Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: We're live.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair, House Education]: Welcome to a joint hearing between House Education and House Ways and Means. The Senate has just passed H95 amended just an hour ago. And we are now sitting here for a presentation of comparison of bill that passed the house and a bill that passed the Senate. Thanks to the work of our legislative council and our joint fiscal office. And with that, we're gonna turn it right over to the two of you to walk us through and just tell us which document would be

[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: the best one to be following.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel.

[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: John Gray, Ledge Counsel.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: So we put together, very hastily for you, a side by side, which I think is the best document to use, of the House passed version and the Senate Proposal of Amendment. The Senate proposal of amendment just was passed by the Senate less than an hour ago. I've already found mistakes in this document. I haven't given Kirby an opportunity to add his sections. So this is really to benefit everyone and move us all along. I will send a new draft to Daphne with some updates when I have a breather later. But none of the updates will be substantive except for one, which I will point out.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair, House Education]: And thank you for the extremely quick turnaround on this.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: I've also sent Daphne two timelines. One is a very polished timeline that Kirby put together based on the Senate proposal that is entitled, I think, Senate Lower Amendment Education Transformation Timeline. The other one is less pretty, more streamlined, and this was a document that I had created to kind of help me with just the merger process. And so use it as you see fit. It was passed out on the Senate floor. So the Senate has Okay. We have an hour, correct? Okay. And I know Ways and Means has joined you, and I know that I have walked through much of this with the education committee, but there have been some big changes since the last time we walked through the Senate's work.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: Do you all want me

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: to talk about findings or let them speak for themselves?

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair, House Education]: I probably let them speak for themselves. And if we have time, we can come back to it.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: Okay. So the Senate added some findings and they added to your legislative intent. Do you want me to share my screen?

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Education)]: Oh, that'd great.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: Those findings the same song we last took that's with a senate finance? The findings are. Yes. Daphne, can I share?

[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: Oh, yeah.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: Thank you. Yes, the findings have not changed since the last time the Education Committee looked at this. The Senate did not touch the House's legislative intent subsections. You just had those two subsections. They've kept them. They're now subdivisions, and they added two pieces of Actually, three pieces of legislative intent. Do you want to go over that?

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair, House Education]: I don't think so.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: Moving on to section two, which is chapter 10 in title 16, this is the BOCES seesaw chapter. Again, I'm sorry, should have started by orienting everyone. There's the Oh, my goodness gracious. Header is not repeating on every page. That's gonna bother me to no end. So left hand side is House, right hand side is Senate. In section six zero one, which is the policy section of the Seesaw chapter, the Senate has added some language to the policy section that Seesaw shall be used to ensure every middle and high school student has a genuine opportunity to participate fully in and to benefit from CTE. The Senate also added to each of the seesaws. We have four standalone Career and Technical Education school districts that are independently governing school districts for the only thing they operate is their CTE centers. The Senate added three of those to the seesaw where they were geographically located. And in order to do that, bless you, and we'll talk about the fourth. But in order to do that, they updated the definition of supervisory union just for Chapter 10 to include, because remember, Seesaw's membership is at the SU level, not the school district level. So Supervisory Union for the purposes of Seesaw's includes supervisory districts and regional CTE school districts. And then they added, you can see they added the, I'll go back up, but they've added the Patricia A. Hannaford Regional Tech School District to the Champlain Valley South Seesaw. They've added the Southwest Regional Tech Center to the Southwest Seesaw, and they've added the Central Vermont Career Center to the Windhamskey Valley Seesaw. There is one more, and we will

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: get to that in a minute. Can interrupt? I

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Education)]: want to just go back because I'm sorry, I really have to ask a question about six zero one policy. The added language ensure every middle and high school student has a genuine opportunity to participate only in.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: That's current law. I borrowed it directly from the It's

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Education)]: both middle and high.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: No, the middle and high is a policy choice. We participate fully and benefit from is current law.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Education)]: Because currently we don't have middle school students fully participating, just bringing it up. Thank you.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: The other change that the Senate made to your seesaw membership is that they flipped Grand Isle and Milton. So Grand Isle, SU, used to be part of the Chittenden Central Seesaw. It's now a part of the Champlain Valley North Seesaw. And Milton used to be part of the Chittenden Central and it is now a part of the Chittenden Central Seesaw. And I had just left off Ludlow Mount Holly Unified Union School District as a member of the Two Rivers SU. So we caught that. There were no other membership changes for seesaws. The next change the Senate made in Chapter 10, Section two, this is the I'm on Page 10 of the side by side. This is the list of what needs to be in the bylaws, previously articles of agreement. The Senate added language to clarify that membership fees need to be allocated according to aggregate ADM of each member SU, and service fees need to be based on the amount of services actually provided to each SU as applicable. So if you don't use the service, then you would not be billed for a service. That's the only change to the bylaws. Powers of seesaws. You'll remember that you all included at the very top of page 12, which the Senate has kept some suggestions of what seesaws can provide, including professional development, curriculum coordination and transportation. And then you made a list of three topics that the seesaws had to provide services in. The Senate has kept that, but they've added that those services only need to be provided when requested because there was a concern that the CSOB could be incurring costs, having folks on staff for services that no one ever wanted. And the Senate has added that those services need to be provided when requested and when approved by the CSOB board. The Senate had some discussion about what happens if it is one supervisory union or even one school district within a supervisory union that wants some very expensive service. Does it make sense for the seesaw to do that? If you don't modify that shall in any way, then I think there's an argument that they have to. So we've built in that discretion that really services are gonna be provided under the discretion of the seesaw board, which is made up of the members themselves. And then the Senate also added to business and administrative services and subdivision two information technology, so IT services. No change to 605, no change to six zero six, no change to six zero seven. The Senate added a brand new section to Chapter 10 and Title 16, CSUN Membership Adjustment Proposal. This is like a very watered down charter change process. That concept will come back. We will come back to that process. But for now, the board of a member SU can propose to you all to change its membership according to this procedure, and that procedure would be that the Supervisory Union Board would vote to withdraw from one CSO and join another. And if a majority of the SU board members vote yes, then the two applicable Seesaw boards would hold an advisory vote to say, yes, this sounds good to us, you leaving and joining. And then the SU that wants to move is gonna send a bunch of stuff to the Secretary of Education, including the minutes for all of the meetings where this was discussed, warnings and published notices for any of these meetings and minutes around the votes taken by both the Supervisory Union Board and the CSOB boards. And then the Secretary of Education is gonna send all of that material to the General Assembly. And then you all will stick it on a wall and decide what to do with it. And the membership adjustment is only effective upon affirmative enactment of the proposal, either as proposed or as amended by you all. Any questions? Okay. Senate also added them on page 14. The Senate also added a new section 2A. See, you'll note we've tried to, it's not perfect, embed the effective dates in each section. So this is an amendment to section six zero four, subsection A, which is the powers and duties of seesaws. This language should look very familiar. We just walked through it. The language we just walked through related to the services that seesaws have to provide would take effect on 07/01/2026. Section 2A takes effect on 07/01/2027. The difference here is that you'll notice that those suggested services that the House added, professional development, curriculum coordination and transportation are struck and they are added to the list of services that have to be offered when requested and when approved by the seesaw. And then the Senate went one step further and also added facilities master planning to the list of services. So as of 07/01/2027, should this become law, that list of required when requested and when approved by the seesaw has grown to include these seven services. I said we would come back to the fourth standalone CTE district, and here we are. The fourth standalone CTE district is the River Valley Technical Center School District. And it would be geographically speaking, a member of the Vermont Learning Collaborative, which is your one existing BOCES. You do not wanna monkey with the one existing BOCES because they are doing a whole lot of work for you and your skill. So this language says talk amongst yourselves, figure out a way to petition the legislature using that process I just walked through to have the River Valley Technical Center become a member of VTLC. And prior to that, ELCT is required to offer services to the River Valley Technical Center as requested. So they're not going to be members, but they're not also going to be left out in a bolt from provision of services. Section three, the Senate made Sections three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, and 11, the Senate made no difference to what the House passed. Same for Section 12. This is all BOCES, Seesaw. Section 13, we're now out of the Seesaw Reader Assistance heading into the Union School District Exploration and Formation Reader Assistance heading. Section 13 is the study committee process. The Senate made significant changes here, both to the name of this process and to the timeline. So no longer are we referring to study committees, we are now referring to merger committees in the Senate proposal amendment. There are a few places where I have explicitly kept the term study committee because we are referring to the current law study committee statute. Please don't point out that I have made a mistake. Merger committees and the timeline is different. So you'll notice the Senate had everyone, I'm sorry, the House had everyone getting going by the hiring of the facilitators on or before October 1. The Senate has bumped that up to September 1. The Senate has also added a requirement, I'm on page 16, that facilitators are required to assist merger committees with strength based asset mapping and with developing and executing a public outreach plan that maximizes public engagement for the merger committee process.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: I was going to jump in with a question over here in ways and means. Please.

