Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Committee staff/technician (unknown)]: We're live.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Welcome everybody. This is the Center of HIV Unity. We're going after two on Saturday the twentieth. Last week we heard from the secretary of putting forward, I think what was described as the best dot at a map, the hyper map that we got. And today we're gonna get another map that was introduced to the task force by Senator Beck and I think former secretary law. And then what we really want to do this week, that's not entirely not the whole week, but a lot throughout the week is ask testable and put in front of us. We've got the bees coming in and we've got a number of superintendents coming in small to just give us some reaction, thoughts to put us in a position of figuring out how we're going forward. So with that, we all have copies of Senator Bennington. Think it's in free version, I think of that one, you can say it's full of words. So welcome, Senator Bennington. Okay. Thank you

[Senator Scott Beck]: for having me. For the record, Senator Scott Beck, California District's former house education member.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So

[Senator Scott Beck]: the maps that you see in front of us were constructed by myself and David Weeks. As your chair said, David has the resume of my long, commissioner of education, Hinsdale, superintendent, president of Kesha and it goes on and on and on. And I really enjoyed working with Dave. And so what Dave as we went as the task force progressed, there were a number of different ideas that were talked about exploring districts based on districts based on county, districts based on regional high schools, and there were a couple of others. And at various meetings as we progressed through our eight meeting sequence there, we were asked, you know, okay, county, a map based on county. Do we even wanna proceed with that? Do we even wanna look at it as even gonna be worth their time? And for example, counties, we decided, at at one of weeks, just through a kind of a thumbs up, thumbs down exercise, we gave it a thumbs down. Reason we gave it a thumbs down was because we just felt that so much had happened since the county lines were drawn, and it just didn't really make sense anymore. And we did that and we did put that same exercise with And CTT was, you know, continuous thumbs up for the whole process. And so David and I continued to work on that proposal. In the end, at the very end, the, task force decided, by, I think it

[Committee member (unknown)]: was the eight to three vote

[Senator Scott Beck]: to not recommend this set of maps as part of their their greater task force report. Nevertheless, the map is still, you know, it was part of the process and it was looked at very closely. So just to kind of orient you to,

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: you know, what what is going on here and what the Senator, which one would what should we be looking at?

[Senator Scott Beck]: I'm gonna start with this one. Okay.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: Yeah. Okay.

[Senator Scott Beck]: And so what David and I were trying to accomplish, and I think we did, was we were trying to really solve one, you know, big problem, and that was to make it so that it was very it would be very easy for every child and every student in Vermont to access a career and technical education center. Okay? And right now, I know I know you've had a lot of the discussions probably in this committee and also in senator Ram Hinsdale's committee regarding seats. But, basically, I kind of put kids into three different buckets. Kids that are in school districts that have a career and technical education center, it's very easy for them to access that career technical education center that that school district operates. Okay? If you're a kid that has a choice in the high school grades, public tuition student from a district that doesn't operate a high school, it's very easy to access a career technical education center because in those situations, the money just follows the kids' sequence. That's how it works whether they go to a Career Technical Education Center or not. The third type of student is a little bit is is really quite difficult, can be. And those are students that are from school districts or supervisory districts that do not operate a Career and Technical Education Center. And if that student decides to leave that district and travel to another district that has a career technical education center, then the sending district has to effectively pull money out of its budget and that money has to get sent to that receiving district. And that in some areas of the state, is obviously dependent, but it can serve as an obstacle, deterrent to kids getting to Career Detective Education Center. So that last circumstance was what we were trying to solve when we did this map. And so what we did was we started with the Career and Technical Education Center Regional Advisory Board lines. We looked at the patterns of tuition that existed in the state, and we drew lines such that we thought that the towns that we populated to each of these governance units, that's where the kids were filming anyhow. Knowing that we could make, I wouldn't say call it a mistake, but knowing that in the instance of a choice student, we didn't necessarily have to worry so much about that community because those kids can go wherever they want to maybe not. And so what we ended up with after we, you know, massage those lines and try to account for a lot of things that have occurred, since the regional advisory boards were established is what you would see in front of you right here. K? And there's a couple of things I think in here that are are interesting. And if you decide to, you know, continue a conversation around these maps, you probably wanna, you know, about, be alerted to. One is that you'll notice that Grand Isle is its own supervisory district of about eight fifty kids, which is small compared to what a lot of people in the conversation are hypothesizing right now. And the reason we did that was is we just didn't feel like some of those kids go to Franklin County. Some, they come down into Chittenden County. They go to a number of different high schools down in Chittenden County, high schools, and then some go over to New York. We did not feel like it would be in the best interest of that those communities to populate them with either Franklin County or with Chittenden County. And that's why they're there as Cologne is a very small district. Okay. That was our our thinking. The other that you'll notice is that Chittenden County is a rather large district right next to the very rather small district. And we had, you know, was an interesting conversation. We had reached out to the members of the task force that were from the Chittenden County area to, you know, do you have a suggestion for how Chittenden County might be divided up? They did not offer any suggestions. And so, you know, one train of thought is is I was thinking of is, like, you know, one big district, 22,000 kids, eight public high schools, the possibilities of intradistrict choice in in a situation like that where a lot of these high schools are rather close to each other might be a really good option for kids. The other thing that makes it really difficult from a CTE perspective to divide up Chittenden County is is those two CTE centers are are rather close to each other. So that's, you know, that was kind of our thinking about Chittenden County and why we left it large. Is there a a division that makes sense? There may very well be. We just David and I didn't think that we understood Chittenden County well enough to, you know, propose something. And also, you know, just and I think you all have already know this, but, you know, every time you put a line on a map like this, the friction points increase. Fewer lines, fewer friction points, more lines, more friction points. I think the other another area that is interesting and might also require a little bit of thought if this community decided to work with this map is Riverbed Career and Technical Education Center, which is on the other side of the state. I guess I'd call that magenta or something like that. And that is, that is also a pretty small, governance unit. I think it's about 2,000 kids. Currently currently, Heffernan is attached to it. They're that o e OESU, but it's not geographically connected because of because of the Rivendell School District, which does the two, interstates are the ones that have the hash lines through them, the Mhmm. Diagonal hash lines. So we took that for and we put it over with the Randolph area. That was a that's a change. And then there was also a lot of conversations about, you know, River Bend is quite small. Part of the part of it's in Caledonia County. Part of it's in Orange County. Would it just make more sense to take Rivendell and to roll it into Caledonia or to roll it into Randolph? And so maybe that's something that, that you might wanna consider as well. The map was drawn such a way. It was also one of the considerations that we took into account. It does not divide any existing school districts. So it does take any existing school districts and break them up. We thought that would be, you know, could be culturally very disruptive. It might be legally very disruptive too because now you've got split up assets and bank accounts and liabilities and everything else. So we, when we picked what we picked, we did it in such a way that we didn't break any school district lines. We did break some supervisory lines, but not school district lines. Okay. So maybe before I proceed to the next map, are there any, anybody have any questions about this map?

