Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Good morning.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Good morning. Morning.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Thanks for all the fun yesterday. So today is January. We are going to spend the morning together reviewing what is in Act 73. It's a lot in there, and it's been a while since we spent time with it. And so this is intended as a fairly intensive review. I would encourage us to focus on just fully understanding what's there instead of jiving yet into things we might want to change or our perspectives on it, but really flagging unfinished work and actually just fully understanding the implications of some of it. And then after lunch, we're gonna do our first conversation that will lead to the yield bill with the December 1 letter with Julia, and then head into the State of State. And we won't come back here after the State of the States. Any questions, announcements?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Exciting, thanks, Sarah. Okay, cool.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Beth, would you like to join us?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Morning. That's St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel. I'm starting the year with a cold, so apologies ahead of time. I will eventually start coughing. But you're getting me in the mornings, so finance is going have a way worse time. Thank you. Okay, so Act 73, if you don't remember, which I hope you all do, I do. I'm your education policy gal, so I'm responsible for the first thirty three secondtions of Act 73. So that's what I'm prepared to talk about in the first hour. I'm gonna stick around when John comes in, in case there's anything that comes up that I can lend some expertise to. A couple of mentions of of what you have on your website. So Sorsha has posted I have a slide deck, which is summaries of the various sections that I can be responsible for. And that's what I intend to walk through this morning. They are summaries. They are not every single word or concept that is contained in those first thirty three secondtions. So if there is a question about wording or a particular detail that I didn't feel was necessary to put on the slide, we're always gonna wanna go back to the plain language in Act 73, which Sorcha has posted for you. Sorcha has also posted the act summary, which reads oddly, but it's all there. There's also a timeline. And I think that's it for me. I do have I did not send it to Sorsha, because I prepared the list of reports for the education policy committees with hot links. And so there are many reports that are supposed to go to the education policy committees and not to the money committees. But many of them are you would be interested in. So if you're interested in that, I can send it to Sourcet. It has hot links for every report that I could get my hands on. So with that being said, I'm gonna share my screen. And please, you want me to move on from a concept or a slide or a section, let's move on. If you want me to spend more time on it, then I'm inclined to redirect my attention. So again, high level overview of the education policy sections in one through 33. There is one that really straddles education policy and education finance, and that's the tuition aid sections. So we'll pay special close attention to those. Section one of Act 73, and I put page numbers on here so you can refer to the act itself.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Thank you.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The findings and intent section were six pages. I did not cut and paste them here because that seems like a waste of PowerPoint slides, But it is where your plan for this year lives, your intent for a plan for this year lives. Do you want to look at that in the act, or do you want to move on to the substitution? Don't what mean. To look at it? Well, I have it queued up. So we're starting at the very beginning, findings and intent. I'm going to skip over all the beautiful references to Brigham. And we're gonna go right to subsection b, your intent and plan for the 2026 session. So remember, this is intent language. You cannot bind yourselves this year, but this is what you all passed last year. So in the 2026 session, it is your intent to enact larger school district boundaries. Those boundaries would be effective 07/01/2026. There's three subdivisions here about updating the CTE system, governance, delivery, funding. Begin a process to create voting wards within those new school district boundaries that you formed.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Is it helpful for people, for me to point out where my understanding of how, like, where that work's gonna start right now? Okay. So as Beth goes Sorry about this. Slow this down. So CTE is hypothetically going to start in commerce or in the Senate. I don't know yet, but it's not here. Because the fiscal landscape needs to Well, could be very straightforward in some scenarios and very not straightforward in other scenarios. And so they figure out how the governance and delivery will work. The voting words is GovOps, but education has to, of course, do more work. And there is, I believe, still a there's a working group that's still in operation for that. The of State's office.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The fall is your intent this year to establish an appropriate weight for pre K students, as well as enact changes to publicly funded pre K program, then ensure costs are borne by the appropriate funding source, depending on the age of the student and the pre kindergarten education provider. We're going to start that off Friday.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: And