[Rep. Charlie Kimbell, Member, House Ways and Means]: What is strength based mapping, asset mapping?

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: Oh, I'm going to ask you to ask your chair that question.

[Rep. Charlie Kimbell, Member, House Ways and Means]: So Emily, what is strength based asset mapping?

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: This language did not come from me. However, strength based asset mapping is a standard part of a consultant's toolkit to do strategic planning. And it involves, instead of looking at, say, a standard What's that acronym with the

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: SWOT analysis. Thank you.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: Instead of a SWOT analysis, which is more deficit based, it is more of an asset based way to say, What are the resources we have in front of us that we can use together to move forward? How was that for you, Beth?

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: Wonderful. And I should clarify that I asked Chair Kornheiser speak to that, not because this was her idea, but because I have no idea what strength based asset mapping was. Thank you very much. Okay, so the Senate added language that to get everyone ready, each school district So we've hired facilitators on or before September 1. The Senate has changed the timeline for the first meeting and for study committee assignments to be October 15. So between September 1 and October 15, by September 15, each school district needs to have identified one current member of their board to participate in the merger committee. So they can't technically make an appointment yet because there's nothing to appoint them to yet, but they need to have at least identified that person. And then on or before 10/15/2026, the facilitator needs to assign everyone. The Senate kept the criteria for assignment that the House passed, and the merger committee needs to hold its first meeting by October 15. Now we're gonna walk through kind of the work of that merger committee. So the Senate added language, well, you all had language that required each school district to participate in the merger committees. The Senate added that that participation needs to be in good faith, and that will tie into school construction later on. So remember that. The merger committee is required to follow to the processes and requirements of Chapter 11 as amended by this section. No change to the fact that the facilitator can work with folks to readjust merger committee membership as necessary. No change to the budget for the merger committee. You all are gonna give them money. And the Senate made no changes other than updating the term study committee to merger committee. No changes to the appropriations for your merger committees and for your seesaws. So no change to the budget piece. And then you all passed language that required study committees to explore the feasibility of operating a regional middle, regional middle or high school that offered residents access to CTE. And the Senate changed that to exploring the feasibility of providing for the education of its resident students through local elementary schools, central middle schools, and comprehensive regional high schools that provide each student with universal access to CTE. And then you all had two different reporting requirements.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: One reporting requirement for if a merger

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: Before we go to reporting requirements, just jumping in here. Thank you. I guess what I'm seeing on the Senate side, added through local elementary schools

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: there? Yes.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: So is that mandating local elementary schools?

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: No, the merger committee shall explore the advisability and feasibility of a contemplated new unified Union School District providing for the education of its residents students through the following forms. So you gotta think about it.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: So local doesn't mean necessarily a particular town, it just means, well, what does that mean?

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: Local is, it's not defined.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: Well, this is prevent to elementary schools or three elementary schools from combining.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: No.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: Why not. No, that's what it's, plain language, your sense.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: Beth, did you hear that question? I'm sorry, I didn't.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: I'm sorry. It was, why does it not?

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: The plain language is you have to do it through these things. Local elementary, central middle, and comprehensive regional high schools. So access, I don't see that you could merge a local elementary school under this.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: The highlighting language I think is perhaps throwing us is that the merger committee has to explore the advisability and feasibility. So is it possible for a new school district to provide for the education of its resident students through local elementary, central, middle and comprehensive regional high schools? The language in the bill stops short from saying, and if it is feasible, you have to do it. It just says you have to study it. Thanks, Beth. Yep. So the House passed version had two different reporting One of a study committee said it was good to form a new union school district, and one of the study committee said it was not good to form a union school district. And so the Senate condensed that into one reporting requirement, regardless of the final recommendation. The report needs to include the names of the school districts, the strengths and challenges of the current structures of all of the participating school districts. What's the merger committee's final recommendation? Is it advisable or inadvisable to propose formation in Union School District? An analysis of how a final recommendation will enable the merger 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. And if the decision of the merger committee was not unanimous, an analysis of the minority view of the committee, including an analysis of how any school district participating in the merger committee, but not recommended to be part of the new Unified Union School District will, under the foundation formula, provide excellent educational opportunities that allow students to achieve or exceed the state's EQS, maximize operational efficiencies that allow the district to meet or exceed the district quality standards, provide resident students with a genuine opportunity to participate fully and benefit from CTE, and provide special ed services. So that's what needs to be in the final report of the study committee. The Senate kept the language that kind

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: of Sorry, we have another question over here.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: Where I see V, Roman numeral I, V at the end of sentence, just a second, now we've got the punch. Oh, the Roman numeral one provide excellent educational opportunities.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: Yes, that is the language that you chose