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: Yeah,

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Terry. Did look at the, like the Grand Isle and what schools actually had choice? I mean, because that would affect the I mean, if they were choice out, that

[Senator Scott Beck]: would affect the strength and number of Yeah. So the I I they're in a process right now, but the Grand Isle supervisory union right now is composed. I I I may be dating myself. They've they've gone through some transformation in the last six to twelve months, but I think as I understand it right now, it's a supervisory union with three school districts in it. Alberg in the North is a pre k through eight. The Southern part of Grand Isle is a pre k through eight, and the middle part of the is a pre k through six. So but I think they were in the process of making everything a pre k through eight. I'm not sure exactly where they are in that process, but but all of them have high school choice. All the kids that supervisor receive

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: have high school choice. Yeah.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Yeah. I think it's still you know, you were on the task force. It would help me to understand, you know, to what end. I think that you're a CTE instructor. Like, I've been frustrated. No. Oh, you're not? Yeah. Oh, but you're at the comprehensive CTE.

[Senator Scott Beck]: I'm right. The school I teach.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Oh, I what do you teach?

[Senator Scott Beck]: That's what I teach history.

[Cheryl Charles (Chair, Rural School Community Alliance Steering Committee)]: Oh, okay.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: It it's been frustrating to be talking about CTE maps without a lot of focus on how do we really help kids access CTE and do these maps start to solve that problem? For example, you know, Milton and Colchester have a lot of actually, I think anywhere in Northern Chittenden County, they can't do health sciences in Chittenden. They don't have that anymore. No. They and they have to fight to go to Bellows So, like, you know, we we're constantly hearing that it doesn't necessarily solve the CTE access problems just to draw lines like that.

[Senator Scott Beck]: It doesn't solve all the problems. We certainly yeah. Not every Career and Technical Education Center offers every

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Mhmm.

[Senator Scott Beck]: Type of CT. We do have a process, and we do have a procedure now for what that like, I know, for example, in my area, River Bend does not have electrical. And so if you're in one of those school districts down there, there's a process for them to come up to Saint Johnsburg to get electrical. Mhmm. There might be some kids that go the other way. They have, I think, a few programs that we don't have. So there are, ways for those kids to move across. Is it is it the best way possible? Mhmm. Are there different policies that might make that situation, easier? I I think so. Probably, it's worth the conversation. And, again, you know, every time you put a line on a map Mhmm. You are Little line. You're creating something. And so yeah.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So what do you see as this cost saving of these lines on the map or the quality value for students?

[Senator Scott Beck]: Well, think the quality value for students is you're making it, I think, easier for a number of kids to access CTE that it might not be useful right now. As far as the cost savings, I think cost savings is, and it's been, is there another 12 here? 13. 13. That 13 business? Maybe

[Committee member (unknown)]: I missed that.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: With the islands?

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay.

[Senator Scott Beck]: 14 with the islands, yeah. I think the the cost savings is is that operating, 14 business offices, superintendent's offices would be, far less expensive.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So these would all be districts, not supervisory unions?

[Senator Scott Beck]: Either or, but each would have its would have one superintendent's office, one business.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: One superintendent's office and one business office.

[Senator Scott Beck]: Yeah. So 14 probably more robust Mhmm. Superintendent offices than we have now relative to 52 super superintendents' offices, some of which are probably too small to offer the robust services that our kids need. Okay. Any other questions about this map? And then I think we'll get to senator Ram Hinsdale's next questions. Yeah. That would be good. So so the way this is divided up, if you look and I'm looking at I'm looking at this map right

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: now.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: The transportation.

[Committee member (unknown)]: Oh, no. That's right now.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: Okay. Yeah.

[Senator Scott Beck]: Is in a number of areas of the state, there there are no independent schools per se. And in those areas of the state, those those, governance units that are depicted in Hawaii here on this map, without any independent schools, no dissimilar structures, everybody's in pre k through 12, that a supervisory district made sense, and probably a supervisory district with intradistrict choice, which would, actually give kids a lot more choice than they have right now, especially at the, high school level. So and so everywhere you see on on white on the map, if you transpose it onto the others, the other, so that those white areas would be government shoots that are supervisory districts.

[Cheryl Charles (Chair, Rural School Community Alliance Steering Committee)]: Can I ask a question?

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: Yeah.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Are you let's just take this wide area. You saying choice with transportation?

[Senator Scott Beck]: No. I'm just talking about

[Cheryl Charles (Chair, Rural School Community Alliance Steering Committee)]: choice of school. Okay.

[Senator Scott Beck]: In her district.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Sometimes choice is, you know, false if you don't have the transportation or CT.

[Senator Scott Beck]: Yeah. I would leave it up to each supervisor district

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: to

[Senator Scott Beck]: solve those transportation problems. Yeah. In the areas on this map where you see the the colitis of of colors, different colors. Okay? What that those are all areas in the state that would be supervisory unions. K? And but with the caveat that within each supervisory union, like structured school districts would be required to merge. Okay. So I'll use my I'm a little more familiar with Caledonia County. If you see up in Caledonia, there is all those magenta districts. Okay? Those are currently three different school districts as Caledonia co op in the East Of Saint Johnsbury. Under this construct, because they're all pre k through eight, the same structure, they would be required to collapse into one school district. Yeah. One school district within that supervisory unit because they're like structures. And if there are pre k through sixes that are within the same supervisory union, they would collapse into one nonoperating, so on. Okay? So there is merging going on in here, of white like districts are merging into larger units. K? And so why, you know, SUs, in these areas? Well, because we have a lot of we have, independent schools. We have a lot of receiving public schools. Public schools receive a lot of kids. In fact, there's there's far, far, far more, public schools that receive public tuition students than there are independent schools. And so by using supervisory unions, that would continue in these areas, the state would allow for kids to use public tuition and access whichever independent or public school that they need to access.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So so these maps don't fully overlap

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: they do.

