Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Zoie Saunders, Secretary of Education]: We're live.

[Rep. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, back after a short break, continuing our look at the combination of the task force report, activity in general, and recommendations to us. And now picking up next with the Secretary of Education, who will introduce herself. That's the task in front of you. Welcome.

[Zoie Saunders, Secretary of Education]: Thank you. Good afternoon. For the record, I'm Zoe Fonder, Secretary of Education. Pleased to be with you this afternoon to talk more deeply about Act 73 and the implementation considerations moving forward. I think we're at a really important time in Vermont's history. The passage of Act 73 represented bipartisan legislation that's allowing us to build better system. And I think it is really important to talk about the focus on the system and just listening to prior conversation. Sometimes when we talk about the need for change, educators can feel blamed for some of the challenges. And what we're saying really explicitly is it's the system that is creating the challenges. And we're all collectively working together in partnership to address those systemic issues so we can better support our teachers and better provide educational opportunities for all students. It's important to acknowledge that this work is really challenging, and it does require us to have some difficult conversations. So part of that is ensuring that when we're engaging in those conversations, that they're based on facts. And so in my role, it's important that I do correct the record on certain aspects, which I will do throughout the presentation. But more than that, it's confusion. I do think there's a lot of questions that Vermonters still have. There are questions that legislators still have. And so as I walk through the presentation today, I'll highlight the areas that I have identified are the most consistent inaccuracies that I've seen, or also the questions that continue to come up that I think are important to name and identify how they have been contemplated as part of Axiomy three. So the request for my presentation today was to provide our evaluation of the redistricting task force's report. So I will walk through the evaluation that I provided to the task force. And then I hope we can pivot to talking more about the future and identifying those decisions that are important to determine for this session in order for the state to move on the goals of Act 73. To begin this conversation, I want to provide background for the evolution of Act 73. I came into this role as a secretary of education at a very challenging moment in Vermont's history. At that time, over a third of the budgets had failed. And what I immediately focused on and worked with superintendents to identify was that there was an equity challenge, and that was impacting quality in terms of educational opportunities. In fact, one of the first documents I submitted to the general assembly was reflecting the reality that despite all the cuts that are being made in district budgets, the property taxes were increasing and that calling out specifically that it was disproportionately impacting our higher needs communities and recognizing that there were in many places no more to cut. And so my focus as secretary since the beginning has been on education quality and understanding how we can make changes to our system to ensure that it is equitable for students, it's supportive of our educators, and it's also based on research and data around best practices to move forward. The General Assembly early on recognized the need to study and evaluate a better approach for how we can organize our system and commissioned, it was the General Assembly that commissioned a report in 2023 that resulted in the PICUS and ODIN report, which was published in September 2024. And that report was explicitly asked to identify how Vermont could streamline our operations, improve educational opportunities and reduce cost. When that report was published, there were a lot of questions because the report called for really larger schools than would be feasible in Vermont, even in a future state. The work that we did at the Agency of Education was to build upon that study and the model that was put forward was an evidence based model. It is an evidence based model that is incorporating research to identify those inputs into the system that are needed to ensure educational quality. And we looked at that and identified adjustments that would be needed to that model to better meet the Vermont context. Much of that was informed from what we learned in our tour, traveling all around the state and talking with teachers and parents and community members. We heard that there was a need for additional mental health support. We heard there was a need to expand pre K access. We heard that there was a great desire to increase the opportunities around career and technical education. We identified a great inequity in terms of teacher pay and a need to ensure that we could increase teacher pay so that they could be compensated, particularly in rural areas, at a rate that was comparable to their peers in more affluent parts of the state. And we identified through this process, these were our goals. So we established very specific goals and those goals helped inform how we adjusted the initial study from the general assembly. So I think it's really important for everyone to know that we started with the end in mind. We started with a clear vision around education quality. Much of that has already been codified in law in Vermont, but we have struggled to implement with fidelity and consistency across the state in order to enable these opportunities. When you look at the challenges of any education reform in Vermont in the last over a decade, it really comes down to challenges with scale and unequal funding. And so we started first with the educational goals. We adapted the funding model, actually increased the funding to ensure that we could deliver on the array of programming that Vermonters really expect and adjusted the size to be more in line with the Vermont context. Throughout the legislative session, and the governor did put forward at the beginning of last session at the request of the leadership and the General Assembly, a comprehensive proposal. It first, as I said, identified education goals, and then it identified how to fund those goals. A key part of funding was ensuring that we could actually achieve scale so those dollars could go further in allowing for the consistent delivery. As you know, we did put forward initially five districts, and there was a very specific rationale while we made that recommendation. However, we also identified that there was room to make adjustments within that based on the formula and how it was organized to ensure, again, that it could deliver on the educational objectives. Throughout the legislative session, we engaged in a lot of testimony. Practically lived at the State House last year, and we adapted that model. We also organized policy sprint teams, which included representation from our education leaders across the state of Vermont to help us identify