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: equal educational opportunities. They can just say, well, it's very excellent here, but it's not equal. Somebody else has five choices, they have one choice, that's not equal.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: Language was a policy choice.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: Yeah, I guess I just disagree with that policy.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: Thanks, Representative Odie. Thank you, Beth. Thank you.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: The Senate kept the language about if you dissolve your study committee, you can go on to do whatever you want. And then the Senate added some language specific to career and technical education. So it requires each merger committee to consult with area CTE directors and to document that consultation and any recommendations made by a CTE director in the final report. And the final report also has to include an analysis of how CTE access will be achieved for all students residing within the proposed new Unified Union School District. And if a merger committee's member school districts send their resident students to one of those four standalone CTE school districts, then the final report has to include an analysis of whether the applicable regional CTE school district should dissolve and the center that that school district is operating should then be absorbed and run by the new union school district. And the report needs to include That analysis needs to include the position of the regional CTE school district. Final reports for merger study committees in the Senate version are due on or before 09/01/2027. And then the Senate added explicit language here that if a merger committee completes its work before September 1, it doesn't have to wait for any of the last, the drop dead deadlines that follow. It can move on to the next phase at any time. Facilitator, let's see, new language added by the requires the agency of education to make agency staff available to assist the facilitators by providing technical assistance to the merger committees as requested. I would argue that that is already current law in Chapter 11. And then throughout the merger committee process, facilitators and members of merger committees shall work together with their assigned school districts to endeavor to prevent any school district with an ADM of fewer than seven fifty students from becoming isolated by being left out of the formation of a new unified union school district. This concept of geographically isolating a school district or stranding a school district is going to come up several times in the rest of the Senate changes that we look at. Secretary review process, the Senate kept the process the same. It shortened the timeline that the secretary has from six Sorry.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: So my question is there's folks on geographic isolation, is there anywhere in here that I'm missing that talks about locations such that, I'm withdrawing the question, thank you. Thanks, Beth.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: Okay, so secretary's review has been shortened from sixty days to thirty days. That all of the reviews need to be done by 12/01/2027, or the study committee can, or the merger committee can bypass the secretary review and go straight to the state board who has to issue their final report by December 15 or their final findings by 12/15/2027. You'll notice that's about six months different than the house passed version. The vote still happens as it does under current law. Although I noticed in doing my work with the Senate that the current law does not require school districts that are identified as advisable to vote on a merger unless petition to do so by a certain number of citizens. And so we're not withstanding that piece of law. All necessary and advisable districts have to hold the vote. And that vote needs to occur on or before 03/07/2028. So town meeting day.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: Question over to you. Okay.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: I should know, but remind me, the voting process, I thought the Senate was potentially going to make some changes here. It doesn't look like they did. They kept how it happens now under Chapter 11. Correct. So let's take some hypotheticals. I'm in CVSD, and we've run out and explored. And CVSD, Winooski, and South Burlington have done a wonderfully collaborative merger process. South Burlington, ultimately, is the voting commingled across those three districts? Is it? By district. Okay. Could any one of those three districts, if South Burlington says, no, or is the whole merger done?

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: It depends on if they have been identified as necessary or advisable. If all three of those districts are identified as necessary under both the House and the Senate version, as well as current law, which the House and the Senate version rely on, then the merger doesn't happen if any one of them say no. If one of them is identified as advisable and that advisable district says no, then the other two would form a union school district and the advisable district would remain whatever it is. So it depends, and the merger committees themselves are the ones that identify who's necessary and advisable.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: Merger committee of that.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair, House Education]: So I'll give you a, for example, let's say you were a merger study committee merging U32, Montpelier, Barry, Twinfield and Northfield. You don't want to end up with a situation where Windfield and Northfield say we're going to merge because what you really need is that core group in the middle. So therefore they would be necessary to make it happen and the others could be deemed advisable. So they could not throw off the merger of the necessaries. If the study committee certifies. That's right.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: And remind me the votes in those instances, is it simple majority in each of the districts? Is it a two thirds? What's the

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: threshold? I don't believe it's two thirds. So it's a simple majority. It

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: is the school district vote, it's not a town vote, it's a school district.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: It depends on the type of

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: school district. Depends on the type.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: But so if it was a union school district, the union school district is voting and there are no town lines. But if it's a town school district, then technically it would be a town voting. It's not town vote,

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: a town it's a school district by school district. So a school description of multiple towns

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair, House Education]: would put people in May? Yes.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: Okay, so here is the section that I forgot to include. So I'm gonna stop sharing for a second so that I can share a different document. Sorry, we've now walked through section 13. That's that. We'll maybe actually, let's do this. This is the timeline that I just walked you through. So facilitators hired in 09/01/2026, study committee starts 10/15/2026, 09/01/2027, the study committee final reports are due. November school boards complete their review. Secretary of Ed completes review. State board issues final findings by December 15. So from mid December through early March, you've got your election process happening, the warnings, the ballot preparation, all of that. Town meeting day of twenty eight would be the vote to form the Union School Districts. And under current law, and neither version amends

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: it

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: in any way, the vote to elect initial members of the school boards happens at the exact same time. And the warning for all of those is all spelled out current law. Then mid April to mid May, votes are certified. And there's a whole process specified in current law for how a new union school district is designated, depending on when votes are certified, etcetera. Then you're gonna have to have an organizational meeting held within, and then everything is tied to the certification of the new school district. So depending on when that happens, then there's an organizational meeting that needs to be held. And that's all spelled out in current law, the business to be transacted there, including the warning, who posts the warning, all of it's already there. Transition period is also spelled out. This is when you've got the asset and the liability transfers. At the same time, you're going to have your current school districts running parallel, taking care of the education for all the residents, students of the new Union School District as they normally would. And then on 07/01/2029, the new Union School Districts would become operational. All of the current school districts that voted to form the new union school district would cease to exist. And theoretically, your foundation formula would become effective if the contingencies have been met.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: Yeah. If a merger is ready before town meeting day twenty twenty eight, can they proceed or do they have to wait now until then?