[Senator Scott Beck]: They do. These these two maps right here

[Cheryl Charles (Chair, Rural School Community Alliance Steering Committee)]: Yeah. Fully overlap. Except in the

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: white areas where you're saying.

[Senator Scott Beck]: Yeah. So the white areas in this I refer to Addison, Washington, Lemoyle, Fairfax, Chittenden, and Grand Isle.

[Committee staff/technician (unknown)]: Mhmm.

[Senator Scott Beck]: That's that big white area. Mhmm. And then the, the white area in the Southeast corner, that would be, what we call the Southwest Area Supervisory District, which is is Windham and a lot of Windham and a lot of Windsor. Yeah. So they do overlap. Yeah. And so that was our thinking there, you know, to retain the SU model would allow for that public tuition, which is allows these kids in, you know, a lot of cases, pretty rural areas of the state. It allows them some diversity of options. It wouldn't force any town to sever its relationship with its receiving public school or its receiving independent school. But they would be like like school districts would be required to merge in that. So like, yeah, say, I'm more familiar with my area, but those three districts, they would merge into one three thousand five hundred student supervisory school district within that supervisory. Yeah.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So it has it struck me that, you know, maybe it's because I'm from the part of the state that detests a lot of schools.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: But some a lot of the struggles we've heard are about having the resources to build a comprehensive regional high school. Right? So the votes that typically are going down are about should we be investing more in than deferred maintenance in this school, in this high school when there's another high school close by? Like, is this high school the best investment ever dollars? And and we're stretched about where the state is putting bonding, you know, capacity and, like, where school construction dollars should go. I'd like to run by you, you know, this notion that first of all, wherever we draw the lines, those communities should be responsible for paying for the infrastructure of some regional high school, that they should be sharing some decision making in the future about what infrastructure they're going to fund. And right, we heard, for example, in the White River area, they all still focus on, okay, we have a middle school, so that's our responsibility. Two towns are carrying the bonding vote for the White River High School. It I I personally don't see how towns sending $5,000 more per pupil maybe in tuition compares to taking a vote on shared bonding and shared infrastructure costs. And then at some level, the state can direct its dollars within these lines to say, this is the regional high school where we're gonna put forth additional dollars for school construction so that we're all putting skin in the game to get regional high schools. I don't know any other way that we get fairly achieved regional high schools.

[Senator Scott Beck]: Well, I think I think I think current law actually gets you where you want to be. You know, the allowable tuition report, which, gets issued every year, they calculate what the cost to operate, a high school is, which includes debt. And the sending district, that public school, is obligated to pay that allowable amount, which covers the share of the debt for each child. So I think current law already in the way tuition is set by the public schools and the way it's true, that trued up, build back or whatever you wanna call it by the public schools to their their sending school districts. Think it I think it

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: addresses If the difference that you're talking they're sending to a high school that's not comprehensive and has no plans to be comprehensive, then they're not putting dollars into a regional high school. Right? So with White River, you have

[Senator Scott Beck]: They're putting in our current system, they're they're sending dollars to cover the capital expenses or bonding at the school that the child attends.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Right. So that could be sharing academy.

[Senator Scott Beck]: No. No. That only allowable tuition only is for public schools. Independent schools don't have the ability to set allowable or to bill back. That's only something that public schools do.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Thought we were changing them in act 73, but right now, they can charge an additional amount.

[Senator Scott Beck]: Right now, all independent schools in the state of Vermont, charge average announced tuition unless, they have a you know, for example, if their voters make a decision to send more or if they follow EQS, Bedford and Chair, I think, followed EQS or they operate a CT center. So St. John's Brayland operated CT center. They have the ability to set their tuition, but what they don't have the ability to do is after the school gave over to do a calculation of what the actual cost of educating that child was, debt, and billing back to the school district. The only schools that have the that could do that are the the public schools

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: that situate. I

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: guess I I am struck by this case study where two towns are aren't seeing the mechanisms that they would have to get the rest of their supervisory union to pay for their public high school. So you have two towns saying, are we the ones on the hook for funding this entire public high school?

[Senator Scott Beck]: Well, they're they're the ones that that have the vote and are ultimately responsible for the note but the bill, the bonding bill, which is included in the allowable tuition setting, would be being paid by all sending districts that send kids to that

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: But only per student. And if they send them to another high they're not.

[Senator Scott Beck]: If the if the child went to a different high let's say, one of those kids pretty far west and

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: then decided to go to Rutland

[Cheryl Charles (Chair, Rural School Community Alliance Steering Committee)]: Mhmm.

[Senator Scott Beck]: High School, for example. Rutland has its allowable tuition rate that covers their costs, including any bonding that's associated with Rutland High School. And in that case, the money would go to Rutland School. But if the child went to, Woodstock, which I think is what we're talking about here, Woodstock High School.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: We're talking about White River in royalty.

[Senator Scott Beck]: Oh, royalty. Okay. So if it's a public school in that area and a child is going there, then the allowable tuition true up makes it so that the sending district, in the end, sends an amount of money to that receiving district that covers that bonding.

[Committee member (unknown)]: That's what that's what what yeah.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Right. I I what I struggle with is what and and I need someone, maybe JFO, to highlight this for us. If you're in say you're in Royalton, and you pay for the bond for your high school, but your child goes to Sharon Academy, are you paying twice?

[Senator Scott Beck]: Well, I'm not I I can't say is is royalty the choice community? No. Wealth is not choice. Growth is not choice. So those kids will go to the moment.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Okay. I mean, it sounded like in that supervisory union, you had kids in royalty who said, I chose to go to Sharon Academy.