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: then subdivisions B and C here are basically saying that you're going to provide the agency of education, the field, the clerks, anyone who would be involved in getting new school districts up and running, you'd be providing them with the necessary staffing and resources to do that. And then there was this piece of intent language that was added at the very end of the process. It's basically a list of all of the things that you intend to do to reduce property tax bills. Do you want to go through line by line? This is basically a summary of what the bill does.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: So

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: that's section one. That's your intent section. Moving back to the slides. Section two of the bill was a refocus on the Commission on the Future of Public Education. That's pages six through 18 of Act 73. The actual changes that you made in Act 73 are, I don't mean to say small in a substantive way, but there's just a lot of language that is not new language in those six to 18 pages. What you all did last year in Act 73 was that you refocused the charge of the commission, And I've listed the four things that you asked them to do. Recommend recommendations for roles, functions, or decisions should be a function of local control and what roles, functions, or decisions should be a function of control at the state level. The necessary updates to the roles and responsibilities of school district boards and the electorate. A process for communities served by a school to have a voice in decisions regarding school closures, and a process for monitoring implementation of the act. And then I've linked here anywhere where you see an underline, that's a hot link to the report. So this is the final findings and recommendations of the Commission on the Future of Public Education.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: So we have an operational definition of control. Is that just referring to decision making or is that referring to responsibility to making sure that we get stuff?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Because those are different. I don't think local control or control was defined in Act 73, nor do I think it's defined in Title 16. Section three. Not lasting nearly as long as I thought it would. I apologize. School District Redistricting Task Force. You could take

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: breaks if you need. I can get you to

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm okay. This whole pocket is full of crap. Created this. So section three created the school district redistricting task force to recommend new school district boundaries and configurations to the General Assembly. That's all I've put here for a summary. I've linked to their final report. Happy to switch over to the Act if you want to look at anything specific in their enabling language. This is the section four created the school district voting.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Let me say one thing about this. So my understanding and talking to our own member that served on it, as well as one of the chairs, is that their final report, essentially, how would that fit into the fiscal side of things, was outside of their jurisdiction. And so the education committee is going to be spending a lot of time with their final report, but we won't until the education committee tells us something.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Section four- I encourage people to read it. Sorry, Beth. Section four is the School District Voting Award Working Group, which is what your chair mentioned earlier regarding creating the wards constitutionally apportioned voting wards in new school districts. This group is up and running. I believe they've met at least twice, but they can't do really any work without new school district boundaries to create those voting wards within. My understanding is that they are ready and willing when you signal them that they're up. I will note that they are required to provide recommendations to you all regarding school board size, but there is no date deliverable. So if and when this is more for the Education Policy Committee, but if and when the legislature gets to a point where they are deciding how big school boards should be, there's nothing in Act 73 that would trigger that recommendation. Y'all are gonna have to be reaching out to that group. Section six, class size minimum, pages 27 to 31. So I've summarized class size minimums here. Class size minimums do not take effect until 07/01/2026. There is no contingency.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Blake, do you want to finish your sentence? What

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: did we define in the bill? Did we define the numerator and denominator? Is this an average class size or is this individual? I believe that the word is average. Was there any contingency related to early college and how the impact of early college versus, the impact, did it mention that at all in the context of the high school

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: classes? No. Terminal courses and advanced placement courses are exempt from class size minimums. So the law does not require a certain number of kiddos in AP calculus. That doesn't necessarily mean that the school district is not going to make a different decision about whether or not to offer that class based on how many kids are available to take it. But the law does not require that there be 12 students in AP calculus. And who I'm sorry. Who defines what a terminal class is? Because there are different terminals in different schools currently. Yes, and that is not defined in Act 73. So I'll just let the class size minimum speak for themselves. Mult there's also a limit on multi age classrooms from kindergarten through grade 12. This is limited to two grades per class, grade levels per class. And then you can see that there are exemptions. Pre k, kindergarten, CTE, flexible pathways, terminal courses, advanced placement courses, courses that require specialized equipment, driver's ed, and then small group services for special education or extra academic support are all exempt from the class size minimums requirements.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Yes. So on this, I noticed that instead of saying advanced courses, they chose to use a test based curriculum that incurs additional costs, which is AP. And there are many schools that do not do AP on purpose for that reason. Does this create an incentive for people to shift to AP? Oh, I don't know. I think that