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: Under the Senate version, the votes occur on 03/07/2028. So no. There's a separate section asking for the Secretary of State's office to give you all a report back early next year on the resources necessary for mail in ballots for that election and help that maybe local clerks may need, etcetera, to maximize voter turnout. Okay, so I did not, am hastily preparing this, I failed to include this new section that the Senate passed, section 13 a. So I'll update this and send Daphne if you want to put on the website. But section 13A, so we just walked through 13, that's the merger committee process. Section 13A is school district merger proposal, general assembly approval. This is essentially the charter change process for school districts that do not want to be isolated. They wanted to be part of a merger and it didn't happen to them. I think the term that was being used and was used on the Senate floor today was they weren't picked for the kickball team. So this is again, a very watered down charter change process. So eligible district means a school district that is not successfully merged with a neighboring school district on or before 07/01/2028, pursuant to section 13 of this act. So we're tying everything back to that process. So an eligible district may propose to the general assembly to merge the school district with a union school district by majority vote of the legal voters of that district present and voting in any annual or special meeting, warned for that purpose in accordance with the following procedure. So the board of an eligible district may propose a plan to merge with a union district. Either the board proposes it or they can be required to hold the vote if at least if petition to do so by at least 5% of the voters. And an eligible school district can only propose a plan to merge with the Unified Union district that is contiguous with. So the merger proposal has to include an analysis of the educational advantages and disadvantages of the merger and then staying standalone, the financial advantages and disadvantages of merger, standalone, operational and financial viability of both options, and any other advantages and disadvantages. I'm just skimming this. Within ninety days following the boat.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: I'm gonna, sorry, Beth, jumping in with a question.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: A little earlier, it said they have to be continuous. What if it's like the island's up and come back?

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: I'm not a visual learner, so I can't even picture that, to be quite honest with you. I don't know how to answer your question.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: Okay, so there are islands up here, and they may decide they want to merge with a district where they send lots of their kids to high school. Or South Burlington, not because they send a lot of stuff. I don't understand why we would I

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: think that's a good question for the education committee to be sitting with. I don't think it's a question that Beth can answer.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: I will let her know. That's good, Leanne. Thank you.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: And remember, this process is only if you've already gone through a merger process and the folks you have wanted to join forces with have told you no, thank you.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: Thank you.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: I'll answer the next question. That same topic.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: You go closer to the mic though.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: Yep. Yeah, Beth, I hope you can hear me. It's Caroline. So regarding that same scenario, Carol was just talking about where one of the towns in Grand Isle wants to merge with, wants their children to be able to go to South Burlington or Colchester or somewhere they've already been attending. Somebody in the governor's office told me yesterday that there hadn't been any changes at all regarding school choice. So those schools all have school choice for high school because they don't have one since the Albert High School closed down about twenty years ago. And so wouldn't that remain the same that they have now? So those kids could go anywhere the parent chooses. That's the ability they have right now. And if there wasn't any choice, any change, why wouldn't they stay the way they are?

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: This bill makes no changes to the town tuition program. It leaves how a school district is going to provide for the education of their resident students up to the study committees or the merger committees, and then ultimately up to a vote of the electorate, it is entirely possible that new school districts are going to form that were made up of formerly non operating districts, and they join forces with a giant operating district and they all become operating. It's also entirely possible that we go in the opposite direction. All the law that enables those local decisions to be made stays in place. So we won't know how the education for each resident student in Vermont is going to be provided until we get the results of the votes of each of these merger committees, should they recommend forming a new union district?

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: So the governor's office was wrong. Needs to vote.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: Don't think, I don't know the context in which the question was asked to the governor's office. So I hesitate to say whether someone was right or wrong, but I don't think that this bill changes. I don't think this bill requires any town or district in the state to provide for the education of its resident students in any specific way. It leaves that decision up to the voters.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: Thank you.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: Where were we? Okay, this is the Someone told you no, thank you, and you can't take no for an answer. So you wanna be part of a union school district. The board has done this analysis. The voters of the eligible school district, the one that's been left out, isolated district now vote. The question's determined by Australian ballot, and it's gonna be mailed to all of active voters not later than forty three days before the election. And then if the voters of the school district that wants to petition the legislature to force them to join another school district, vote yes, that's a great idea. Then the clerk of the school district sends the results to the Secretary of State who records the voting results, and then submits that to the Secretary of Education. The Secretary of Education delivers those copies and the results to the General Assembly. And then the General Assembly, either along with the minutes and the warnings and all of that from all of the meetings that happened related to this request. And then the merger proposal becomes effective upon your action. So very similar to a charter change. The school district is coming forward and saying, we were left out of this. We believe we belong with this school district. Please put us there. And you have that power under the constitution to do that. I left that out side by side just because, no real reason. It was a mistake. I will add it.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: Question? It goes just to the side of education. It doesn't go to the

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: state board then. No, and it's just there's no recommendations. It's just a chain of information that you shared. Yep. Okay, back to the side by side. 13b, the Senate added a moratorium on a school district or a town's, it's really a town's ability to withdraw from a union school district through fiscal year 2035. So under current law, there's a whole provision for how a town can petition to withdraw from a union school district. You don't wanna facilitate these mergers just to watch them fall apart in the next year, or maybe you do, come see me for an amendment. But this bill says you can't do that, at least through fiscal year two thousand and thirty five, which essentially brings you through the transition years of the foundation formula. Here's that Section 13C report is the report that you all will get back from the Secretary of State in consultation with school district clerks for all of the necessary funding and resources to support those town meeting day votes pre union school district formation, specifically what are the resources needed to ensure ballots are mailed to all active voters. Section 14, guidance for merger committee groupings. I'm just going to say that the merger committee groupings themselves are very different, and the best way to see that is on a map. So I'm not even going to bother to walk through that. But in the lead in language, the Senate did say that facilitators are required to include advisory representation on merger study committees from the four regional CTE districts, and they would be non voting members of any merger committee that they serve on, and they are likely to serve on many merger committees because those four regional CTE centers are probably serving a lot more school districts. They're made up of many school districts and the merger committees are likely to be smaller. So you're probably gonna see their representation on a couple.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair, House Education]: I've got some paper copies of the groupings for people to look at with the Senate laid over the House, and I'll pin it up here and leave a

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Education)]: couple on my desk here. Sarah, do you have

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: a link to that that we can share?

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair, House Education]: I should.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: I'm gonna ask a question. Yeah. We don't know anything about the qualifications or conflict of interest for facilitators, correct? But they happen to have been a board member in that region in the last three years or a superintendent in that?

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: No, the for There's nothing about conflict of interest. The language for facilitators is just that. Trying to avoid scrolling. Knowledge of an experience in the public education system, But no conflict of interest. Okay, so that takes us to section 15, Ferger Committee Results and Analysis. This is the final facilitator report. It is now due instead of 01/01/2029, 12/01/2028. It requires the facilitator to determine and identify any school district that is a bad faith participant in the merger committee process. And that is going to come into play for eligibility for school construction funding, the results of each merger committee, and then everything else that you all asked for. Section 16 is a report back to

[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: you

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: all. The House passed language requiring recommendations for supervisory union boundary adjustments and SESOT boundary adjustments. Senate passed language that just makes recommendations for SESA boundary adjustments, because I also, in my work with the Senate, discovered that there is a statute that requires the State Board of Education in Chapter 11 to make supervisory union assignment when they are certifying essentially the creation of the Union School District. So we're just gonna let that process play out. Section 16A is new from the Senate on page 28. It is a report back. So again, we're getting at that concept of isolated school districts. It's a report back to you all on or before November 1. The state board is reporting to you all with the name of any school district with an ADM of fewer than seven fifty students that has not successfully merged with a neighboring school district pursuant to this act. And if they do identify such a district, how to merge the district of neighboring larger school districts in order