what are some of the other considerations that we need to account for. And through that process, we did modify the recommendations and ensuring that we could actually provide more college and career counseling and some other support that our educators identified were gaps with the initial model. And then, as you know, in June, the legislation was passed with bipartisan support after a lot of compromise to land at a very comprehensive approach to education reform. And it is important to emphasize that the reform is unique from any prior reform in that it focuses holistically on governance, funding and quality, knowing that they're all tied together. So through the compromise, one of the areas was to form these redistricting task force. It was certainly our hope that we could identify new districts last session, but the governor recognized that there was a need for additional time and a request for that process. So the Redistricting Task Force was formed, and they had very specific requirements. I would say, obviously, the intent of the task force was to recommend new school district boundaries to the General Assembly. They were asked to study and consider different configurations and propose no more than three. So those requirements that were outlined were very clear parameters. They included enrollment of 4,000 to 8,000 for each district, also included other measures that would support the overall delivery of the education quality goals and to make the funding work. And that included, as I think the task force shared with you yesterday, the array of parameters. And so the considerations, they were asked to look at some of the other factors that would influence the operation of those new districts, including transportation patterns, geographic barriers, and those type of items that should be taken into account. I think it's important to identify first that this certainly wasn't an area of compromise. Also to reiterate, it was a narrow task. And it was a narrow task because the parameters had been identified really clearly in order to deliver on the goals of Act 73. And I think that's important to emphasize. So the role of the agency of education, we did not have a seat on the task force, but we did provide significant assistance throughout the process. In terms of data, beginning in August, we provided information over 100, we responded to over 150 individual data requests from the task force, and we did create interactive, publicly available web page that you can access as a resource for your planning. We also provided significant technical expertise to task force members who were interested in looking at different ways to draw the lines. This technical expertise was supported by the district mapping tool. The Agency of Digital Services produced a mapping tool so that every Vermonter can go in and look at how we could configure districts differently and meet those requirements. Our legal counsel also provided testimony on the types of school choice in Vermont to facilitate conversations around tuitioning. And I was invited to the task force to present my reflections on the two proposals that they were reviewing prior to submitting their final report. All in all, I had about a total of thirty minutes with the task force over the four months that they convened, and so there wasn't as much opportunity for the agency to be engaged meaningfully in partnership to inform the final report. I think it's really important at this point to correct the record on a few statements that I think have been misleading and also lead me to believe that there's room for more education. So this work is very complicated. We are considering a lot of large scale change. And so for the record, just want to address a couple of common misconceptions that we can send you to hear, and also some of the testimony yesterday from the redistricting task force. So I think we continue to hear a lot of criticism of legacy issues at the Agency of Education. I feel it's important to note that those are reflective of the old education, the Agency of Education, not the Agency of Education that I am currently leading. I have been very transparent in naming some of the prior challenges and have documented those. And we've worked proactively in coordination and partnership with educators across the state to develop a plan forward. So we do are coming into this legislative session with a strategic framework and a plan. We've identified the priority areas. We have identified the key goals that we will track. And also we have completely reorganized our agency to better support the field. So I think it's important as we're talking about the overall strength of the system, to also recognize that we at the agency could tell very early on that we needed to change to support the field with this level of work. Regarding data, I think there's been a misrepresentation that data wasn't provided by the agency of education. I did personally attend the first redistricting task force. I had a data presentation and also a rubric that identified the key requirements along with links to data and supplied after my five minute presentation additional Excel documents that were not shared with your redistricting task force. I think it's important to name that we have very much been an active partner and recognize the need to supply and partner with the district and task force to provide that data. There was also a comment made that we say all of our data is perfect at the Agency of Education. I think you've heard me pretty consistently identify that we have had some legacy issues with our data collection and data reporting and that we are very focused on making improvements to that. What that looks like is additional data certifications that are currently happening in the field. So as we bring data forward to you, you can be assured that that has gone through an additional process of data verification from the field. And if there are any discrepancies, we want to know about them because we want to correct them. So just want to make sure that you have that context as we talk about data. And then also, was, I think, maybe some questions or confusions around my evaluation from the task force. I think there was a comment made that I said, don't focus on implementation. And if you hear me talking with my staff, all we focus on is implementation, because one of the most critical challenges that we have as a state is implementation. I think we have a lot of the right laws on the books. We've identified the best practices and our challenge has been implementation. So my commentary was more around identifying the district boundaries as the charge. And in doing so, it's really important and helpful for the district and task force to identify considerations as it relates to operationalizing this work. And so we're modeling that in the reports that we have produced. We identify, we answer the question, identify the data analysis. But you'll notice in every report that we bring forward, we will also note additional areas of inquiry. And that's really important because we have to name where there are areas that we need to further explore and identify considerations for how we might need to make different decisions in order to achieve