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: would be a question for the field. It's a policy question. My understanding is that advanced placement courses, you can still take it and not take the AP exam.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: I guess my question is more, it has lowercase a p? Is this a higher case AP course where it

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I think that's a policy question for someone outside of Surin.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Alright, I will ask them. Because it has potential for me. Yeah, because you have to train your sons also.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Representative Burkhardt.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Can you remind me, is there anything in here that puts

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: any limits on stat size? Just class size? The state board may grant a waiver to a school if it is geographically isolated or it's working on a plan to come into compliance. And if the school is not meeting class size minimums over three consecutive years, the secretary may take the actions that the secretary is already allowed to take under education quality standards regarding helping that school come into compliance. So the way this works is there seems to be a lot of confusion about this. Press record out there. Class size minimums do not take effect until 07/01/2026. If a school is not meeting class size minimums over three consecutive years, that puts us in 2029, then the secretary may take the actions, moving on to section seven, that the secretary is already allowed to take when a school is not meeting education quality standards under section one sixty five subsection b in title 16. That requires that the secretary start with notice in writing to you of what you're not compliant in. So in this case, class size minimums. And two years of technical assistance. So that puts us in two thousand and thirty one. And then if after those two years of technical assistance, the secretary feels that there is still some noncompliance or still room for improvement, the secretary may make recommendations to the state board for further steps. Those further steps already exist and already existed prior to act one seventy three. Act one seventy three did not amend those steps in any way. It includes more time for technical assistance. It includes supervisory union adjustment boundaries. It includes consolidation. It includes the state actually taking over the school.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Yes.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Tell me if I'm wrong, I don't If after two years of technical assistance, the school still has not come to compliance, the secretary is required to make recommendations. You said secretary may.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, then that was a mistake on my part. The secretary is required. And that may be no further further action.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Right.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think I think After providing two years of support, the secretary needs to be able to say, where are we going from here? Either we're all good or here are the things that we need to do to continue to help this school improve. So for for class size minimums, they don't go into effect until 2026. The secretary is not allowed to intervene for non compliance and class size minimum until it's three consecutive years of noncompliance. So that's 2029. The secretary needs to offer at least two years of technical assistance. That's 2,031. And only then would they be able to secretary be able to make a recommendation to the board for next steps on getting a school into compliance. So when it comes to class size and minimum specifically, it's not until 2031 that if a school was non compliant, the state board would get involved. If the state board gets involved, section seven of Act 73 says, of the menu of options available to you, consolidation is off the table if it's going to generate construction costs and the school district can't pay for those construction costs out of a capital reserve fund. Until you all work some magic, and you've either come up with new school district boundaries, or you've taken further action regarding the consequences for failure to meet EQS. And that's just in relation to class size minimum non compliance, not anything to do with any of the other education quality standards or student performance standards that the secretary and the state board are monitoring. Everyone clear on that? Enough to move on? Okay. Section eight required the State Board of Education to update its education quality standard rules to reflect the new class size minimums, and they would need to initiate those, that rulemaking on or before 08/01/2026.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Excuse me.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It also updates our education quality standard rule series on or before 07/01/2027 with statewide graduation requirements. And those requirements would take effect beginning in the twenty seventwenty eight school year, which would be the class of 2030.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: A quick clarification. Are we still in the land of no contingencies?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Yes. All of this is a law. Well, Section eight was effective, I believe, 07/01/2025, or on passage. So this is all