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair, House Education]: to

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: promote financial and operational viability. So there's a process for school districts that were left out of a merger but want to be included. And this report should sweep those in, but it would also potentially identify school districts that don't want to be a part of a merger and maybe they need to be. And so this is a report back to you all and you can figure out what to do with those results.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: Section 17 is So it's a report back. It's not a mandate that then there will be Just vaccinations. My understanding is that a vast majority of the smallest districts are non operating and some are all raised. So I think that challenge of operating structures comes into play, certainly on display in Act 46. Okay, thank you.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: Section 17 Can I ask you a quick question before you move on? I noticed that some of the recommended merger groupings overlay multiple CSAT groupings. How is that sorted out? Do they have to request reassignment when they're reassigned to a new seesaw or is it automatic that the new merge district will be reassigned? Section 16 is a report back to you all with recommendations for new seesaw boundary adjustments. So, okay. So the agency and the state board will take care of that. They will recommend to the general assembly what those boundary adjustments should look like, and only you can affect them because those boundaries are set in statute. Do

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: you Okay.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Education)]: I also have a question about groupings. For a school district that is a member of modified unified union school district and the same town is also their own school district, But those two in these groupings

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: are in two separate groups.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: That seems like a problem to me.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Education)]: That seems like a problem to me, too. So a town is in two separate groups, separate districts with separate groups.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair, House Education]: Actually, if you could send me just the specifics on that.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Education)]: Well, was probably over, I would just state it to this book. Yes. I think

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: that would be very problematic. But remember, that section 14 is just ultimately recommendations. I understand. But yes, I think the goal with section 13, it's actually not the goal, it is the directive, is formation of a unified union school district, which would not allow for that split. Okay, so I'm sorry, section 17 is the appropriations for seesaws and merger committees, no substantive changes, just changing merger for study. And then do you want to talk about the whatever this is? So

[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: section 18 is the amendments to the effective date section of Act 73. It's where you'll find the effective date for the foundation formula and the accompanying tax changes. It's also where you find the contingencies for the foundation formula and those pieces. So the house construct had been effective FY '31, so 07/01/2030, and that's been accelerated by a year to 07/01/2029. So this would have foundation formula rolling out in fiscal year 2030. And then the changes that you can see here relate to the contingencies. The easiest way to describe the process that the Senate did here is they tried to dramatically condense and increase the specificity of the contingencies if possible. So the new package that you have here from the Senate is first, that the General Assembly has received two reports. So that's the foundation form of the report under Section 45A. That's already an existing contingency. And in place of the requirement that there be this clerk certification opportunity to study, They just have receipt of the facilitator report on the results of the merger committee process. In part, that was an attempt to address the possible problem of a rogue clerk preventing the rollout of the balance sheet formula. So the first two conditions have been collapsed into this receipt of these two reports. And then the Senate has taken a different approach to how to describe legislative enactment. On the House side, that was that legislation has been enacted that addresses a laundry list of items. And now the Senate has proposed language that gives a clearer trigger for meeting that contingency and also tries to tie some of the pieces to existing work being done. So you now have legislation has been enacted that expresses clear legislative intent to satisfy this condition by addressing each of the following components of the 45A report, CTE, special ed, sparsity measures, empirically supported secondary student weighting and geographic cost differences, implementation of a pre K funding mechanism, and measures for satisfying legacy collective bargaining agreements and capital indebtedness held by school districts. Squishing together the contingencies, creating a trigger for legislation related to you would include in legislation an intent section that says, I'm trying to meet this contingency by addressing these components, and then otherwise making conforming changes to the timeline rollout.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: Question.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: I've read this like five times, and I'm still trying to understand and make sure I understand from a non lawyer perspective. Does it materially mean the same thing, or does it mean that the legislature could pass a bill that says we have the intent to fund CTE and then the bill is about

[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: You could what do that.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: We know intent is different than statutory length. This is only intent, this is not.

[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: The way I think of this, you can satisfy, there's multiple ways I think you can try to satisfy this. So one that this is indicating, which is what you're getting at, is that you pass legislation with an intent section that says, I'm meeting the contingency of H95 by addressing da da da da da, and then it's a bill about pesticides. I think there would be lots of political constraints that could hinder that from happening. But yes, that is the idea is that you could satisfy this with legislative intent. The other way you could satisfy it is by addressing all of these things, which would express the clear legislative intent to address all the things because you did do it. So part of the issue that it's trying to resolve is that on the House side, you could have infinite questions as to whether you've met the contingencies. It's trying to create a trigger that's easier to meet. But you're correct that technically, I think you could meet this without doing much work, but you would face political constraints rather than legal constraints in that context. Imagine trying to pass a bill that just has intent language to satisfy the education transformation bills and doesn't do anything to do with it. Sounds like there would be a little bit trend there.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: I had

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: sort of a similar question. So the way I was interpreting the House passed language was that subsection D was sort of going to the substance of what this language calls on the legislature to enact. And then Sheriff, Representative Brady's question around, so does that concept in the House passed version still exist in the Senate passed version, but just with that added requirement to also express clear legislative intent or does that supplant the House passed?

[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: It's not an added requirement. It's not an

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: On the House test language that required the Department of Tax to come up with a widget, the interactive education funding calculator so that study committees or anyone really could figure out what their education payment would be under our current system versus under the foundation formula, the Senate removes that.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: Sorry, jumping in for one second to just offer that my understanding is that there is language that's being added to the budget to have the widget be one of multiple duties from the agency of education that they'll do in consultation with the Department of Taxes.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: Senate made no change to the pre K language that you all passed.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: Can we go over? Yep.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: Are you? I'm on page 32. G, I guess. Again, one I've read multiple times. Does this mean, check my understanding, that if we get the facilitator report about the foundation formula, we do all the merger committee reports, but that the report does not say we need an weight for high school, and therefore we do not enact a high school weight. The entire foundation formula is actually this contingency could

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: No, this is just for the additional it's just for sub sections B and C of section eight twenty three, which will be your new tuition section under the foundation formula. Subsections B and C were just allowing a receiving school, both public and independent, to charge up to 5% more of the base for high school students. And that was kind of in lieu of a weight for high school students. So it's just those two pieces. It's not the rest of the foundation formula.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: What does it do again, sorry, to

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: the 5% above base? It allows a receiving school to choose to charge a sending school district up to 5% of the base for each high school student that it receives on public tuition. But it has to meet certain criteria in order to be eligible to do that. And that's what I think B sets up to 5% and I think C spells out how you become eligible to do that. And both of those pieces are contingent on these contingencies taking effect. But they're completely separate subsection of the effective dates from the rest of the foundation formula.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: If we do not go down the path of weights for secondary students, it's preserving a mechanism for schools to charge up to 5% over base for secondary?