our goals. So just wanted to emphasize that we certainly continue to be here as a willing partner and that we are very much focused on implementation and providing data as we move forward. I think moving into points of consensus. We're starting this legislative session having worked through a lot of really challenging conversations and coming to consensus on some big areas of need for our system. And I would say that these points of consensus have emerged certainly through the work of the redistricting task force, through the Commission on the Future of Public Education, through our listen and learn, and through all the ongoing work we're doing with our strategic planning. It is clear that we have a challenge of scale. And in the redistricting task force, they did note the importance of scale and recognizing that scale certainly matters and it affects per pupil spending, it affects the opportunities available to students. There has been a recognition that we do need to merge. Our system is overly complicated for the number of students that we serve. And the districting task force also noted that in their report that we have too many buildings for the kids that we have and that there's a need to get more kids under fewer roofs because we know that we can provide a greater array of programs and courses and support for those students. And then there is a need to manage school choice, and Act 73 already identified ways in which we can organize our ecosystem more effectively in that process. We have been consistent as an agency of recommending districts as opposed to supervisory unions and identifying that school choice can be managed through policy and not governance. So when asked to provide our reflections and evaluation on the proposal, I shared four main areas of feedback. One, that the Volunteering Merger and Cooperative Education Service Agency proposal maintains 119 school districts and 52 supervising unions and supervising districts. That simply does not align with the intent of Act 73, which is designed to reduce the number of districts. The Cooperative Education Service agencies add bureaucracy, adds another layer on top of the 52 supervising units of districts and 119 school districts. It adds a layer of cost and complexity to an already top heavy governance structure. Third, the proposal does not address how districts will be funded during the decade long voluntary merger period. I think this is a really critical point because there is a sense of urgency to address our challenges now. We know that we're facing really difficult cuts that translate into less opportunities for students. And so a ten year ramp is really hard to conceptualize what that will mean for our students over that time period. That's a generation of students. And fourth, a larger reflection that we need a strategically designed system of monitoring, oversight, and training that reflects our small sites, and that we build capacity at the right levels. So in the next few slides, I'll go into a little bit more detail on those four points. The first, as it relates to the primary question of aligning with Act 73, my evaluation is put forward in the context of Act 73, because the Redistricting Task Force is part of that law. The current proposal does not propose new school district boundaries. It represents an entirely new policy path. It has not been contemplated yet by the bipartisan coalition that passed Act 73. There also has not been modeling around the financials or clarity around the educational goals that will be achieved. So by any plain reading, the proposal is inconsistent with the goals and guardrails established by the General Assembly. It does mirror more of Act 46 in its narrow focus on governance reform. And what will make Act 73 a success our ability to achieve the goal is keeping governance, funding and quality together. If we separate governance, we lose the opportunity to ensure that those governance changes are actually delivering on the educational quality goals that we're trying to achieve. The second point related to the Cooperative Education Service Agency construct. The proposal inverts the governor's original plan. If those lines looked similar, it's because they were the same lines of the five districts that the governor proposed. The difference is that it maintained the 52 supervisory unions, the districts underneath, and the 119 school districts underneath. So it results in more governance, more overhead and the preservation of the legacy inefficiencies because we're not identifying some of the root challenges with operating our smaller districts. We do have smaller student enrollment than other states that do this model. In fact, supervisor unions as a construct were put into place to try to do this work, and have proven really challenging operationally to do in a way that actually coordinates service delivery and saves cost. Our overview is that it will actually complicate the oversight from the AOE again, because it creates another layer. And we still have a fundamental statutory and compliance requirement to ensure quality. So there would need to be the sustained engagement with the levels below the comprehensive education service agency. I want to be really clear that the agency of education does support regional service models, like what we proposed originally, which was an education service agency. So if you recall, when we first put forward the proposal, we said, yes, we need to have larger districts to operate at scale. And that's going to allow our funding to go further and achieve these educational goals. But in some cases across our state, we're still small enough that we're not going to achieve scale even within these larger districts. And so for that, we would still want to think about regional service delivery. And we had conceptualized that initially as service delivery to support career and technical education, and it also talked about that related to special education. So the idea of regional services is one that we support, but not on top of the existing governance structure. What we would ask in some of the feedback provided to the task force was to evaluate what a district can do in terms of making those dollars go further, and then where you might still need regional service on top of that to provide specialized support in key areas. The third point is just the question of how this will be funded in this decade long transition. The concern is it will exacerbate the inequities in our system now, And we believe it would risk violating the principles of the Brigham decision. Last year, we all were clear that our funding system is no longer serving us well, and it's not achieving the goals of equity as intended. It is unclear how, within this model, we could implement a foundation formula. It would likely produce winners and losers, and creating a lot of pain and challenges within districts, knowing that they would have an unfunded mandate upon them to deliver on the educational quality expectations. So what ACT 73 does is already anticipating those challenges because we know scale is such an issue and being proactive in identifying how we can organize ourselves to ensure that we can get those dollars to deliver on the educational goals