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: current law.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Do we know if JFO has estimated the cost? Because school districts have been working for five years to develop graduation. JFO is coming in tomorrow. Some people ask them if they anticipated the cost and the administrative impact of that language right there.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Section eight also requires the state board to update a different rule series, the independent school rule series, to again reflect class size minimums, and we will look at where those come into play later in the bill. It also requires a report to you with proposed standards for schools to be deemed small by necessity or sparse by necessity. I became aware yesterday that this report does exist. I could only find it on the agency's website, and I did not update my slide deck. But we can get you a link to that as well.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Can we also ask you about because there is currently no collection or ability to validate class sizes? It's an independent school, so that's a new collection of data, and so would be worth getting a cost estimate for that as well. But also, do we have a definition of what a class is? Because there are independent schools who say they do only individualized programs. Does that mean they're not subject to class size requirements? They say every student is on an individualized plan. I don't know how to answer that question.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Class is not defined. They are independent schools that wanna be eligible to receive public tuition are required to follow the class size plans. So think that would be a question for whoever is doing that approval process, which is the state board, and how they are interpreting that. And if that is even something for the Remember, we will get there, but Act 73 narrowed the criteria for eligibility to be able to receive public tuition. And so I don't know if that limited number of schools falls into that category. I think it also applies to elementary schools, for example, in the public sector. If everything is individualized,

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: I don't know how you approve the multi age restriction is my point. I mean, is an independent school, for example, that has eight students. They are approved technically under Act 73. Is when it comes to the class size requirements, are they going to be, is a high school? Are they just gonna say, hey, we don't have classes?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: It seems like that's a good question for the board or for the education Well, committee to class pick

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: too because it affects our guardrails, because we can also legislate to definition on what we mean by class sizes. Sure,

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I would say legislating about the class sizes is more the purview of the education committee than the purview of the Ways and Means Committee. I would It's get into

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: funding it if

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I should. Yes.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Yes. I would say, it sounds as though there are things that, rather than do a presentation, about the structure of it, I don't know, but it would be nice if the education committee and we could hear these comments, if they could hear these comments, because these are, sometimes you can call them loopholes, what's a terminal horse, Definitely just different, and I'm thinking this is just pretty messy. So I guess I

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: would ask you both or anyone else to have a conversation with members of the education committee and see if they're aware of it or not. And if they're not, we can figure out how to tackle that.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: It's a way you should talk to them. Yep. Just talk to them. Alright. We have. Okay.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Uh-huh. Just Can I the report about sparse by necessity, is that the one you just said that you found?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Okay, great. Thank you. And are you going to add

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: is it on your hyperlink? I'm going to

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: add it. Great. Thank you.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: But I was thinking also, I know there are discussions around the graduation requirements they've been having, but not a final recommendation yet.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: They have this, the agency, so we're to go, we're going to, thank you for the segue. We're going to jump to section nine, which requires We

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: jump to section nine on section eight, the small and sparse by necessity, that is deeply tied to weights and grants. And so we will schedule testimony about that report and have someone come in for it. Just want to flag that as a next step for folks.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And I believe the report is in the form of a slide deck.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I've talked to a number of folks who are writing reports this year and all over state government. And I've said, it's okay to do a slide deck sometimes. And if anyone feels that that's not true, let me know at some point, and I will discuss that. Yeah, you love it? I would like to say,

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: I think that's a really good idea. It takes too much time to write everything down. And it's easier for us to comprehend. On