[Senator Scott Beck]: No. No. I'm not changing any of its structure. If you're a to be yeah. If you're a pre k through 12 right now Yeah. And you have a public high school that's part of your district that your units go to, we're not severing that at all. So for example, in the Southwest Corner, you have Mount Anthony.

[Committee staff/technician (unknown)]: Mhmm.

[Senator Scott Beck]: Right? And so Mount Anthony, the the the towns that are part of the Mount Anthony Union School District are fully operating districts there in Greene. Mhmm. So those we're we're not giving choice to those communities. Those communities would still send all of their children to nonunion, then in high school. Yeah. All the green areas, those are all areas high school. Yeah. Those are all areas that do not have public tuition. They do not

[Margaret MacLean (RSCA Steering Committee)]: have choice.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So, I mean, so shouldn't Rutland Town just be paying for Rutland High School instead of paying a tuition? Like, shouldn't they be taking the same vote to fund their central They're not CTE?

[Senator Scott Beck]: They're they're not their Rutland Town is not part

[Committee member (unknown)]: of the Rutland City School District. They are

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Then what exactly does this achieve in terms of savings and getting people to be paying into a regional high school?

[Senator Scott Beck]: This is not a regional high school proposal. It's it's a CTE proposal. You know, I think the regional high school is a I mean, in a regional high school proposal, as as I under I mean, it's not anything the task force advance. It's not anything that I've I've worked on. But I think when you say regional high school, k. Well, what happens to all the high schools that are regional?

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Well, they're at least maybe not

[Senator Scott Beck]: Yeah.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: They don't get our very limited school construction dollars should we put those forward.

[Senator Scott Beck]: Maybe that would be a policy decision. But

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Otherwise, I guess I don't really see the savings of BizMath, like what you're saying Well, I think

[Senator Scott Beck]: I think, you know, I think that that was a that's a that's a great that's a question that the Task force. The task force grappled with.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Mhmm.

[Senator Scott Beck]: And I I I said several times, I said, I don't think I don't think you're you're thinking of the question correctly because under act 73, there is no savings. Mean, I in the sense that what I say what I mean by that is

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: How about the governor?

[Senator Scott Beck]: Yeah. No. No. But what I mean by that is that whether we have 10,000 schools and public schools in the state of Vermont Mhmm. Or we have 200 public high schools or a 150 or a 100 public high schools in the state of Vermont, the foundation formula is the same amount of money. Right? I mean, you're gonna spend the same amount of money regardless of what you have for districts, regardless of what you have for school buildings.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And that's exactly what I'm saying is the foundation formula is somewhat inclusive of deferred maintenance. But voters have said, we're gonna you want us to pay more on top of that to bond for a high school. And we're not seeing necessarily how you're all working together to produce a regional high school at every weekend of board. It's an addition on top of the foundation formula.

[Senator Scott Beck]: That's not the way I read the foundation formula.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: There's never been money for future school construction in the foundation formula. Otherwise, we would have actually solved the

[Senator Scott Beck]: I think I think it's some I mean, I think

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: There's deferred maintenance dollars that are very significant.

[Senator Scott Beck]: I think the way the law is written right now is is the foundation formula is is it. It's what you it's what you receive until unless the legislature says it doesn't cover this and we're gonna pay for this some other other way. And which is my point is that the the point of redistricting and changing the number of school districts and maybe the number of schools and maybe the grades that each of those schools serves is not an exercise in saving money because the way Act 73 is written right now, regardless of what decision is made, the same amount of money is gonna be spent. What we're talking about here is, is trying to design the most efficient system so that those finite number of dollars get spent in a

[Committee member (unknown)]: way that is the best

[Committee member (unknown)]: for kids. Improve efficiency in hopes that it's gonna save

[Senator Scott Beck]: us money. So nothing here changes the foundation amount.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I mean, let let's let's go back then.

[Senator Scott Beck]: Yeah.

[Margaret MacLean (RSCA Steering Committee)]: Up here Yeah.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Where you have huge disparities right now in teacher pay. K. How do you see this big white blob saving money when that's a lot of differences in what they're spending money on?

[Senator Scott Beck]: Again, they're gonna get the same amount of money. They have disparate teacher contracts. But it's

[Cheryl Charles (Chair, Rural School Community Alliance Steering Committee)]: the same. Yeah.

[Senator Scott Beck]: Any any you know, if if we're talking Chittenden, for example, I don't know what the disparity is between the teacher contracts in any of the districts in the Chittenden area are right now. But, whether they're very disparate or very similar, that district under the foundation would get the same amount of money. And so

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So you'd maintain the lines over here in the white space? Or you're just Yeah. What is the white thing?

[Senator Scott Beck]: That's right.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: Yeah. Is this space just told you

[Committee member (unknown)]: that they're all they have.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: Yeah.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: for example public high space.

[Committee member (unknown)]: So

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So but there's just no dark lines that show any district. So I'm just not sure.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: That

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: there This is overlaid

[Senator Scott Beck]: with the dark line. One, two, three, four, five. These are all the districts within that white space.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And you would it was unclear to me if this white space was like, could be one district. I wasn't sure why you left it without

[Senator Scott Beck]: the It wasn't decision we made, but

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: it could be. I mean, we didn't

[Cheryl Charles (Chair, Rural School Community Alliance Steering Committee)]: even. Okay.

[Senator Scott Beck]: We we said we're gonna turn it into six. These six Mhmm. Right here.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And the reason it's white is because it's fully operating. No. It's just

[Senator Scott Beck]: that those are all supervisory districts. Just remember Grand Isle is a choice of discharge. Yeah. Yeah. District. Yeah.

[Cheryl Charles (Chair, Rural School Community Alliance Steering Committee)]: Yeah. So

[Senator Scott Beck]: This all this does is it provides the additional detail of what will happen in the supervisor. The areas with color, those will be supervisory nucleus. Okay. The areas that are white, those will be supervisor. Districts.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And it doesn't really ask them to do anything differently. No. Because if they One superintendent, one business. Like

[Senator Scott Beck]: like structured districts in New York City. So these these three districts,

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: three districts,

[Senator Scott Beck]: they have to merge into one district because they're

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So, like, all these all the yellow ones are one district?

