Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: All those in favor of concurring with the Senate, Mr. Strompel, raise your hand. All right. All those opposing, concurring with the Senate, raise their hands. We need the list back. But you just all you need to do is vote right now. Well,

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: then I have no opinion. Don't have no option. Alright. I guess it'll be a yes. Fine. I'm a

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: yes, sir.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, the list will be in the policy as opposed to in statute. All right, thank you everybody. All right, we'll turn it over to legislative council to walk us through a side by side, and I don't have the page open, but I assume it's posted.

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: Are we moving on to slide 55?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We are. Right by side.

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council, just a few things to set expectations.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Excuse me.

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: So house on the right on the left, Senate Finance draft 1.1, which was voted out late yesterday afternoon on the right. Because it was voted out so late and because I had already made this because the my wires are sentenced. As long as it's Because it was voted out so late and they had already made this side by side to aid the finance committee, the finance language is technically unedited. It had been edited many times as it came from the Senate Education Committee, but the whole package of it hadn't been edited. The entire Senate Finance report has now been edited as one package. And as with any time you get a second or third set of eyes on it, there were commas missing or an of this act missing here. So while there have been no substantive changes, there may be a line or a punctuation or a word choice for drafting conventions that has changed. I have put at the top in the header that the Senate language is unedited. That's more of a caveat to anyone looking at it online. This language has been edited many times, but it was edited again. And so there were more things about

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: it. So

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: there's been a lot of confusion around this. So just putting that out in the universe. Okay. So also in an effort, and this is just the first sections one through 29A. The next chunk of the bill is all tax and that's Kirby. And then the last third of the bill is John and that's largely school construction. And we have been furiously working on a new side by side this morning with everything in it. So that will be produced at some point today.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We have John coming in tomorrow.

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: Great. In an effort to not make this hundreds of pages, if there was no change between the House and the Senate version, I have not included any legislative language. I have just included the section number. I have also embedded the effective dates in each section in blue. There might be some that are not super accurate because I did this very quickly. But I don't think anything in the policy sections that we're about to go through, nothing's contingently effective at any date or anything. So I think for all intents and purposes, this is a good document to use for what the Senate has voted out. And when John comes in tomorrow, he'll have the whole side by side for you. Okay. So with that, would you like me to share my screen or do you want to just

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay.

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: Yellow highlighting, we all know how good I am at highlighting. Yellow highlighting represents changes that the Senate made to the House language. So, if there is language that the House had that the Senate didn't keep, there's no highlighting in the left hand column. So, section one.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: As you go through this, by the way, you are welcome to say, point out, we've reviewed this previously. I think

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: you've reviewed all of this previously.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay. Well, we are This is really going to be a rerun of There haven't been any changes that were made to it.

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: Senate Finance made one very small change. And I believe since you looked at this language, then education may have made a few changes that I can point out. But I think largely you have already looked at all of this.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay, fine to do it again. But in general, we've already seen this once before.

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: I don't know, did you see the finding? I don't think you saw the findings before.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, did. Oh, great. Printed yesterday. We haven't done it yet. Oh, okay. Yeah, go ahead.

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: I think this may be one of the things that the Senate, the education added after I was in walking through what they had been working on.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Behind the document, next, hadn't got through it. Right.