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: the small what is the interplay between that language and those recommendations and the state board granting waiver for geographically isolated?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I believe the state board is also supposed to come up with recommendations for what it means to be geographically isolated when they update their class size. So Rep Kimbell, Section nine requires state board requires AOE to recommend statewide graduation requirements to the state board, and they have done that. And I have a link to that report for you all. The state board owns that rule series. And so the agency is required to make recommendations, and now the state board has them and has to begin their process of figuring out what they're going to actually adopt and put into the rule. Also in Section nine, AOE is required to honor before 01/15/2027, so next year, develop and publish a statewide school calendar that was going to effect for the twenty eight-twenty nine school year, so that's a ways off. And then a bunch of reports. This was drafted as one report, and you are getting multiple different reports to meet all of this. So I have hot links to everything. Not on this slide deck, but in the reports for SORCIA. Recommendations, so AOE to you all. Proposed implementation plan for statewide financial data and student information systems. Recommendations for a school construction division with AOE. Progress report regarding the guidance that they would be giving to the field for district mergers, and recommendations for the need for cooperative education services and the oversight of therapeutic schools. I believe all of those reports from AOE on the legislature's website and they are linked in my reports document that I will get you. Section 10 requires the State Board of Education to essentially do a sunset review of all of the rules that they own, figure out what's no longer necessary and what rules need to be updated, and then report back to you all with a plan for that update and recommendations for rules to sunset. And that report or recommendation is not due to you until December or so for the next biennium. In the interest of time, I'm just gonna say sections 12 through 20 are your state age school construction program. I've listed out what each section does. So there's statement of policy, there's the creation of the program, there's the advisory board, there's the special fund, there's the approval and funding statute that talks about all the criteria that goes into approval, and then there's the small statute regarding appeal of state aid decisions. The state aid school construction program, so sections twelve, thirteen, sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen don't take effect until 07/01/2026. The State Aid for School Construction Advisory Board went into effect on 07/01/2025. They are up and running. And they have a report for you all regarding legacy debt and mergers, and what do you do with it. Section 19 transfers rulemaking authority from the state board to AOE. And then Section 20 is the repeal of all the current law for school construction, because we've replaced it now with everything that goes into effect 07/01/2026. Section 21 is an amendment to 16 BSA eight twenty eight. This is current law. This went into effect on 07/01/2025. No contingencies. Pages 50 to 52 in the bill. This is the statute that tells public schools who they can pay tuition to, what kinds of educational programs. So in the first bullet there, I've listed everything other than approved independent schools. So public schools located in Vermont, independent schools that meet AQS, tutorial programs, approved education programs, a public school located in another state, and therapeutic approved independent schools located in Vermont, another state or another country. So those are all educational programs or types of schools that the school district could tuition a student to. And they can also tuition a student to approved independent schools that meet all of this new criteria that Act 73 added last year. So the approved independent school needs to be located in Vermont. Needs to already have been an approved independent school on or before 07/01/2025, needs to be located geographically, either within a supervisory district that does not operate a public school for some or all grades as of 07/01/2024, or a supervisory union with one or more member school districts that do not operate a public school for some or all grades as of 07/01/2024. It needs to have had at least 25% of its student enrollment composed of tuition students during the twenty three-twenty four school year, and it needs to comply with class size minimums. I believe the agency has a list of schools that comply with these standards on its website. Act three.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: What is your sentence?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Act 73 also adds a definition to therapeutic schools.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: So, was complying with the exercise minimum. But they have all the same GOAT secretary, all the same dates. So,

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: yes, there is session law in here that requires Let's see. Let's just look at it.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: So,

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the school complies with the minimum class size requirements contained in Subdivision 165 A-nine, which is what we walked through related to class size minimums. However, if the school is unable to comply with class size minimum standards due to geographic isolation, or a school has developed an implementation plan to meet the class size minimum requirements, the school may ask the state board to grant a waiver. So that's the same as public schools. And then up here in section eight, when

