correct. How many towns are represented here?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Three.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, so Unified Union School Districts, all one school district, those town for the purposes of thinking about the school district as a municipality, those town and city lines go away. It's municipality. The schools can be anywhere. They can operate tuition. Board. One board, yes.

[Emily Long (Member)]: I

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: had a

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: quick question. So on the left, the four school boards that we see, the purple, green, orange, red, that's four separately elected school boards. Correct. Okay. Likely four administrative opposites or superintendents. Oh, that's a great question.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Probably all within one, actually. But we

[Emily Long (Member)]: don't usually look at one.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So looking at the main difference between the two options, the difference between them has nothing to do with where and how kids are going to school. It's the governance level of management. Am right or wrong? We're assuming these are the same two situations. School in town A, school in town B, elementary school and high school in town C, same buildings, same kids, same towns. What we're doing is comparing these as being the same situation.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah. But the rules sort of go away in terms of where the town line is. Right. If I

[Emily Long (Member)]: could just say, I think it's really important to understand that it's not just that there's four boards and one board, it's that Act 46 made a lot of those on the left into those on the right. And I know a lot of people are unhappy with Act 46, but there was collaboration between communities to create what we see on the right, which is Unified Union School Districts. And to go to Beth Quimby's point, as districts have grappled with declining enrollment, conversations are happening in the unit on the right a lot more often than they did when they were like the unit on the left and around whether a school can stay open or whether it's best to keep a school open. Because when you're in the district on the right, often there is inter district choice amongst So those if there's space, they can move. And so I, in my area, with the decline in enrollment, I'm seeing a lot more movement toward reconfiguring the buildings and maybe even reducing the number of buildings because there is more flexibility under one unit as the one on the right. So I just think it's really important to understand the difference between the two. We rarely talked about that when we were separate districts, but when we became one, suddenly that was a viable discussion and was welcomed.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Part of the debate also is like, SUs are more complicated and all of that. And you can see on the left, each one of those entities has its own set of books, has its own contract, negotiates things differently, staff can't move from one color to another easily. So that's one of the big differences that's worth noting as we have the SUSD discussion.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Example, the rest of the slides are examples. Central Vermont Supervisory Union. So the blue squares represent districts. And what does this lovely red oval represent? So we've got two school districts here, Echo Valley and Payne Mountain, or Echo, sorry, Echo Valley. Echo Valley operates the Washington Village School, pre K through four, the Orange Center School, five through eight, and then tuitions grades nine through 12. It is organized to provide pre K through 12, and it is made up of two towns, Orange and Washington. So what type of a school district is Echo Valley? Union. Kind of a union? Unified. Payne Mountain School District, Northfield and Williamstown. Northfield Elementary, pre K through five operated, also operated Williamstown Elementary, pre K through five. Also operates Northfield Middle and High School six through 12 and Williamstown Middle and High School six through 12. So same, and this is also a Unified Union School District, right? They're organized to provide Pre K through 12. They operate all grades made up of more than one school district or member town. So it's a union school district. So we've got a unified union school district. And so, this is just highlighting how you can have different, same type of school districts, but they're providing for their resident students differently. And they're all under one superintendent, the Central Vermont Supervisory Union. And it's a supervisory union because multiple school districts. But then we have Milton and Ralph Long was correct. So Milton is the Milton Supervisory District. It's one town. It's organized to provide pre K through grade 12. It does that by operating those three schools in elementary and middle and high school. And the state board has made a determination the Milton School District is going to keep an SU busy enough that they can be its own administrative planning unit.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: So even though it's a supervisory district, that's what that big red oval suggests.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It is a So every school district in this state belongs to a supervisory union.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Because the supervise That's why I keep stressing the fact that supervisory unions and school districts have different responsibilities and powers under state law. If you were to do away with the concept of supervisory unions, you would have to reallocate some of those duties and responsibilities. Some of them, it would be like, Do we really need to spell this out? And some of it would be, You really have to spell this out, specifically related to special education is what I'm thinking of, what's an LEA and who's responsible for it, etcetera. So every school district is a member of a supervisory union. And if a school district is the only member of its supervisory union, then it is a supervisory district. So is the local education agency or purchase of federal grants or whatever is always the SU, right? The LEA is never a school district? I can't say never. I know for special education, the LEA is the union. I don't know where else. LEA is a states can decide what level of governance qualifies as an LEA. So it varies from state to state. Like in some states, BOCES can be LEAs. And some of that has to do with the ability to receive federal funds and things. But there's trade offs, right? Then that means that there are certain responsibilities. So I can't say it's never another unit of governance. When we're thinking about special education, it's always supervisory.

[Emily Long (Member)]: This is a quick question for your feedback. I hate that we have supervisory units, supervisory district. I think it's always been complicated and confusing, and I know we can't do away with supervisory units for everybody except, but what if we did away with the term supervisory district, and it would be just a one town supervisory union? Everybody's confused about it all the time and always has been.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think it's very worth pointing out that under the draft map that a member of this committee put on the

[Emily Long (Member)]: table, we've

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: dealt with a lot of this terminology and confusion.

[Emily Long (Member)]: I'm actually serious about it. It is important to simplify things, and I think that does complicate it. Legally, I'm not sure whether that's an issue.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Honestly, the definitions. I'd have to think through I just put it on the table and we need to keep on. I just think so. Let's look at So we've got the definition of supervisory unit is what I read to you all before, an administrative planning and educational service unit. That consists of two or more school districts. And if the context clearly lasts, term also means a supervisory district. So if you got rid of everything after section two sixty one of this title and you struck supervisory district, then I think you could do it. What are the unintended consequences of that? I don't have to think through. I don't know that there are any.

[Emily Long (Member)]: Okay.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So everyone's real straight on all of this. No problems.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Shoot her.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Then we get to Southwest Vermont Supervisory Union, which is made up of five school districts. They are all different types of school districts. They are all organized to provide for different grades, and they all provide that education differently. So you've got an elementary school district. You've got operating. You've got nonoperational. You've got non operational pre K through 12. I'm going to just let this speak for itself of how complicated that can get. And all of these school districts are under one superintendent, one administrative planning unit, one central office, one supervisory.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Wonder what this all looked like in this district pre Act 46.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That is all I have for you.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Alright. This is a good time to ask questions about this. If you got any confusion whatsoever. That's got over.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: We started for the gig.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: You've seen on the floor, but also just in our own caucuses, confusion, like his legislation tends to only use the term supervisory union, meaning also a supervisory district. And so people are like, Oh, well, so this bill is all in favor of SU as well. No, in the case of nine fifty five, SU, this means either a regular old SU as we think of it, or an SD, or a supervisory commissioner, or a town school commissioner, they'd opt for it. All grades. They keep going, more than a month.

[Emily Long (Member)]: Yes. That was good

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: grades to other states. So it's variation in some shows in ECS.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Maine's probably the best comparison because they've got SAEs or SAUs.

[St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: When it comes to tuition, Maine is the only other state in the country with a comparable tuitioning system. New Hampshire, kind of, but Maine, very similar.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Alright, if there are no other questions, we will be adjourned until 02:30 for our next