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: So the Senate kept section one as legislative intent, but they also added findings. So subsection A is now findings. The first subdivision is implementation of school district consolidation under Act 46 resulted in the creation of larger SUs, supervisory districts and unified union school districts, have achieved measurable administrative efficiencies, including reductions in per people central office costs and the elimination of duplicative governance structures while maintaining or improving student opportunities in many regions. Regional high schools serving broader geographic areas provide expanded and more equitable access to academic programming, CTE, co curricular opportunities, and specialized staff, which are often not sustainable at smaller scales. Research demonstrates that closing small elementary schools often yields limited or inconsistent cost savings once transportation, capital adjustments and community impacts are considered and may negatively affect student outcomes and family engagement, particularly in rural areas. Nationally, the average public school district enrolls approximately 5,000 students, while the median district size is substantially smaller, commonly cited near 1,500 students, reflecting a wide distribution of district scale across The US. In rural states, school district design must account not only for enrollment but also for geographic size, as districts are often measured in square miles. Larger geographic areas can present barriers to equitable access to educational opportunity, requiring careful balancing of efficiency, transportation time, community connection, and student access to high quality programming. Approximately 40% of Vermont high school graduates enroll in a two or four year degree program. This outcome does not reflect a lack of academic engagement, but rather underscores the importance of ensuring that all students graduate with a clear and supported pathway, including high quality CTE workforce entry or further education aligned with individual goals and regional economic needs. The Senate kept your two legislative intent subsections. They modified the first one slightly. Instead of saying to ensure each student is provided substantially equal educational opportunities, they have modified it to read to ensure each student is provided substantially equal opportunities for an excellent education. They made no changes to the second one, and they added a third. It is the intent of the general assembly to create a statewide education system that encourages and supports local elementary schools, central middle schools, and comprehensive regional high schools that provide each student universal access to CTE. That local elementary, central middle, and comprehensive regional high schools is taken directly from Act 73 and was one of the criteria the task force was required to be considering. Section two is the BOCES chapter amendments. So they did make some changes here. The first change is to the policy section. So they added that one of the ways BOCES or CSUS now should be used is to ensure every middle and high school student has a genuine opportunity to participate fully in and to benefit from CTE. The next change is to the CISA membership. I think we can do this with words. We're going to get to a point where we cannot do it with words.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Sorry. I have a question. Oh, yeah. Go ahead. Sorry.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: So as I'm looking just as we're going through so I look at the words excellent education or excellent use excellent subjective. Right? So I'm I'm just thinking about that. Everyone deserves an education. We're not saying bottom of the barrel, but Think about as I look through defined excellence, and what does that mean? Are we able to meet that standard? Maybe it's small, maybe it's not. I just wanted to bring it up because it just I saw that.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So I think you're going to see that term used a number of times through here, the second put that in. It is in what we call intent language. So it's just aspirational. According to your second point, asked a

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: question about that. Are we interpreting that as what we would normally say high quality opposed to excellent? I would say a but, the same way, and I don't really understand what I mean by excellent either. I kind of understand my quality because I'm talking about it. I guess I'm just laying it out there.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Ultimately, we may need to get somebody in here to sort of explain the language. I'll be very upfront and frank when it sort of comes to intent language. I think it's mainly aspirational. We just spent a lot of time wordsmithing high quality, is excellent, but it kind of means that it's the same aspirations. Thank you.

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: So both CSO membership. The only change the Senate made, and this bill still has to go to Senate appropriations this afternoon, so when I say the Senate made the changes, it's finance. The only change that was made was to the membership of the Champlain Valley North Seesaw. They added the Grand Isle Supervisory Union as a member and swapped it for Milton. So Milton is now a member of the Chittenden Central Seesaw, and it was formerly a member of the Champlain Valley North Seesaw and the house version. So they just flip flopped those two memberships.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: And

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: on page six, I've highlighted in the Senate column Ludlow Mount Holly Unified Union School District. I think I just left that off. But that's the supervisor union it belongs to, so it should be there. So that wasn't really a change the Senate made. That was a catch I made of my own mistake. And no other changes to CSO membership. Moving on to what is required in the bylaws, the Senate included some language that requires the membership fees to be allocated according to the amount of services actually provided to each member SKU. So the bylaws, formerly articles of agreement, is the operating, the governing document for each seesaw. And all the statute says is you have to address this concept within your bylaws. The results of that are up to you and what works for your area, your seesaw. And so the Senate is saying whatever membership fee structure you come up with, it has to have an allocation for those fees that aligns with the services that are actually provided to each SU. So theoretically, if there was an SU who was not availing themselves of any services, their membership fee may look different than someone who was availing themselves of all of the services that the seesaw was offered. But the actual terms are gonna vary from seesaw to seesaw because we don't get any more specific than that.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So just to point out, I'm thinking to everybody, There are membership fees and then there are service fees. We have put in there. I'd be a little wary of dictating how membership fees are to be allocated rather than letting them figure it out because you're always gonna need a baseline amount of funding. And how are you gonna know how much services you're gonna avail yourselves of until you start showing what the services are that are being offered? That's challenging. And, you know, again, we already have services being paid for, And some places may become so self sufficient on service fees that they don't even have membership fees.