for us. In terms of overall, there's been a larger conversation, as you know, and we've had around the federal uncertainty and what that means and how do we create a system that is more resilient to those uncertainties? Adding additional layer and adding additional cost is not the path to doing that. The only way for us to be in a better position is to have greater efficiency in our system so that we can invest those dollars where they will have the biggest impact on student learning. And we know a key piece of that is investing in supporting their teachers. We also recognize that there needs to be support with that long term strategic budgeting. This model creates a lot of questions for how that would work. Right now, I want to note that districts can voluntarily merge. Right now, BOCES can be implemented. In fact, I signed off on the first BOCES in our state earlier this week, and I'm very eager to continue working with those leaders to learn about the role that can play in our current system, but also, more importantly, in our future system. So the last point is we recognize that we have a very complex system for the number of students that we serve, and we need to be focusing on how do we strategically design that system to provide the right level of support to drive continuous improvement. The Agency of Education has recognized the need to have clear accountability, to have clear expectations, but that come with support, that come with training. And that's a lot of the efforts that we've been doing through our strategic planning process in reorganizing how we operate, reprioritizing where we focus our efforts to make sure that we are adding value to the field. The governor's original proposal did recognize the need for increased AOE capacity. That is something that the legislature has noted for several years and was reflected in the overall proposal. And so thank you to the legislature for recognizing the need and the increased demands on the agency by approving the appropriations to support this work. And then lastly, I think we need to be really clear. We've had a lot of compliance issues at the state. In almost every area of federal education law, we have had persistent compliance issues. And some of that is related to the complexity of our systems. Having more complexity is not going to help us with that. We really need to be clear on how we're going to organize, provide the right level of monitoring, and support moving forward. So with that, that was the critique that we provided to the redistricting task force. I think the work ahead of us is really inspiring and allows us to deliver on possibilities for our students. And it is a very strong investment and commitment to public education as the great equalizer, and as the pathway for students to thrive, for communities to really be revitalized, and recognizing that education is the pathway to doing that for our state and has so many benefits beyond the classroom itself. So we also recognize that this work is really challenging, and we recognize that we're going to continue to have difficult conversations. We are going to continue to be asked to do more, provide more support. And so in anticipation of that, we were, as I mentioned, making some changes at the agency. We are very focused on our strategic plan. We are clear on our priorities. Those priorities are reflective of the needs of the state. They're reflective of the legislative priorities that have been put in place over the last several years. We hosted a planning retreat in November. It was our first statewide strategic planning retreat attended by 300 educators, school leaders, partners and higher ed and agency staff, and parents and families. And it was just a great opportunity for us to come together and identify what are our challenges and what are our opportunities ahead. We worked collaboratively to begin developing a vision, a unifying vision for public education in the state of Vermont, and identified how we are going to advance this work, foster those five strategic pillars that we've identified, which are to improve academic excellence, to expand college and career readiness, promote safe and healthy schools, improve operational effectiveness, enhance special education delivery and differentiated support for all students. So within all of those pillars at our planning retreat, broke out into focus groups and we really rolled up our sleeves and worked together to identify, well, how do we need to work together? What needs to happen from the agency in order to support these shifts? What do we need to understand about the realities on the ground now in order to make this transition in a way that will deliver on these intended outcomes of Act 73 to improve education quality? That was our first strategic planning retreat. We will host a planning retreat now every year, and moving forward, we will talk about progress to those goals. And we expect, when we're not making progress as we would intend, that we'll need to make some adjustments. And it will be important to have that opportunity every year to engage our education community in identifying what's not working well, what needs to be adjusted as we refine our level of support at the agency. Additionally, we have produced a number of reports to the General Assembly. These were required by Act 73. Each of those reports evaluates the current state, references data, looks at comparisons to other states across the country, and importantly is reflective of the feedback that we've received from the various engagement sessions we've had with educators to move this work forward. Each report identifies next steps, so we are taking this work really seriously. These are not reports that are sitting on a shelf. These are actually reports that have helped us in doing our own internal change management and recognizing the specific actions that we need to take and the support that will be required to move forward with Act 73. We are prepared to provide support with the district maps. We have done that throughout the summer and fall with the Redistricting Task Force. The tool that was created by the Agency of Digital Services is very accessible. So every phone rauncher has the opportunity to play around with that. And what it allows you to do is identify that depending on the configurations doesn't meet the specifications outlined in Act 73. And so we are definitely prepared to support with that work. This is a list of the legislative reports that we have produced. There are several that will be forthcoming as well in the next month that are focused on education quality. But you can see here that it is an array of recommendations that are looking at how we move forward to elevating educational opportunities through establishing statewide graduation requirements, strategies to improving our special education delivery. And then there's also some operational considerations as we think about the best way to organize and also some early considerations around policy questions that you will be grappling with related to transportation, some of the other merger support considerations that still need to be determined in this session. So with that, I will stop sharing my screen and open it to questions.