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: It's only if the 45A report contains evidence that it does cost more to educate students and you have not passed away.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair, House Education]: And then I'd recollect in order to actually charge that additional amount requires a vote.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: I think there's state board approval and you have authorized supplemental district spending for that purpose. Yes, there's several hurdles to jump for, yes. Widget. No change to pre K, no change to data collection, no change to special education funding. Section 24, the house passed language that would be contingently effective with the foundation formula that would prohibit a receiving school from charging tuition or fees on top of what they're getting from the sending school district. The Senate removed that language and replaced it with legislative intent language that takes effect now, well, 07/01/2026, but we're almost there. 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 a 10 versus the statutory change. And the Senate language is specific to tuition and says nothing about fees. Section 24A is passed by the house, was legislative intent language clarifying the effective date for section 24 and the Senate removed that. No change to Union School District study committee budgets, rulemaking, some very small changes here. No change to the small Sparks Schools rulemaking, the inter district budgeting rulemaking. The Senate clarified that the inter district budgeting rules need to be in relation to the foundation formula, And that that rulemaking is pushed out to 12/31/2028. The house passed version had that as 03/31/2027, and added some clarity that the inter district budgeting needs to support budgeting in a way that will afford students opportunities and excellent education. No change to the rest of the rulemaking and informs piece. Do you wanna talk about smallest of our schools?

[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: Sure. So the change that you see here is related to in Act 73, and I suppose what you can see here on the house side, small school has a two pronged piece. So one is you need to have been determined to be small by necessity, but there's also a numerical check. So you ask how many pupils, and the House contract has fewer than 100 pupils in two year average enrollment. The approach that the Senate took here is to say, well, schools could be sized wildly differently depending on the number of grades that they offer. They thought that average grade size might be a better measure for what a small school is. It maintains the dual prongs of small by necessity, but instead of having fewer than 100 pupils and two year enrollment, we now have an average grade size of fewer than 12 students. The technical piece I would note related to this is that count does not include pre K, but they move to this average grade size as the measure for small school.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: The Senate, so we're in the very final pieces of my sections here in the education committee's work. The Senate removed your definitions. So the House passed language that amended section 11 to add definitions for average class size, etcetera. The Senate struck that language and replaced it with its own language related to class size minimums. So what they did is they took the clock stoppage concept that was traveling in H nine thirty one, the miscellaneous bill that you all passed, where you had class size minimums, failure to comply with class size minimums couldn't be counted against you until either the rules were in effect or July '57, whatever came first. The Senate pulled that out of miscellaneous ed, bumped into section 29A of nine fifty five, kept the same, it shall not count against you concept, but tied it to the foundation formula being effective. So the failure to comply with class size minimums cannot be counted against you until the foundation formula takes effect for both public schools in subsection B1, Subdivision B1 and independent schools in Subdivision B2. Independent schools would continue to remain eligible to receive public tuition if they fail to comply with class size minimums until the foundation formula is in effect, which is a similar concept to public schools. And then they added a new section 29B.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: Before we go to that, and the one above, is it fair to characterize it as the class size minimums still exist in law because we passed them in Act 73? It's just that there is no enforcement until the foundation. Yes, I think that's fair. Yes.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Education)]: You had mentioned grade size minimums with small schools. Do any of those independent schools Do we need to look at that language to include grade school minimum as it pertains to independent schools?

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: No, this is The language that John just walked through was related to a grant for public schools only. And this is a different concept. Okay,

[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: thank you.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: So I would say that maybe it's not fair that there's no enforcement mechanism. It's that nothing can be held against you to trigger the enforcement mechanism. So the enforcement mechanism is still on the books and active, but the clock hasn't started ticking yet. And then Section 29B, the Senate added, which amends Section eight twenty eight, which is the statute that tells a school district who they can pay tuition to. Subdivision A-two is the list of things that an independent school needs to comply with in order to be eligible to receive public tuition. Act 73 added class size minimums to that list. The way I drafted it was that it swept in by just referring to Subdivision 9 in its entirety. I swept in all of the enforcement processes for public schools. When you've asked the state board to come up with a separate process for independent schools. So all this amendment does is say that independent schools have to comply with class size minimums up through the numbers. It excludes the enforcement process. So this is what it looks like. If the internet will work, there we go. Okay, so here's class size minimums. This is a little

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: bit of statutory construction that no

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: one asked for. Subdivision 9 is class size minimums. If you say comply with class size nine at Subdivision 9, that technically means compliance with subdivision A, B and C underneath nine. But subdivision B and C are specific to public schools. You have asked for the state board to come up with a separate process for independent schools for the enforcement process. So now that amendment section 29 B says independent schools, you have to comply with nine A, which is where the actual sizes live, not B and C.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair, House Education]: Just to be clear,

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: not that they won't have to comply, but not under this, the state board

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: of that is developing rules. For enforcement. Enforcement. Which needs to be substantially similar to the same opportunities offered to public schools. Yes.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: It's not saying, oh, you don't have to

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: really do it. You have

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: to follow your own process. Correct. Kate?

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: How does Section 29 be role for those kids who are going to a public school located in another state?

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: A public school located in another state does not have to comply with class size minimums. It's just listed as

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: eight twenty eight.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: It's just so in the list of a school district shall not pay the tuition of a student except to a public school located in another state. So there's no other qualifiers there. And that concludes my talking.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: Do you want me to keep sharing my screen? Before your talking has concluded, we have more talking for you.

[Rep. Charlie Kimbell, Member, House Ways and Means]: Hey, Beth, it's Charlie Kimball. All the definitions that you had in that section, is that anywhere else in the bill, or are all the definitions gone from the bill?

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: They're all gone.

[Rep. Charlie Kimbell, Member, House Ways and Means]: Is it your opinion that they are satisfied somewhere else in statute without this definition section?

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: None of these terms are defined anywhere else.