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Let's go back to the Act.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So when the state board updates the independent school approval program to require independent schools that intend to accept public tuition to comply with class size minimums, they also have to create a process for a review by the state board for failure to meet class size minimums and the corresponding actions the board may take for such non compliance. And it requires the board to provide an approved independent school a substantially similar opportunity to come into compliance as it would to a public school. So because the public school process is tied to education quality standards, and independent schools are not required to follow education quality standards, You couldn't just say this all applies, or there was a policy choice to say this doesn't apply, but you got to offer them the same similar opportunities. That's a great example and not every detail is on slides. Section 22. So that's tuition. That's who gets money. Later on, we'll get how much money do they get. Section 22 allows students that were enrolled in the 2024 school year or accepted for enrollment. Now they would be enrolled in the twenty five-twenty six school year and an approved independent school that was eligible to receive public tuition under the law prior to Act 73, they can continue to receive tuition until they graduate, even if that school doesn't meet the new standards. Sections 24 through 26 are changes to the appointing authorities of the State Board of Education. State Board of Education is made up of 10 members prior to Act 73, this is current law. This took effect on 07/01/2025. Prior to Act 73, the governor appointed all 10 members. Act 73 changes the appointment authority for two members. So the governor retains appointment authority for eight members, including two student members. And now the speaker of the house gets one appointment, and the senate committee on committees gets another appointment. And then in perpetuity, if there's a vacancy in a seat, whoever the original appointing authority was would fill that vacancy. There's a transition period in section 25, so the speaker is going make a first appointment to a vacancy that occurs after 07/01/2025. Senate Committee on Committee is the second, then the governor, and so on. Section 26. The governor retains the removal authority over all board members regardless of who the original appointing authority was. However, the appointing authority that made the initial appointment would fill the vacancy that's created by the removal. So the governor can remove someone that the speaker appoints, but then the speaker gets to fill that vacancy. Section 27. This is the section that I alluded to that I think is the most straddles most the policy and the money the most in the sections that I am responsible for. This is pages 56 through 58 of your bill. This section, section 27, is contingently effective along with the foundation formula. So this section that we're about to walk through is tied directly to the foundation formula, contingently effective on 07/01/2028 if, I put the contingency down here, new school districts are operational and the cost factor formula report is received by you all and you've had an opportunity to enact legislation and consideration of root care. So section 27 does not go into effect unless those contingencies are met.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I'm trying to find the words on the screen and I can't. Contingency about it's just the opportunity to enact legislation, we don't to enact legislation. Correct. That is charming. Okay, thanks.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Can't find your Can't find your stuff. No, I love it. Current law tuition is set in various different ways. Public schools set tuition and school districts are required to pay it. If an electorate decides to pay more than the average announced tuition for an approved independent school, the school district pays it. If the school district and the approved independent school come up with an agreement, school district pays it. Many independent schools were working with average to announce tuition is the cap. Yes. Can I ask

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: you to clarify, because some of this will carry forward, but it's going be in place right now? And I was under the understanding that receiving school could not charge different districts different tuitions. But we schools that

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: are doing that currently. I don't know that off the top of my head. I'd have to go back into Title 16 and take a look at that. I'm happy to do that after. That'd be great.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: And I can send you the section statute that I was looking at because there are districts that are being charged different tuitions at the same school. And then the other question I had is, from the implications of the funding formula, what's the impact of the fact that some of the schools that are approved to receive tuition are charging families individually significant tuition above the tuition paid by the school district? How does that affect how we calculate what the cost of education is for the purpose of setting weights? Well, one, we haven't walked through this yet. So we haven't put in context the language of Act 73.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Two, I think you're talking about, A, I'm not JFO. So I'm not your money gal. But also, I think there's a difference between private pay and taxpayer education dollars. So I understand there are policy implications in that. But when we're talking about the cost of educating a child, I would want to know, you talking about the public cost of educating a child or

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: That's a policy choice. Let me just ask one more question just to clarify, if I could, around the CTE. So if I read this correctly, the way this is written, right now, if you are an approved CTE center, you can charge a CTE tuition to all students, even if they never take a CTE course. And I'm assuming that we're assuming that will continue in the new foundation, but the way this is