[Rep. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Doctor. Williams.

[Dr. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Thank you for that. That was very informative. You said you've been reorganizing the AOE. Did you organize task force team for M and A?

[Zoie Saunders, Secretary of Education]: I think that's specific implementation task force. What we've done is we have organized our work around the five strategic pillars of our strategic plan, and then where there are requirements for our leadership in Act 73, that's embedded within our work.

[Dr. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I'm not quite sure what our plan is going to be going forward, from what I can see, we've a ways to go, you know, starting with redistricting. Is there is there a possibility you could provide? We always used to have an AOE representative in each one of our committees so that we could kind of have you on speed dial if we had an issue that we needed to know. What do you think, where should we go from here? Is that possible?

[Zoie Saunders, Secretary of Education]: Yes, so through our reorganization, we actually expanded our team that's focused on policy and communication. So I do have with me our Director of Policy and Communication, Torren Valor. And so we will definitely be available to provide support. We are also in a lot of different committees for testimony, but we certainly are here as a partner to be responsive, to answer questions that you have. Absolutely. Right.

[Dr. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Last question. Yes. So where do you see AOE's role in actually helping to develop the governance part of the pillar?

[Zoie Saunders, Secretary of Education]: So with the district maps and the governance? So I think

[Dr. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Well, primarily the district maps, I'm not quite sure. I think we're all gonna have to decide on what we're gonna do in So

[Zoie Saunders, Secretary of Education]: for the district maps, we stand ready to support in your work of evaluating what the best configuration could be. I think it's important to note that it was always the role of the General Assembly to approve the maps. The redistricting task force did not produce maps, but act 73 is still law, and the next step in that law is for the general assembly to vote on maps. So we're a little bit delayed just because there aren't specific maps for you to review, but there there are only so many ways to draw the lines and meet the parameters that are established in Act 73. So we're very happy to do that. We've provided maps to the redistricting task force that were not shared with the task force that could also be a helpful starting point. What we're hearing consistently from the field is they need clarity. I think you heard that today. The level of uncertainty is really challenging and does not allow for our districts to be and school boards to be proactive in making some of these decisions. We often say at the agency, clarity is kindness, and having clarity around those district lines is really important. The sooner we can identify viable maps, you're going to get input around that and have something to react to. It's important to recognize that any approach we take in Vermont will not be a cookie cutter approach. And so within districts, there's going to be some variation with how those schools are organized, how attendance zones and lines are drawn. And there's a recognition that there are some parts of our state where schools are going to need to be much smaller than other parts of our state. That's why Act 73 contemplates that and you all recognize the need to have criteria for small by necessity. So I think it's really important, even though we're talking about larger districts, the actual portfolio of schools that are operated within those districts might look a little bit different, right? And that's okay, that's how it is accounted for and the way we would fund and support the system.