[Rep. Charlie Kimbell, Member, House Ways and Means]: Thank you.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: So

[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: we jump next to the school construction sections. Section 65, there's no change. And it's just your intent section for school construction. The simple way to explain the updates to section 66, the house provided staffing for AOE school construction division, but did not provide any FY '27 immediate funding for those positions. In an attempt to get the rollout to happen as quickly as possible. The defendant included a $500,000 appropriation in FY 'twenty seven for those positions, and then asked AOE to come back in FY 'twenty eight with figures for permits that hang up the division. Section 66A is a new section that appropriates $900,000 to the school construction aid special fund. This is for facilities master planning as part of the merger committee process. And so this would be exclusively available as part of that process. It's not a general grant for all kinds of Facilities Master Planning. It's just for those purposes. And it had initially been a million dollars and appropriations looked around. The amount of funding that was available had been reduced by 100 ks. Section 67 is your grant of rulemaking authority to AOE for school construction. This delays from the House position to 03/01/2028. That's your new deadline. That's the soonest proposed deadline for rulemaking on school construction. And it tries to increase the specificity of the directives for building out prioritization of bonus incentives. So you'll see that consolidating school governance structures is tied to that process under section 13, improving access for homeschool students to, and this is the call out that the Senate had been using, excellent educational opportunities, including CTE shared special ed services for high needs students, and approved comprehensive curricular offerings. Then they added a new directive here. So we're building up those prioritization of bonus incentives, reward school districts for remediating or eliminating health and safety issues. So three specific directives for building out those prioritization of bonus incentives. And then they dropped the requirement that the House had for rulemaking on the treatment of school districts' outstanding indebtedness. Part of their position came from, if you have the legacy debt aid section later in the bill and you're taking a position on what should be done, then why ask a re to do rule making as to how it should be treated. Section 68 is your advisory board report on identifying school construction opportunities. The simple way to explain the sentence changes, they were concerned essentially, I think that the house task might be too large. Identify opportunities for the construction or renovation, provide a full siting study of each, but this could be a quite lengthy list and that a full siting study for each might be too much to ask of this board that's relatively minimally staffed, right? So they took this down to identify three to five feasible opportunities for the construction or renovation of regional high schools. They have their call out. And then instead of a full final citing study, they said provide a preliminary citing study for each. It would still include that cost, location, other factors deemed relevant. We just thought that this might be more achievable. Section 68A is a new section. It's an intent section that says no state aid is going to be available under the school construction program until funding has been resolved and AOE has fully staffed its school construction division. Section 69 through 71, there are no changes. Those are statements of policy under the state aid program, AOE responsibilities, and advisory board responsibilities under the state aid for school construction program. Section 72 is the application process for state aid and the award of construction aid. And the pieces that you're going to see here, one is you'll recall that one of the eligibility conditions for receiving aid is that the applicant achieved the level of proficiency in the district quality standards related to facilities management. I think there was some concern that this, because just a self assessment, was maybe a bit weak. And so the change here is that the applicant demonstrates proficient substitute would be a requirement in the application itself to draw out factors that show you can meet those standards. They've added another new eligibility condition related to PCBs. This is tied to another bill that's traveling in the center. Think it's H592 maybe. But it's that if the applicant school district is applying for school construction aid for a building that was constructed or ventilated. Before 1980, they had completed that indoor air quality testing for PCBs. So just aligning with the approach that the Senate is taking elsewhere with PCBs.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair, House Education]: In the PCB bill, you'll see the exact same language when we get it back from the Senate.

[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: The Senate has also taken a different approach to solving the sequencing problem that we've already talked about before, that how do you know what to bond for if you don't know your state aid package that could include state bonding support. In looking at the ballot language that goes out to districts to vote on the bonds, you're just voting an authorized amount. You're not actually issuing any bond at that point. So you can go out and authorize the bond. You just need to not issue the bond until you know the actual state aid available. So they preserve the existing sequencing in the program for Max 73. And that's where you see the clarity right here on the final approval stage. One of the conditions is that the district has authorized a bond. And then what you see here now is just providing that clarity that provided that they shall not issue the bond until the secretary notified the districts of its state bonding support. Okay, there are some meaningful changes to the award of construction aid section. So the range of aid available on the house side was 50% to 95%. 50 is the base amount. You get an additional 45% of bonus incentives to take you up to that 95%. The new range that you see is 30 to 75%. So they've maintained the same amount of bonus incentives, 45% available, but they've lowered the base amount to 30%. And then one of the biggest things you see here is the highlighted piece here. Bonus incentives are exclusively available to a certain set of school districts. And so this language that you see is projects for which the applicant is a consolidated school district are eligible for additional bonus incentives up to that additional 45%. I'm going to skip past this C deck to tell you what a consolidated school district is. It's either of the following. It's a school district that results from a merger identified as advisable in that merger committee final recommendations, or it's a school district with an ADM of at least 2,000 students. So they're essentially doing a check on size. Did you merge pursuant to the study committee process or are you already at an ADM of 2,000? Only if you were one of these kinds of school districts would you be eligible to receive bonus incentives, meaning that if you were not one of these kinds of school districts, meaning that you both did not merge and are sub-two thousand and eight EM, your max award available under the program would be 30%. The other change that you see here is related to the recommendations related to bonding support available under the program. It's an annual recommendation under the Senate proposal. And instead of having that come directly from the treasurer, the Senate tasked CDAC with recommending. I don't think this is really that divergent from what the House had. It's the treasurer in consultation with CDEC, and the treasurer is on CDEC. Section 73 is the same info. That's your repeal of preferred maintenance, the provisional aid to projects resulting from significant deferred maintenance. Section 74, there are some meaningful changes. This is your legacy debt aid section. The first piece I would note is that under the House proposal that was effective July 1, obviously there wasn't revenue for that. So the first change is this is now in the Senate construct, contingently effective 07/01/2030, so with the remainder of the foundation formula. And then there are a few pieces. One is a callback to something that Beth noted a few times related to bad faith participant in that merger committee process. In the House proposal, it was 100 coverage of legacy debt aid for school construction. So what you have here is that a school district shall be eligible to receive legacy debt aid only if the district is not identified as a bad faith participant in the facilitator report. So default is that you would have this available, but if you are identified as such in that report, you would be kicked out of being able to receive this kind of aid. The other piece is instead of one coverage, 100 it's 75% coverage. And it's not just debt that's incurred. The new condition is debt that is approved by the voters of the district related to facility construction and renovation and for which construction has begun as of the end of twenty twenty five. So same cutoff date as the house, but instead of debt incurred by the end of that date, it is debt that has been approved and for which construction has begun. So someone might have started work but not taken that debt, and then a conforming change to the maximum annual support available related to that 75% cap. Sections 75 through 77 are the same as in the House construct. Those are technical updates to your education payments. And Section 77 is a big substantive one, but there's no change. It's exclusion of school construction expenditures from the cap on supplemental district spending. Section 77A is tied a little bit to the sequencing piece that we talked about in the school construction section. There's existing law that spells out the ballot that goes out for the occurrence of debt. So this is what a school district would use when it's going to authorize debt. And the Senate has just tried to boost some of the language here. They've cleaned up some outdated references to the old state aid program, and they've tried to provide some language to make the sequencing clearer. The way I would say this is that it adds disclaimer language to the ballot to advise voters that the annual debt service costs on school construction will be covered through your SDS tax and not subject to annual authorization. And they also provide information, not part of the ballot, but just information alongside a hearing, Provide information on potential SDS tax rates to voters under different aid scenarios, so if they receive no aid, if they receive the minimum aid of 30%, or if they receive the maximum of 75, what kinds of tax rates would they be looking at so they can have a sense of the potential future costs at the time that they authorize the debt. In any event, these would be estimates and that's something that's noted in the ballot language you see in C is that the board has to notify participants that those future SCS tax rates would vary annually based on a bunch of assumptions. But trying to make clear to voters that at the point they authorize a bond for school construction, there's more to come. You're going be covering it through your supplemental district spending tax, and you're only going to authorize it once through supplemental district spending, trying to get some sense of the rates they might face. Section eight is the ballot language for the supplemental district spending, so separate from the current debt. This is your authorization of supplemental district spending. And they've stuck with the House's approach, but tried to clean up some of the references, basically. So this is trying to maintain separation between ballots for regular annual supplemental district spending and one time authorization of supplemental district spending to cover those ongoing annual debt service costs. So they just tweaked some of the lead in language, but it's the same concept as the House was pursuing. The one new piece you might see in the ballot here is that in your regular annual supplemental to your extending ballot, so not one for school construction, It does have new language included here to say, if you don't approve supplemental district spending, here's the rate you're going to face just to cover your annual debt service costs. Letting voters know that even if you vote down a regular supplemental district spending, you might still have an ongoing annual cost. Similarly, on the other side, your one time authorization ballot for supplemental district spending of annual debt service costs for school construction. John, sorry to interrupt.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: Okay. Representative Odie has a question.