[Senator Scott Beck]: They would be required

[Committee member (unknown)]: to merge into one district.

[Cheryl Charles (Chair, Rural School Community Alliance Steering Committee)]: One district. Yep. K.

[Committee member (unknown)]: So yeah.

[Senator Scott Beck]: And all the and all the green

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: that matter.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So we go from 52. That's that's huge. Sorry. Large. That's 400 ranking districts to 14 and a lot less. Because you're 50 districts. Yeah. A lot fewer districts. Yeah. I didn't count them up. I guess probably in the neighborhood of less than 25. 25. So you might as well take it easier for kids to access CTEs once they exist. Yeah. Because they'd be able to go find those boundaries. So I

[Senator Scott Beck]: said, was our goal, to increase the access to CTE.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Mhmm.

[Senator Scott Beck]: Not to break up any existing school districts and to, retain the existing, the 90 towns that use public tuition and public for independent schools.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So can I ask a CTE question then, like a CTE access question? Sure. Because I I wanna test all these maps for the problems they're able to

[Committee member (unknown)]: solve. K.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So we talk about Stafford a lot in Rutland because it's an incredible model, incredible Yeah. Accountability, and staff Yep. Has a wait list. I think one of our goals is to try and get rid of wait lists for CTEs. Would your map somehow solve that problem?

[Senator Scott Beck]: I think it makes it better. If you would want, if you'd like more detail and more detailed answer and information, I think that, Ruth Durkee. Durkee could come in and but we did we did test for that. Mhmm. We also part of the conversation, we also, you know, theorized it kinda shows up on this map with all the lines of the map. You know, there we have we we couple areas in Saint Martin, have what we call the clear and technical education center black hole, where there really isn't, Manchester, for example, fits that description. It's, fairly far north of Bennington. It's barely far south of, Rutland, and then you have all the mountain towns that, you know, come down into it that add to the travel time to either. We identified that that a career technical education center in Manchester would likely help kids. We also, had some conversation about, one at what is, now in proximity to the Champlain Valley Union campus. A lot of kids there. The OCTE center. Yeah. And we also, you know, the the distance between the Essex Center for Technology and

[Cheryl Charles (Chair, Rural School Community Alliance Steering Committee)]: Mhmm.

[Senator Scott Beck]: And the the one at at Barry, at Spaulding High School. There's quite a distance there between those two. And this it makes sense to, you know, put something in the in the Water brewery or Hardwood area. Those were conversations that we had.

[Committee staff/technician (unknown)]: I just searched

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: with South Burlington that all four of their students who applied for HVAC were denied.

[Senator Scott Beck]: Yeah. That's a problem. To go where?

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Yeah. Which is

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: the It must have been Essex.

[Senator Scott Beck]: I would be.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Yes. I think they have the HVAC. Burlington's not operating right now because

[Senator Scott Beck]: it's amazing. With 22,000 kids in the Chittenden County area

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: Yeah.

[Senator Scott Beck]: And your biggest district and school being at, Champlain Valley Mhmm. I think it probably makes such a

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: lot of sense to add a third. Okay. Tech center. Yeah.

[Senator Scott Beck]: Well, that was a conversation

[Committee member (unknown)]: you said. Over the course of

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: the year. Yeah. Yeah. So Okay. Okay?

[Senator Scott Beck]: We did not achieve perfectionist, but A lot of the questions that you were asking are questions that we asked, and in some cases, maybe would require a little more exploration or some explanation for.

[Committee staff/technician (unknown)]: Mhmm.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Committee member (unknown)]: Okay? Yeah. Alright. Thanks. Thank you. He's got a deal over here.

[Cheryl Charles (Chair, Rural School Community Alliance Steering Committee)]: Alright. Have fun. I'm gonna just check on this other meeting and come back.

[Margaret MacLean (RSCA Steering Committee)]: I can't have my chair.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Alright. So, okay, you can take the seat. You'll give make sure that's it. Okay. We'll get so we'll get started. So go ahead. Alright. So like I said at the beginning, what we're doing now in a lot this week is we had the secretary put on the table, not something they're saying is their proposal for saying such. I I want to be clear about that. Also their best shot so far under and then by virtue of the following environment model. But then we've got the map that Senator Becht has put in front of us. And so we're just trying to test get reaction, get a feel for what people are thinking as they look at these maps and the notion of maps at all. That's why I had you with before, but not directly on this issue. So that's what we're trying to do this week. It's really just do some testing and some thoughts.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: Okay. Yeah. So for the record, Jay Nichols, senior executive director, senior executive director. Yeah, I've just changed. Oh, wow. Yeah. So, I'm gonna do today is, my testimony today is twofold. First, to point out a few considerations related to testimony shared by the AOE. Secondly, to share a concept memo that the VPA believes is a better path forward to ultimate educational transformation statement. So, real quickly, on the VSPA Regions map, this is a loose configuration that basically copies the VSBA regions. And we just wanna be clear, there's no connection to school governance that would benefit mapping and government entities from the VSBA. Those maps are created just for regional meetings, so they have a couple times a year for board members to get together, give training, share legislative updates.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So, you say that you're referring to which one? Which one?

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: The one that's called the VSBA Regents Math.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: What the secretary called. Okay. Yeah.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: And some of those districts would be still bigger than 8,000. Although we personally feel, or we know that 4,000, 8,000 student enrollment has the most real basis in the overall research. We do agree that once you get past 8,000, there's quite a bit of research that talks about the finding deficiencies. So we wanna be careful of getting above that. And we can provide you with research on that, but we know last year the Vermont Superintendent Association gave you a bunch of research on district sizes. And some of the districts drawn up in that model would not have a high school, while others would have many high schools. Then you saw the regional high school districts proposal. We think that that's marginally better than the BSB or Regents math, but we worry that we'll break up some supervisor union to supervisor districts. I agree with what senator Beck said two minutes ago. We'd be really careful about that because then we started starting to talk as legal things with contracts that are different, legal entities who owns the property. So the degree possible, regardless of what you do, you should try to keep people working together that have been working together. We still think that's too focused on an artificial number of 4,000 and understand the attempt at reaching scale, make the map work, but we don't think governance should be an afterthought service of desired financial end. And then on the hybrid, some of the same issues, but a first review appears to be the better of the three options if you're gonna choose one of those three to