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I guess I want to interrupt on the CTE question, because I think at the very beginning of the bill, we set the clear guidance that CTE would be something that would be solved before this was implemented. And so the CTE language in here is not I don't think the intent of it was to be carried forward into the full implementation of Act 73.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Let's walk through the actual language, but let's walk through the summary that I have here, and then maybe that will answer some of your questions. So under the foundation formula that, remember, is contingently effective 07/01/2028. So this has not taken effect yet, and it will not take effect unless the contingencies are met or you make some other changes this year or the next year. Transition is now under the foundation formula, the base and weights follow the student. So you have your not super fair because John hasn't walked through the basic foundation formula, but if you all remember, now under the foundation formula, there's a base amount for each student. And then weights would be applied on top of that base amount, depending on the characteristics of the student or the school district. So for tuition, a district is required to pay a receiving school the base plus the weights for each student. So each student has the potential to bring a slightly different amount of money with them to a receiving school, because different weights may be applied to students differently. At the very least, everyone would be bringing the base with them. So public schools and approved independent schools are no longer setting their tuition. Base and weights is what follows the students. However, the act 73 does allow for high schools. So for each student attending grades nine through 12, a receiving school, a receiving school would include a public school or an approved independent school, to charge up to 5% of the base amount, so no weights, just the base amount, for each student attending the receiving school. If the receiving school has received approval from the state board to charge the fee, and the electorate of each school district with at least one student attending or receiving school has approved supplemental district spending for the purpose of this additional fee and an amount sufficient to cover the additional fee. So lots of hoops to jump through to be able to charge this extra fee. And it's only for high

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: school students. We'll talk about the supplemental district spending then, John. You.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Approved independent school in Vermont functioning as an approved area CTE center cannot charge this additional fee, and we'll get to why that is in a second. And receiving schools that elect to charge the additional fee and are eligible to charge the additional fee have to charge the same fee for every student to every school district. You can't charge school district A, 2% of the base, school district B, 3% of the base, and school district C, five percent of the base at the flat fee for everyone.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Yes, Representative Ode. I wanna be sure that I understand electric means you go to the voters and you have a vote about

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: supplemental. We'll spend a lot of time in supplemental district funding, won't you?

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: I am not.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: I want to be sure, but I'll try to miss what I just said. Okay. But just to be clear, to go back to what was said earlier, supplemental district spending is completely separate from private fundraising to offset cost of education at these locations.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: We're just talking about public dollars here.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: I'm not sure this is appropriate for right now, but what is the purpose of this

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: fee, the 5%? We'll talk about supplemental district spending, and that's, yep.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Yes. I get that fundraising that's, isn't in here, but don't we have to look at it tonight? I know, we're not going look at it

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: right now. No. We're just going to try to understand Act 73. Going forward. Yes. Alright.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. So the last piece to this puzzle in section 27 is that a district is required to pay the full tuition charged students attending an approved independent school functioning as an area CTE center. So that would be the two tech centers that are approved independent schools. This is current law. Act 73 carried that in. Whatever you think about the policy implications of that or what it's actually meaning, the law says pay the full tuition charge to the students. The law does not comment on what that tuition is paying for, whether that's CTE courses or not. Section 28 repeals the tuition statutes that would be unnecessary under the foundation formula. And again, that's contingently effective on the foundation formula actually taking effect. And then Section 28A requires the State Board of Education on or before 07/01/2027, to adopt rules to govern the approval process for a receiving school to charge that additional fee. And the approval process has to include a requirement for the receiving school to demonstrate the fee is necessary to educate the students that the fee is being applied to, and that fees will not be used to shift costs elsewhere within the school's budget?

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Do you know how a school would do that? Just presenting its overall budget or its tuition rates or?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's a good question. I don't know.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: We'll hold that for when feel like you will come in. Thank you. Represent Masland.

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: Yeah, and just, my question is very similar to Charlie's. Won't reiterate it, but yeah, I'm concerned about what the demonstration is, because there's potentially a lot of wiggle room there.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's a great question for the field, especially the board who will be

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: writing these tools. And we'll have some folks from the board in as well.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: I don't know which way this goes. Does the electorate still vote on a budget even when they don't want extra supplemental districts? No, knew it.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And that's a great question to go deeper with John on.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: That I have an issue with.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Great, we're just talking about what's in the bill. Always good to

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: put a

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: flag in the ground early. Yeah,