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: This was a Senate change, not a Senate Finance change. The Senate Finance Committee adopted the work of Senate education. There's one change that Senate Finance made, and I will point that out when we get there.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Before we turn the page, are we saying some of us are not in agreement with adding that language?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I'm saying I'm not in agreement with adding that language. Mean, I think I agree. It's for the living you know, there's things we can live in and things we can't, but I'm just pointing that out as an area of potential disagreement.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: I would say I agree with the gut reaction just based on our current biopsies and how they operate and what they've done. I think it really gives an opportunity for someone to a district to just sort of sit back and be like, I didn't wanna participate in this anyway, so I'm not putting in any money, and I'm not gonna show up, and I'm not gonna use any services. I think everybody's got to pay in if we're making mandatory CSAs.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I'm not to belabor this, but that's been the issue with cooperative agreements, is because somebody has to own it and nobody else has to participate.

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: Okay. Powers of seesaws. The senate kept all of the house changes and then added a substantive change here that at a minimum, a seesaw is required to offer services in the following areas to its members when requested. The conversation around this language change was what happens if none of the supervisory unions, right, because you're not requiring SUs to avail themselves of these services. What happens if no one ever wants any union school district creation consultation and facilitation? Does that then mean the CISA has to have someone on contract and be paying for it when no one's actually using that service? And so the when requested was meant to get at that potential conflict between efficiencies and just the fact that we don't know who's going to avail themselves of what. No difference to the financing, budgeting and accounting section. No difference to the annual report. No difference to the employment. So this is a really good example of when there was no difference. I just literally wrote no difference. I didn't include any of the language. The Senate added a brand new section to Chapter 10 for which the House had no similar provision,

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: and

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: that is the CSO membership and adjustment proposal. This is a very scaled down, essentially, charter change process. So you put the membership in statute, which means only you can change it. So the process goes, the board of an SU that wants to change membership would vote. And if that vote was affirmative in withdrawing and joining a new one, then they would transmit the results of that board vote to the boards of both applicable seesaws, the one they want to leave and the one they want to join. Then each Seesaw board, within forty five days of getting that information from the SU board, would hold an advisory vote on whether they think this is a good idea or not, whether they support this change. Then the Supervisory Union Board would take the results of their vote, the results of the seesaw advisory votes, the minutes for any of the public meetings around any of this, copies of warnings and notices for any of the public meetings around any of this, and the results of the votes, and they would send them to the Secretary of Education. And then the Secretary of Education is required to deliver all of that to the General Assembly. And then I borrowed subsection C directly from the Charter Change Statute. The membership adjustment proposal shall become effective upon affirmative enactment of the proposal, either as proposed or as amended by the general assembly. Next section, the Senate. So we're out of section two. We're out of the BOCES chapter as a whole. We're staying in the BOCES chapter substantively, though. My understanding on what we

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: just walked through, all of

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: these votes are just among boards. It is not going to the general town vote. We're versions of this with that. And we've streamlined it. Actually,

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I greatly appreciate we did not put into process. And as long as this is not I'm going go to

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: the next. How long do you see that process taking? I want to leave the CISA. I go through my process, but now we're maybe in the middle of the school year. So then, you know, as far as budgeting season and Yeah.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: A great question. I think part of the challenge of answering that would be there is a process locally, probably could be handled within forty five days. But then it's up to the legislature. Who knows when it will be taken up? You submitted it in January, taken up May. You're in a lot later. Yeah, okay.