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: start

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: playing the movies. I wanted to say that all the organizations and schools doing the work, so I take cost drivers in education. I'm gonna spend a lot of time, unless you're all aware of them, that they have little or no control over, unfunded and funded mandates, out of control healthcare costs, obligations once in the general fund being moved to the education fund. We think any long term solutions have to address these cost drivers. And we are in meetings, Jeff Vanner and I and other VEs, trying to go off the recommendations that we can all read to and relate to Act seven eighty three. In the meantime, the VPA has been meeting and we shared the concepts below with any of our educational partners. So, we're gonna share them with you today. Don't want to discuss this as the DPA's plan, or DPA's proposal, don't want all kinds of letters from people. We're just trying to do some thinking to help you think. So, if the general assembly, and I have to underline it in bold, is convinced that forced mergers, a foundation formula, and governance structures must be part of any solution, we offer the following concepts for your consideration. Firstly, we would say that you take all supervisor unions and merge them into school districts. The rationale for that is it's easier transition to merge operations and structures. You would have similar or the same policies and contracts. In many cases, many SUs already have the same contracts for teachers and employee bargaining, but not all, but many people. You'd be working with people you already are supposed to

[Senator Scott Beck]: be

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: working with to find efficiencies and effectiveness. You'd be less likely to completely unaddend the entire education delivery system, which is a major concern of ours, And you would allow for some level of system stability to disruption that huge changes in the system have on student staff. You move from 119 districts to 51, and then we would say you look at combining under a thousand more practicable. I gave you a list of places that I believe would be under 1,000, for example, Essex North, Canyon area, and then we would say that there should be local representation for each town of the school boards. One of the things that we don't want to see people lose is that local feeling of voice and support in their school system. So we want each town to have representation. Is it better if I stop at each one of these suggestions to take questions, or do want me to keep on?

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I have a question, they can just answer.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: Feel free to interrupt me anytime. I have a question.

[Committee member (unknown)]: Yeah. When we talk about school boards, is that a necessity or can we, each school have an advisory board that that we set policies so that they have teeth if there's issues? So rather than having all kinds of school boards, each school will have, depending on its size, how many board members that we need. And that way you're getting representation of every school board rather than you had a committee where I think you'd take a lot of politics out of it too, because right now, up in like Burlington, that it

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: can get very, well, any school position, can get very blues. We'd be talking about here going from 119 boards to 51. So you'd have less than half the boards you have right now. You'd still have one of the highest rates of school board members per student in the nation, which is something I think Vermont's been pretty proud of, having you know, high representation of school boards, and that those boards would actually have real authority. That doesn't mean you still couldn't have advisory boards in local schools, you certainly could, but when you use the word policy, to me, policy's up here, And it belongs to the school board level, dictate to the superintendent what are the expectations for what we're doing as a district, what is our guiding vision? And to me, that should be at the school board governance level, not at the local level with the principal. It should be the superintendent and the school board together. That's policy to me. And this would still give us a lot less boards than we have right now. Okay? Great question. Thank you. The second thing we would say after and again, this is all if you're intending on implementing Act 73 or something like that of educational transformation, you'd encourage voluntary mergers of newer, larger SDEs. And we would say that you would look at using a SNC and a carrot approach. The carrot would be grants and incentives to help with this work for systems who want to do it, using educational opportunity payments as a potential carrot lever. So for example, let's go up my way. So you've got Franklin Northeast as a supervisor, and you tell them, you've now gotta become a district. And boom, they become a district. Then you've got next to them the school district that became a district with Act 46. You could encourage those two to join. You could require them to, let's be honest, you can do what you want. You're the general assembly, you get to decide. That's the Supreme Court, I'm pretty clear about that. If you decide you wanted to join, some of the things they're gonna need is consulting how do do that? How do they merge those contracts? How do they take care of debt services? How do they take care of all those? So a care for those types of things could be, listen, we wanna help you find efficiencies. We're gonna give you expertise support to help you do this. So if you're gonna require anybody to merge, we're suggesting that you give them the support so they can merge in a way that's efficient, effective, legal, and addresses those concerns that they're going to have. Merger's not not easy. Haven't been part of it. It's not easy. We're talking about pretty big merger here. We also suggest that you use class sizes, you know, as incentive as you as we are now or as a stick, and that we use a number from 1,000 to 4,000 as an overall district number as a measuring stick, as opposed to the 4,000. Doesn't really have any research base to it that we can see. There are school districts all over The United States with 1,000 kids, even less than 1,000 kids, that are very, successful. So we would suggest that you look at that number. And the other reason I picked that number for the admitting pipe exhibit is because then most of the systems that you already have, supervisors who use the school districts, would easily be an attorney to be kind of a school district with one board, one superintendent, one business office, one set of policies, and you have some efficiencies.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I don't understand what the stickers you're talking about. I get the class size stuff, I'm not quite sure how that would have.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: Class size, the way it works right What

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: happens if you merge versus don't merge? She chose the class sizes.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: Well, if you merge, what happens is, especially if you're in an existing SU, you can share some. So you can get to those class sizes, and you can share students. Whereas right now, in a lot of places, you can't share them. So I was talking to a principal this morning, in fairness to her, her school isn't gonna close, they've already decided, but she was like, We don't have any choice anyway, we're never gonna be able to make the class size system. And because she's in a supervisor union, she can't even share with the school right next to her. And they've got two, three schools that her kids are gonna go to, and there are plenty of room in all those schools, so she knows that her kids are gonna go to another school close by. But in the current structure she has, if her school did close, they could never make the class size. There's no way they could beat it. They've already got combined two threes and three fours that still don't make the number.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We have, I'm I'm just

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: thinking Oh, this is good. Is fine.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Not about this, but we have the law now that says, if the code has the class size statements. Yep.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: That's part of 73 rent.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So when you talk about that being a stick, it's already there. Yes. So how does it become a stick?