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: Thank you. I really have

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: to think about what you're saying here, but does this then force us? I might know the answer to this, but I'm curious about whether this forces a school district to spend its full equal opportunity payment and then forces them to spend above that for the bond, to repay the bond with supplemental district spending. I think probably not because it's something you just said, but can you talk about that please?

[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: Yeah, so educational opportunity payment is not for the bond costs and you would cover bond costs through supplemental district spending. That's why it is excluded from the cap on supplemental district spending.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: Okay, then my next question is, when you're paying, when you're spending supplementally that way, will you have to pay for your bond repayment plus more because you are using supplemental district spending that will go with some fund?

[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: I'm not sure I'm fully understanding, but you're-

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: I think with my big picture with Brigham, if you do supplemental district spending and you're able to do that, we said, well, if you have supplemental district spending, then you will have to spend some of what you have in the supplemental district spending, you can spend on a local level. And then some of it, they just might have to go into a fund if they don't know what we're do with that fund. Remember them.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: They're don't know if was

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: paying attention to four people who walked in on the next question. This is important. Okay. All right. So when we were talking about this a while ago, we said, because of freedom, if everyone got into opportunity payment and then someone said, well, I'm gonna have to do supplemental spending, you don't get to keep 100% of what you voted on supplemental to expand, you have to share some of that.

[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: Yes, And but you

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: so what I'm So I'm wondering if it's for a, to repay a bond to build, do you have to do that sharing? There are two different supplemental districts' spending. But

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: John can explain that. I think your question is, is the construction supplemental district spending also taxed at different rates depending on the brand list strength of your community? Yes. John, did you hear that question?

[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: Yes, and it is. It's raised in the ways that other supplemental district spending is raised. The thing where I started, I'm sorry to interrupt you, was in pointing out that in every case, a school district raises the full amount to cover its supplemental district spending. It's just that it always raises extra. So I thought the direction you were heading is that they might not have enough money to cover their annual debt service costs, but they would. It's just that extra is raised, which is used to buy down the following year tax rates. It is raised in the way that supplemental strict spending is typically raised, is tied to the lowest taxing capacity district, the rate that would be required to raise it there?

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: There are many things about that I have concerns about, but one of the things is if we want to encourage people to consolidate and merge, but we then ask them to pay not just the price to do that, to build a new building, but in addition,

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: have to pay

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: more. Why would you make that choice? It is a question to Caledonia. It is a question to Thank you.

[Rep. Charlie Kimbell, Member, House Ways and Means]: Hey, John, while we have the mic open, on the legacy debt, if 75% is being taken over by essentially the education fund, In the discussion with the Senate, did they think of where the extra 25% was going to come from?

[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: Yeah. To take down legacy debt? The assumption was that it would be covered through supplemental district spending. So that's a good point is that in this reduction from 100% coverage of legacy, you would now have, at least as contemplated here, some amount that's intended to be covered ongoing through supplemental district spending. And in those cases, not subject to any authorization because you've already authorized that indebtedness.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: And folks, we don't need to figure this all out now. We just need

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: to understand what the Senate did. I'm just gonna say, you have legacy debt and then you're subject to this with supplemental spending, you didn't know going in how this is gonna be working out. So other people who are building later would say, Oh, well, I have to take all these things into account and I can do that and then make my decision. Those with legacy debt have that choice taken away from them. Thanks. I don't know. Oh, yep.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: Representative Bennington, you should move closer. It is really

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair, House Education]: hot. Okay,

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: so I think I understand it about the legacy debt. That is not included in the cap, right? Somewhere along, I heard that, your spending.

[Rep. Carol Ode, Member, House of Representatives]: Yeah, so

[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: A couple of things there. So legacy debt aid itself would be something that the state extends. But I think the question you're asking about is if there's a portion remaining for the school district to cover after receiving any legacy debt aid, would that be subject to a cap? And the answer is no, that is not. That's excluded from your SDS cap.

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: Okay, thank you. That clarifies it. And then what about that the AOE has to hire more personnel before they can allow any more construction? Did I mishear that or what is that? I think it was back in Beth's testimony or maybe in the beginning of yours.

[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: Yeah, so there was intent language that spoke to how there simply wouldn't be state aid available under the program until a couple of conditions have been met. One is the really obvious one, which is that the funding sorts itself be resolved by you guys. And so whether you provide that condition or not, it has to be met. But the other was that the Agency of Education has fully operationalized its school construction division. And that's really just meant to be a practical point that until there is rulemaking and a division in place to review applications, even if you had funding available, there would be no reviewed applications because the work wouldn't be done. So that's just an intense section, but it's trying to give some indication of the kind of work that needs to be completed before any aid is gonna go out to districts. In part, the Senate, if I understand it, had included this intent language because there was some concern that if you had all of these school construction sections to be built and didn't include some disclaimer that the money still isn't there, that school districts might be hanging their hat on the fact that come July 1, they're suddenly gonna come into a bunch of cash, which isn't what's proposed here.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair, House Education]: May need to pause here. We have a roll call vote on the floor. What's our availability with all of y'all?

[Beth St. James, Legislative Counsel]: Probably freely available.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair, House Education]: We are already up to page 58 of 65. We're

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: We'll all head back after the roll call.

[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: Yeah.

[Rep. Peter Conlon, Chair, House Education]: Thank you

[Rep. Emily Kornheiser, Chair, House Ways and Means]: very much.