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: Okay, section 2A is new. The House had no similar provision.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Which is frankly a very good point.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Between years. It's

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: just I'm thinking about, if everybody's in agreement doing it, but you're sort of locked into whatever the financial arrangement is while the legislature takes a long time. Anyway, I'm not sure there's I have no solution for it. I'm thinking out loud. Just ignore everything. Proceed.

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: Okay, so section 2A, the House had no similar provision. What the Senate did here, you'll notice there's a new effective date. Everything so far, we've been trucking along at July, which is what the House said. You'll notice now there's a new year, 07/01/2027. So what the Senate did is they took the subsection that requires seesaws to offer certain services. You'll see at the very bottom subdivisions one, two and three, they're no longer underlined because by the time 07/01/2027 rolls around, this will be current law. And they've struck the suggestions embedded in the paragraph, professional development, curriculum coordination, and transportation, and added them to the list of services that are required to be offered as requested and also added facilities master plan. So as of 07/01/2027, that list of services that a seesaw is required to offer when requested rose from three to seven. But still just offer and it's still when requested. Section three, no difference. That's a repeal of the report back requirement to you all related to voluntary formation of Seesaws. Section four is the seesaw startup grant, no change. Sections five through 11 are all conforming amendments to various places in the VSAs where BOCES appeared and we've changed that to seesaw. Senate made no changes. Section 12 is the Seesaw transition. No changes. Section 13, union school district formation. There are some changes here, but you're going to see a lot of white and not a lot of yellow. So the first change is, if we go to page 15, looking at the criteria that a facilitator is required to use when grouping school districts together, the House had the aggregate ADM of the school districts forming the study committee needed to be a minimum of 2,000. The Senate changed that to 1,500. They had 1,000 at one point. Then they negotiated with themselves up to 1,500. They removed the requirement that school districts are required to be contiguous on the study committee. And then they kept the fact that school districts can be on different SUs. Subdivision two is the requirement that school districts actually participate in the study committees, and the Senate added a requirement that that participation needs to be in good faith. And that actually ties into some school construction language that we're going to look at with John tomorrow. But the one change finance made was later on in the final facilitator's report. The report needs to include anyone who was a bad faith actor. Now, some part of legacy debt, I believe, is tied to, did you participate in good faith care? John will say it much more eloquently.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: And who makes that determination? Study hall. Facilitator. The