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: I think it becomes a stick because if people don't fulfill it, then they're in a position where they're gonna need to merger further.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Oh, so the stick really is what we've already built in. Absolutely. Oh, okay.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: Sorry if I wasn't clear on that. Yes. Alright. Now you've already built it in. Okay. And we're gonna say to people, listen, if you can't get there through merging merging into current districts, then you're gonna have to merge further. Okay? The foundation formula, again, if you're gonna follow through the foundation formula, we would suggest that it would go into effect after the merger of concepts in place for the one year lag, so school districts can actually see what they need to spend. We would suggest, as current law says, that education spending above state payment will be subject to vote by citizens of a new district, which is in current law, current act, subject three. We would recommend a goal to reduce growth of education spending over time and slowly close disparities and equalize per pupil spending. Accurate modeling would take place for our current and credit school districts. To me, these next two are kind of a biggie. E, allowance for moving downward in education spending over a set period of time via transition method set by the state as necessary. And the rationale is we do not want to make large impactful cuts to systems that are already largely at scale simply because they pay their personnel well. So, the CBU districts got 84 teachers in two years, that's not good for kids. We need to be thinking about how do we take those places that are already at scale, but are spending more money than the foundation formula, simply because they pay the teachers more. If they were in classes of six kids, 10 kids, I'd be saying like, hey, you need to come on. When you go into those buildings, they've already got 20 kids in the class, 25 kids in the classroom. So I think we need to build some mechanism to protect those places that are already at scale so those kids don't get hurt as we move towards the foundation form. And the only reason they're paying more than the foundation form is because they paid their staff. So I think we need to be cognizant of that. On the other side of that is that, making sure we protect local taxpayers and lower spending districts to make sure that any corresponding required increase education spending doesn't adversely impact Vermonters and lower spending communities. Now, I talked briefly offline with Representative Warren Heizer on this. She thinks the second home tax provision in there that will protect that, but that's something I think you wanna really make sure, or at least Senate Biden has to make sure. What we don't wanna do is say to Richford, one of my former communities, Listen, you you guys, it's a very poor town. We're gonna have, you need more money to educate the client. We're also gonna raise you taxes up and fresh you out of your homes. So, need to cognizant of that. And then, the VP here remains skeptical in general about a foundation for our family. We worry that F'sUs and F's will be put together in a manner that makes the math work, but there's nothing better served over. So we hope you'll be really thoughtful about that. Next part, school closures. Again, if you're gonna move forward next year, I'd just like to say that, but I don't want anybody to think that I'm advocating for you to do this. Local school districts make these decisions. All voters in the district vote. I justified in front of you folks the other day on the Commission of Future Public Education. We would suggest you follow that process. So the local voters have a chance to get input, but ultimately it's the new district that votes on whether or they're gonna close whatever school it is.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Can you say that again?

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: Local voters in the new district, whatever that new district is. So let's let's use up my way, at Berkshire, Bakersfield, Pritchford, Petersburg, Sheldon, and what room for date? If I got my they were told, Now you guys are no longer super res, you're one district, instead of right now they're two. In that district, if you decide you wanna close one of those schools as a board, everybody in that community is part of the vote to discuss that, and then the board makes the final decision.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So you they're gonna go to school, not

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: the district? The whole district. Yeah. That new community, but the whole district's a better word to say it's under.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Wouldn't that be obvious to the district?

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: It's not because right now- It's either a choice. Yeah. Right now it's not because we have at Act 46, we had articles of agreement come out of that, and that's caught a lot of people thinking in the commission. We've heard over and over people thinking that they had veto rights to those schools closed, and some of those towns do because it's in their articles of agreement, but it's not in the law. The law is pretty clear that the school board gets to make that decision.

[Committee member (unknown)]: So it's up to the voters in the district, the new district. The new law.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: They would all vote. They would give information to the board, but the board would make the decision to what we're recommending. So how's the vote used? Informable.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Through the advisory vote?

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: Well, we had the advisory or input. You saw that they both were in there, so you could do a survey or you could do a vote. And you could, when you set up your new district, you could set up any way you want to. So you could say each town at an individual vote, and the town can veto it. You could say it's a voter of approval.

[Committee member (unknown)]: Composition of the school. Right. That comment was about the composition.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: I would want representation of each town on the board.

[Committee member (unknown)]: Well, in essence, just like we have representation of every town in our county. Yeah. It's kind of a parallel process. The school board just has a different footprint that they represent. They come from two from that area and etcetera of it.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: But remember, the bigger you

[Committee member (unknown)]: can just the rationale for the vote of the town's vote, which has no way, but it's kind

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: of advisory It depends what's in your articles of agreement when you form your new I understand the logic. Yeah, you form your new district, it could be completely up to the voters. But if it is, we're saying it should be up to the voters of the whole district. The new district. Not one town in that new district. Sure, sure. So like Berkshire couldn't have veto rights over everybody else in Okay. Their

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Back to my point. Yeah. They would vote. They would know what they needed to do. You know, to get away from forced murder, I mean, wants us

[Committee member (unknown)]: to tell them how to murder. Right.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: And they know how to murder. Based on getting the equation, all the components of it, so they don't wanna trigger

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: We think the more, say people have in the system.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So our, as an agreement, once this thing is, folds out, do you have to be regretted? Well Everybody's gonna want to become the same page.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: You tell me. You guys need to decide. You're the general assembly. I'd be really concerned about the bigger your district gets, the less the average person's gonna feel they have say on this school board. So if you have a board that stretches, one board that stretches all across this white section on that other map

[Committee member (unknown)]: No. That was on the

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: other way to that, Ben.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: No. No. Not saying it was, but the governor's first proposal was five. Yesterday, we heard the number 13 or 14. Think about how many talents you're including in So are you on board of 45 people? So those things have to be thought of. We think this is an easier way to move forward because you have people that already work together. Supposedly, it's as unions are already supposed to be sharing curriculum. They're supposed to be sharing specialized services. They should have a lot of the same policies, so it should be a little easier to finish. Other questions about the school closure part. Choice, we took the adoptive approach. District school boards decide if they're gonna have choice or not. Boards who do have choice, delegate to schools, they will allow their peoples to attend. Current law talks about three delegations. It says, you know, what the rules are around that. We would say you leave it up to the school board of the new district. They wanna send, as long as the school's approved by the state, they wanna send the kids to an approved independent school, they wanna send the kids to public schools, they wanna send the kids to 10 different public schools and three different independent schools, we'll have to vote to stop.