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: okay. Beth.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Section 29 was the requirement. We worked on this a lot in this room. Excuse me, the requirement that AOE submit a report to you all regarding essentially the state of special education delivery in Vermont. They have done that and there's a hot link in the slide deck and it will also be on the list of reports they give to Scotia. Section 30 was requiring AOE to come up with also a lot of work done in this room. Special education strategic plan, a three year strategic plan. They have reported to you all on what that strategic plan will look like. That's a hot link. It will also be on the reports document. Section 31 gave AOE a new permanent classified position to support that strategic plan. And then, I don't know what happened here, but section 32 got smooshed in with section 33. Section 32 appropriated $2,865,000 from the general fund to AOE in fiscal year twenty twenty six for support school boards transitioning to new governance models, positions established in Section 33 that we'll talk about in a second, and contracted services to support school districts with consolidation administrative activities. And then Section 33, authorized five limited service classified positions within the position pool for AOE in fiscal year twenty twenty six to support education transformation work, and I've listed the titles of those positions. And that is it for me.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Section

[Unidentified Member]: 12, the construction issues?

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Yes.

[Unidentified Member]: Anything in it regarding contamination such as HCPs?

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Is that even a proper question to be raised?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It is. I am not, despite dreaming about Act 76 for the last six months or so, I am not able to go into the specific details today on the ins and outs of the state aid and municipal construction programs and where the priorities are. But I'd be happy to come back and do that or to connect with you separately to walk through that. Wasn't a ton of work done on this.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: The school construction language, for whatever reason, moved wholesale from committee to committee. There was no one messing in it very much. It came out of a task force, and everyone just sort of respected those sentences for some reason. Very unusual. But we're gonna review their report either next week or We're the have

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: to review it, so it's fine.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Yeah, but it's a great question. Yeah, to represent them.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Just, mean, do you like to share

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: We're gonna call about PHP despite my stage.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: With with your concerns about high school contamination. For example, like, large and high school, large parcels are bit unusual.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: And if

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: anyone's looking for a spicy conversation with representative Conlon, that's always a good one. I really recommend asking him about it.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: And you can call me William for the time of the flood or Ref Page, it doesn't really I'll answer it all.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Beth? I'm done. I'll answer

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: your questions for me. That

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: was good.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: We have three minutes before we want to finish this section. So despite some speeding up, was beautiful, team. Thank you. I'm gonna ask people to just, before everyone gets up and runs off, take a couple minutes to write down what next steps you're seeing are. If anyone wants to say them now, you're welcome to. Or if you wanna write them down and talk later, we can do it. So what I have as very initial first things for testimony is early college and dual enrollment before we have to reckon with the budget this year, small and sparse by necessity testimony, school construction debt testimony. And then I added deep in a Google doc about tuitioning stuff, about private fundraising, but that does actually apply to public schools as well. Yes, right now.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: I imagine this is largely house ed, but concerns about whether the five zero one services positions for AOE is

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: sufficient to do.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Perfect. Yes. I would just start with the question, are they filled? And then go away from there. Yes. Yes.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: There was some good testimony in ed committee yesterday. Great.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Just a clarification, your statement about early college reflecting the impact on minimum class sizes as Representative Holcombe brought up or separately?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Yes, its impact on the cost of the whole system as well as class size. Representative. Yeah. Beth, you're welcome. Can I add

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: to the budget first? The task force was unable to get information from the agency on the funding stack for current conditions. It actually matters because some of them are likely to be zeroed out with federal cuts. I don't actually think we know what capacity is at the agency unless we can take a broader view. And if we could request from them, they would come in an org chart with the funding snap in position by funding stream.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I would like that question to start in the education committee, because they're really the committee of jurisdiction sort of over has accountability with AOE. And if they can't get there, I will. I'm happy to pick it up. But if that seems like one that should start there. I don't wanna get too deep into their- I think concern- I think it's relevant to our work

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: as well. Think maybe, in respect, maybe we could ask somebody in the ed community to ask for that. Yeah, absolutely. Because our past, we found that after six months, they were still unable to provide it. I'm just saying, that's one time at a time.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Very much, yep. That specific question was asked yesterday. Oh, great.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The Secretary Saunders was in their committee for over an hour yesterday, and that specific question was asked by Abrams law.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Anyone else? Send an email, any Post it note. Just say it verbally to me in the hall, I will not remember it. Okay. Thanks. We are taking a break till 10:50.