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: And the way it's phrased is it's not necessarily a determination that you have participated in good faith. It's an identification of bad faith actors. Words. Okay. No changes to being able to Oh, wait, there is a change here that I didn't highlight. So study committee, you have referenced necessary or advisable school districts. Senate just removed the advisable piece instead of a study committee identifies a school district as necessary and it's not a member of the study committee and they can work with the facilitator. And then subdivision C, the House had that study committees are required to explore the feasibility of a new unified union school district operating a regional middle or high school. And the Senate changed that too. Study committees need to be exploring the advisability of the contemplated new Unified Union School District providing for the education of its resident students, the local elementary schools, central middle schools, and comprehensive regional high schools that provide each student with universal access to CTE. So just a study of the advisability and feasibility of it, it's not a requirement that each new union school district actually is able to do this. The House had two different final reporting requirements. One, if you found that it was advisable to form a new unified union school district and one reporting requirement if you found it was inadvisable to form a new unified school district. The Senate kept the final study report concept, but made it one report that's applicable no matter what your final decision is. And they took the analysis from advisable and the analysis from inadvisable and kind of shrunk it down to one analysis for everyone. So the final report needs to include the names of the school districts participating, an analysis of the currently of the land, the strengths and challenges of the current structures of all necessary and advisable school districts, what's the final recommendation, and an analysis of how the final recommendation will enable the study committee member school districts to, under the foundation formula, maximize operational efficiencies, promote transparency and accountability, and encourage and support local decisions and actions that provide equal opportunities for an excellent education, all at a cost that parents, voters and taxpayers value. It's not verbatim, but it is as close as we can get to the policy of Chapter 11 that's already in statute. And then if the decision of the study committee was not unanimous, what's the minority view of the committee? The Senate kept the call out that if you determine it's inadvisable, you can go on your merry way and decide to do whatever you want after that. The Senate added, I'm on page 17 now, the Senate added that each study committee is required to consult with area CTE directors and document such consultation and any recommendations made by the CTE director in the final report. And then the Senate made no further changes to the study committee process, school board review, secretary review, state board review and findings, or the vote process. They also made no change to the status report that you all will be getting in February. Here, section 14, these are our guidance groupings. I'm not even going to attempt to walk you through the language on this. I think the best way to see the differences between the House and the Senate is to look at the maps.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Do you feel comfortable at all speaking as to why changes were made? Sorry.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: So I just can I just briefly speak to, because I have looked through all of that? I just want to say that our goals are to have a successful study committee where the outcomes, I'm sharing my perspective, but I think it was our perspective, so that the outcomes achieved the goals of the law. And one of the reasons why I had recommended early on to keep the lines of the SUs was because I thought once we started the process of setting, working with people you're used to working with is more positive way of having a brown swell of support for the decisions of who becomes what in each study. Because these are guidance and nothing more. And I've already had a bunch of feedback personally because my SU group was broken up into three separate study groups. And that's already creating division before we even inspire the study committee. So I just wanted to bring that up as a real challenge. When what we're trying to do is reach agreement on community governance models. And it's hard to start on that metric. So that was what I was trying to avoid from the very beginning, saying let's work together with those we're used to working together so we can start it at the ground level, then make the changes as needed. So I'm disappointed, that's all.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I'm just sharing with the committee. And I think that as Kate made clear previously, this might be an area of disagreement.

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: One easy thing I can point out in words is that you all had 21 groupings and the Senate took that down to 18. So we are gonna jump to page 22, section 14A. The House had no similar opinion. What the Senate did was say between 02/01/2027 and 01/01/2029, there's a lot of time, let's get an interim report in here. And so they've added two interim reports. So on or before 01/01/2028, the lead facilitator is required to report back with you all on the status of each study committee and the final recommendations because their final report will be due 12/01/2027. So the final recommendation should be in. You won't know if a new union school district is going to form because it still has to go to the voters. And then on or before 01/01/2028, AOE is required to give you all a preliminary recommendation for any boundary adjustments that need to happen to SUs or seesaws based on the final recommendations of the study case. Section 15 is the final report back to you all from the lead facilitator on the study committee process. The Senate kept it the same, but this is where Senate Finance added some language related to bad faith actors. So everything remains the same. I've just broken it up differently now to add this. It was gonna be a very long sentence. So now we have subdivisions. So the report needs to include the following, a determination and identification of any school district that is a bad faith participant in the study committee process. And that will tie into school construction.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Again, I don't think you may be able to answer this. I'm just a bit like that. If the preliminary report that we just walked through in Section 14A

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: Oh, that's a good question. I mean, I think probably because finance added this at like 04:30 yesterday. And that does, that makes complete sense. But it didn't happen.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Looks like it didn't make complete sense.

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Yes, go ahead. Know you mentioned bad faith actors and you had mentioned school construction. Is the definition of bad faith actor defined

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: into I knew you had a little smirk on your face. I you were going to trick the lawyer. No, bad faith participant is not defined. Good luck.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Mean, that would be somebody who isn't really wanting to end up in a district or wants to funnel kids into certain kinds of schools.