[Dr. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So the plan needs to be a living document. It's going to morph. It's going to change as I we go would

[Zoie Saunders, Secretary of Education]: recommend moving on the district lines and doing that first. I think through that process, as I said, there's only so many ways to draw the lines and meet the criteria of Act 73. And then to your point, if there's feedback around, it doesn't make sense for this particular configuration to be there, that allows you to then make those adjustments for reasons that are legitimate and would be best served to the organization.

[Dr. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: You.

[Rep. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Any other questions?

[Dr. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Can't let her get away, so we can see.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So in our five different school visits with the administration, teachers, students, parents, there was a lot of criticism about the fact that there there was not data offered on cost savings. So so I'd like to if you can validate the fact that going way back into like March and April, I believe you brought to the to the committees a matrix, a cost matrix of kind of a notional administrative organization right down to the individual. And so first off, that did that exist? Was it just a figment of my imagination? And is it still exists for different modeling purposes?

[Zoie Saunders, Secretary of Education]: Yeah, so I'll go back to the slide where I talked through the evolution of ACT 73. At every iteration, there was cost modeling conducted that showed cost savings and improved educational opportunities. That was done as early as the report that was commissioned by the General Assembly, and we took a lot of testimony after introducing the Governor's plan to model that and actually produced sample budgets based on the funding formula within the districts. We identified how those budgets could be adjusted depending on the final configuration of the districts, knowing we could land anywhere between ten and twenty districts as outlined in Act 73. So there's a tremendous amount of data, a tremendous amount of cost modeling, a tremendous amount of research that has informed the development of Act 73. The final funding will be determined by the General Assembly. With the current figures that are in Act 73, we have also done modeling and our tax department led the way in identifying how the foundation formula in Act 73 will save money compared to the projections if we stay on our current path. So yes, there's a tremendous amount of cost modeling that has been done.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Just following up on that, one of the concerns we hear a lot, and frankly, been one of my big concerns, despite my feeling that Act 73 was sort of the path forward, is the cost of leveling up as districts become larger. I just frankly can't remember if leveling up was part of the cost modeling, or if that is part of any sort of source for

[Zoie Saunders, Secretary of Education]: We did. We included a model that walks through within the regions that we were contemplating at the time, how that could be adjusted to increase teacher salaries on average. Then we got that question, well, what does this look like on average? Let's actually see it in relation to the real salaries of teachers. So we brought forward another model that looked at the regional differences, and that's where we saw really clearly the disparity. We're over in our most rural communities tend to pay their teachers over $20,000 less than other parts of the state. And so we identified how we could be really more targeted in adjusting those salaries to get to parity. So we do have that documentation that was shared. It was modeled within the framework of the five districts. But as you move forward with your planning and identify what that new district configuration will be, we can use the same principles to model those budgets. And then what I'd like to do is, as we always, is bring business managers in, bring superintendents in and say, let's look through these budgets and see where there may need to still be adjustments. And another point I would make, even though we've done the modeling and we've produced budgets, those are sample budgets, right? It's the responsibility of the state to guarantee that the funding we provide will deliver substantially equal education. It's the responsibility of the district to make the decisions that are in the best interest of their district to achieving that. And so I want to make sure that that's clear. Even though we have done the modeling, it is not prescriptive to the level of this foundation formula of ensuring that those costs are spent in exactly that way, that staffing matrices are developed in the exact same way. We, as a state, need to make sure that we're providing great education and that it's equal across Vermont, but the districts still have the ability and the responsibility to develop their budgets in a way that are going to best meet the needs of their students.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Yeah, just my concern is that those of us who've been through Act 46, as we combine contracts, probably the knock against Act 46 and didn't save money, I would argue that any time. But one of the significant costs was leveling up salaries and contracts of all the public school employees.