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: I mean, here's where I'm thinking. And this means nothing because I'm not the one who has to make this determination. And I don't wear a black robe and sit on a bench. So someone who just literally refuses to show up. There's a one law that says they have to to participate. I would go so far as to say, if you don't answer the phone or respond to an email or come to a meeting, click on a Zoom link. You may be risking being identified as a bad faith participant. I mean, I think we can get really silly and funny if someone shows up. They're showing up to the table, but they're coming in and they've got an iPad and they're watching Real Housewives all day. Mean, are they participating? I think you can come up with a lot of funny and creative examples. If someone is showing up and doing their best, but their best is just different than everyone else, I think that's gonna be more challenging.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: It is more challenging. Yeah. If they are coming with a goal of blowing the whole thing up. They maybe get a bad attention from this bad faith because of showing up and being clear. Anyway okay.

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: Okay. So no other changes to the final report back to you all. It just looks differently because I've split it up into different sections. So the final report back section 16 related to SU and seesaw boundary adjustments. Once the dust has settled, then you know the votes for any new school district formation. No change to section 17, which is a giant appropriation section, which had all of your appropriations that were allowable uses of the transformation money last year from Act 73. No change to the contingencies that the House passed for the foundation formula. This is no longer accurate. Senate Finance did remove section 18A. I just haven't updated the I will make sure that I update this. Did remove calculator on the request of tax.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Great. That was a good idea.

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: I was not in the room for any of that testimony. No change to any of the pre K sections, the findings intent, the reports or the amendment that requires collection of the hours provided. No change to the requirement that tuition districts collect weighted student data at the time they're approving those tuition requests. No change to the special education funding intent section. Section 24, this is where the house passed language that would prohibit a school from requiring tuition or fees on top of what's allowed under law. The Senate struck that language and replaced it with intent language that reads, It is the intent of the general assembly that under the foundation formula, no receiving school may charge individual families tuition in excess of the amount of tuition paid by ascending school district. So the same intent minus the fee part, but just intent language rather than putting it into statute. And I believe this is an area where I made a mistake with the effective date. I think this didn't take effect until the foundation formula took effect. Sorry, it's the same except that you can charge fees. What kind

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: of fees would those be?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Well, before we do that, let's just be clear. The big overall change is that it's moved from a basically prohibition to an intent. So at this point, their proposal just says it's our intention that that won't happen. But if they do, so in a way to fulfill that intent at a later date, the legislature needs to choose whether it wants to follow its own intent or not. At which point, the fee debate would definitely become on Sunday.

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: So the senate language is silent as to fees, but it's just intent language. Section 24A is passed by the house was the legislative intent language regarding the effective date for section 24. That Senate deleted that section. It was no longer applicable based on the change they made to section. Senate made no changes to the Union School District Study Committee budget change 50 grants of 500 ks for the amount of money that needs to go to the voters for approval for a study committee. No change to section 26 regarding the small and sparse schools rulemaking. Small changes to section 27, which is the inter district budgeting rulemaking directive. The Senate added that the establishment of criteria for inter district budgeting needs to be specific to the foundation formula that was not in the house language and pushed the date for those rules out from 03/31/2027 to 12/31/2028. And then you'll see that language anywhere you see language that talks about substantially equal education, the Senate has replaced it with opportunities and excellent education. No change to 27A, which was an amendment to the reserve fund guidance rulemaking directive from Act 73. No change to your giant school transportation report. No change to the student profile form, which is the student waiting data form that's gonna go out to students to get that waiting data, especially for the tuitioning students. No change to the length of school day rulemaking, Small and sparse schools. I'm going to suggest that you have John talk about this tomorrow when he's in. The Senate did make some changes here, and at this point in the session, I cannot explain that. I don't have enough details left. And then you all passed definitions for Section 11 for average class size, class content area, full time equivalent school, school day, student and teacher of record. The Senate struck that and replaced it with their own Section 29A, which is the class size minimum clock stoppage that was traveling in the miscellaneous bill as you all passed it. Now it's traveling as past the Senate, pulled it out of the miscellaneous bill and put it in nine fifty five. They did not change the language related to Actually, that's not true. They did change it. So they kept the clock stoppage concept and they split it up into two subdivisions, one for public schools and one for independent schools. The issue with trying to treat both public schools and independent schools the same when it comes to this specific piece in just words, is that there is an enforcement process built into statute for public schools, and the enforcement process for independent schools will be in rules that have not yet been developed. So for public schools, you all pass language that says a public school's failure to comply with class size minimum requirements shall not count towards the three consecutive school years of noncompliance that enables the secretary to recommend action to the state board. That's a description of the enforcement process in statute that we cannot make for independent schools. You all pass that language. And then your clock started when the rules were effective or 07/01/2027, whichever came first. Senate said until the foundation formula takes place.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Logistically, we said that in the Distilling Use Education Bill, they extracted from that and we'll finish that with this.

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: Then same concept for independent schools. And I really struggled with how to make this clear. So I started with a little bit of a preamble that says the State Board of Education is required to update the rules governing approval of independent schools to create a process for review by the State Board for failure to meet class size minimums, and then the corresponding enforcement actions the board can take for such noncompliance. The board is required to provide an approved independent school a substantially similar opportunity to come into compliance with class size minimums that it would provide to a public school. So it's really easy for public schools to say those three years. We've asked the state board to provide a substantially similar process, but because we don't have those yet, I felt uncomfortable saying those three, that it's going to automatically be three years. So failure of an approved independent school that is eligible to receive public tuition to comply with minimum class size requirements shall not count towards any period of noncompliance as determined by state board rule that may allow the state board to take action against the school until the foundation formula has been met. That's the same concept for both independent and public schools. We just don't know what the state board rules are going to say yet.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So does this mean that enforcement doesn't take effect until the foundation formula is in or that rule making doesn't start? Enforcement. Okay.

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: It doesn't change the rule making requirement.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So the rule making can go on as envisioned, but then the Similar

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: to the same as how public schools are treated in the Senate language.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, I was asking for both.

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: And then the last line of this section reads an independent and approved independent school that fails to comply with class size minimums shall remain eligible to receive public tuition prior to the foundation formula taking effect if it continues to meet all the other requirements, Because there is a requirement in statute that in order to be eligible for public tuition, you got to comply with class size minimums. So this is stopping the clock there, too. And then the Senate added a new section to be 29B. There's no similar provision in the House, which amends. I think this is a great catch and I wish I had caught it last year. This is the section eight twenty eight that governs what type of educational programs the school district can pay tuition to. This is where it lists the criteria for all the things an approved independent school has to meet in order to be eligible. Last year, Act 73, which is current law now, required an independent and approved independent school to comply with the class size minimums. And the cross reference to the law was the entire Subdivision 9, which includes the enforcement process for public schools. So this change is saying they have to comply with class size minimum requirements only in subdivision A, which is the actual minimums themselves. And then the statute goes on to say, there's a waiver process and then there would be the rules that go over the enforcement process. So I think there was some confusion over whether the enforcement process for public schools, because it was swept in by referring to the entire subdivision, and here, I'll show you what it looks like, would also automatically apply to independent schools. And where am I going? 165. So by saying they had to comply with subdivision nine, That includes A, the class size standards, which are the minimums themselves and the exceptions, and the waiver process and the state board action process. C and B are automatically swept in if you say you have to comply with the entire subdivision. So this amendment is saying you have to comply with only A because B and C are applicable to public schools. And you've asked the state board previously to do rules for the independent schools. And that is it for the I can't figure out how to get rid of this last piece. But that's it for the education policy sections. You're going to want John to walk you through the small and sparse schools change and then tie in that bad faith actor piece when he talks through school construction. Thank you.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We have you both scheduled at eleven Great,

[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council]: I'll be here.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So I would just say to the committee, if you have questions from this, we will have an opportunity to ask those tomorrow as well. Anything build quick?

[Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Yes, it's gonna change again by the time we gave it to Mike.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That's the plans that'll change by tomorrow. I think it's a good question that we don't know the answer to.

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: That's not their job.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Appreciate that. Okay, floor is at one and