[Zoie Saunders, Secretary of Education]: So, Act 73 also has contemplated other parts of system, right? And I think what you're naming with Act 46, it was really focused on governance. The funding system didn't change. So, as we move forward, the funding will change with this. And also the general assembly has recognized the need to identify class size minimums. And so that changes how schools will staff their classrooms to deliver education. So all of that is part of a much broader planning effort that needs to happen of the recruitment and retention of staff. I think it's also really important to note that we currently don't have the workforce to fill the jobs that we're recruiting for. We have seen an increase in the number of teachers on provisional licenses, we see a lot of turnover, and we see a number of vacant positions in specialized areas that cannot be filled, and they are then contracted at two to three times the rate. So there is a reality of we are in a position where we cannot guarantee that access to a high quality teacher in every part of our state. And as we move forward, this is an opportunity for us to actually address some of the workforce challenges that we've really struggled with over the last several years.

[Dr. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Do you have a plan or would you consider a plan because of the disparity between the teachers' wages to come up with a statewide program for that based on steps, longevity?

[Zoie Saunders, Secretary of Education]: So collective bargaining is outside of the purview of the agency of education, but we do recognize that this is a critical question and an important one for us to understand and move forward on in a meaningful way. In our merger support report, we identified that we had conversations with business managers and other educators through our planning retreat to identify some of the considerations for this very thorny issue that you're bringing up. And so one of the things that they had identified was certainly a need for the state to have some leadership in this work, because we need to be fair as we're moving forward and ensuring that we're actually achieving equity in terms of pay for teachers. We have, as an agency, reviewed different models in other states in terms of a statewide salary schedule or statewide contract. So we stand ready to come forward with some of those examples to inform your policy deliberations.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Short question. So you had a list of deliverables that you went through,

[Dr. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: and we thank you for that.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: And then you mentioned the concept also of small by necessity. I'm not sure who's tasked with defining that. Can you help us?

[Zoie Saunders, Secretary of Education]: Act 73 asked the or charged the State Board of Education with defining criteria for small by necessity. The State Board of Education established a committee and they did provide a report with a framework for their considerations. I think there has been some confusion around who then determines that. So they have suggested criteria for the General Assembly to review. Once that has been approved, it's the responsibility of the agency to evaluate that schools meet that criteria. But it's the general assembly to establish the criteria, the state board's made recommendations. Once that's done on a regular basis, as we would do already with a small schools grant, we're responsible for ensuring eligibility for the criteria.

[Rep. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Any other questions?

[Dr. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I actually do. Okay. I've had some school board members and chair people come to me and say that we've got one district in our district that has already voted. The people, the district, the voters have already approved closing one school. Yeah, you know, I gave him some advice. I don't know if I should have done that, but can they do mergers voluntarily right now if they want to? I mean, I think that the districts know what needs to be merged and what doesn't. So, I just want to get some feedback on that.

[Zoie Saunders, Secretary of Education]: Districts can absolutely voluntarily merge now. You saw early in the summer and fall, there was some proactive work that school boards were doing to identify how they would organize to make those recommendations. You also saw once there wasn't a map, a lot of those efforts have stopped. Again, it goes back to making sure that there's clarity from the state around the next step. I think the uncertainty is creating a lot of start and stop work, and ultimately we want to make sure it's fair. We all recognize that this is really challenging, and it's important that as a state, we're providing the right level of support, the level of clarity, the guardrails, to make sure that that's done in a way that is fair. And so I do think across the state, there's a recognition that we need to achieve scale, but they're waiting to understand what some of these final decisions will be. That's really clear in all the conversations that I have with our superintendents and principals. It's clarity. When they ask me, what's your role this legislative session to try to get clarity, if we have clarity, we can provide better support to the field. The field can identify how to move forward. They can start sharing contracts with other districts. They can do the work that's needed to help with the transition. But in the absence of that clarity, we're not able to do that level of preparation.

[Dr. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I got the impression that there was a lot of pushback to and rumors fly around out there that state was going force mergers up. So by having them be proactive and be involved in it, I think that they want that. They want to be able to have that latitude. And I think that we should let them have it if they want to, but we also want to make sure it fits into the overall point.

[Zoie Saunders, Secretary of Education]: So I would share that, you know, I think those proactive measures, can certainly pursue right now. What we've been hearing pretty consistently, this work is really hard, and needing the state to also support with that work, again, to make sure that it's fair and to make sure that they can make those changes in a way that's equitable and supports the goals.

[Rep. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Is there anyone else? Thank you very much.

[Zoie Saunders, Secretary of Education]: Thank you for having me.

[Rep. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Just before we adjourn, Daphne, remind us we are Tuesday we're gathering and we are being in Yuleville.