[Committee member (unknown)]: So you're, Alan, that if I have choice in mind that it would be if the school board at this point decide, hey, I was thinking of sending my child here, but the school board decided, no, we're gonna send all our

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: children there?

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: Yeah, which is what it already is. Your board may allow you to go anywhere, but they can change it any time. So this would be the current law, only would be on a bigger scale.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So what you said isn't true if it's not operating distrubing.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: Good point. Yeah, point. Yeah. Go ahead.

[Senator Scott Beck]: Under

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: this, districts, in all of the larger districts, every district would have the opportunity to have choice or not. Their board had to be considered. Look at Colchester. It's gonna be simple. Because I know other kids at Colchester, they've already got a high school in their system, nothing really changes in terms of their governance model unless they decide they wanna join with S. Those two decide to merge together, they're gonna have to have conversations about, what does that mean? Do the kids go to, the closer SS go there? Do kids need to choose based inter district choice based on their, programming. Maybe one school's more of a STEM school, one school's of a hard school. They will be able to decide that. The places where it's gonna matter, where I think are in the bigger SUs, where right now, some places already have choice, How do you do that in a system that's gonna be one district board overseeing it? Because you wanna make sure that all kids have the same opportunities, which is the difficult part. Pretty simple if we can have to reckon to that issue. I don't think it's the perfect answer. Certainly, I've got members that think that only kids should be, kids should only be able to go to a public high school near them. Others that think they only should be able to go to one of the Forest Park Academies in public schools. We've got members all over the place who are saying, instead of fighting that fight, let the local school board make that decision. And then we would grandpa any kids that are already in a school, allow them to continue their education career at that school. School infrastructure, we'd ask you to develop an fund school construction program, finance the program at whatever level you can. Look Look at the Rhode Island, Massachusetts work, which you've already, I know you've done. And then we would actually incentivize two districts that are looking to combine student populations into new and or updated and modernized facility. I was sitting here said earlier, if we can have really high quality regional high schools, we think that's the way to go. And to do that, it's gonna cost money to do that. So we would say incentivize communities that come together and say, hey, we're gonna build this new 1,500 student high school in this part of the state right here in the center of our, and because of that, we're gonna close these three high schools where the buildings, the walls are falling down or whatever, help us to do that, incentivize us to do that. And we would actually try to incentivize that. Yeah.

[Committee member (unknown)]: Can I ask a question of the group? In the governor's budget address, did he mention school construction funding for seed money?

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: I didn't think he did.

[Committee member (unknown)]: I don't think he did either. I just wonder if anybody else picked that up.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: The only thing the only thing I heard about I asked the question of the secretary and or deputy about, you know, what money would be used for school construction that basically said that any school district that didn't spend the per pupil amount, that amount would get back into a school infrastructure fund. And we really don't have a fund rate. Yeah. There's still, still have a more to work.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: Yeah. We haven't had any new money since 2005. You can see it in the.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So, you know, it was gonna be incentivized to spend all the money. Sure.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: You it's something. Okay. And the last part is cooperative education service areas, like I'll fly to Alice called full seat. We should lean into those. We should try to provide state level support for systems that are willing to implement those partnerships. I gave a couple examples I know of in New York, where they share payroll and other HR functions. Just kinda cool, you have a major problem with the employee, HR nature that needs to be investigated, you get a BOCES that does that for you. You have an alternative school where all the kids that have a certain need are brought to the alternative school given the programming that they need. And then lastly, wanna read the note out loud to you at the end. The purpose here is to get a real reform without completely disrupting the educational delivery system. We believe this will move the state in a direction that gets to better scale, and will make it easier to further combine districts if the general assembly decides to do that in the future. We believe it will be a lot more tolerable for Vermonters, and would allow neighbors to work with neighbors that they already have relationships with. I've gone I'm a little more or less pumped about mergers than I used to be, simply because I've listened to four or 5,000 Vermonters over the last eighteen months. So I think if we're gonna do mergers, we should have people with people that are already working with them, because I think the moderators are not gonna support just She's not So, anything, workers being voluntary? Well, no, I would I mean, I think if you're gonna be workers, then not necessarily be voluntary, but at least have a view of people that are already working together, which would be SUs that's let them become a district, one board, one superintendent, one operating What if they wanna remain an SU? The problem with SUs is there's no efficiencies, in my opinion, for the two reasons I gave you the other day. One, you can't share staff. So if you can figure out how SUs could share staff and make it actually work, and second one is, when kids move, usually as poor kids, go from one town to another, they have to change schools, and we know those are our kids that have our lowest test scores, they have our biggest behaviors, they have the highest levels of chronic absentees, we've gotta help those kids, and SHUs don't service to those kids. And I'm from an SHU, and I was doing an SHU.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yes, we've I bunch wish

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I had heard a little bit more about the CTE component of this plan because From us? Yeah.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: We haven't. We haven't. We haven't here with CTE.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Okay. So but, you know, I know what the governor wants, and and we have, you know, if we close a school, there's a possibility. I know that, like Stafford, they need seats. They don't they don't have enough room.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So we could take one of those schools and turn that into the manics of Stafford, for example. So that was I see the plan being grounded in the CTE and that, and it's kind of like we really need to include them in the conversation.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: Yeah, so our thought has been from day one that whatever you do with CTE should be part of the big conversation. We don't think going out and doing something completely separate with CTE and have the state take over is the way to go, and the CTE directors could not be able give you.

[Committee member (unknown)]: Just an observation. So everything in the memo is predicated on the big hit. Work have events, forced district mergers, funded formula and governance. So we're trying to correct the problem of escalating costs and declining performance. But I haven't heard, and I don't remember this over the course of last year, the alternate solution. What, you know, if you're not on board, you know, the big if, if you're not on board for this, what's your solution?

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: I think the best solution is this. Okay. That's okay. Absolutely.

[Committee member (unknown)]: Because when you say if, and then everything else follows.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: Because it's you. Because it's you that gets to make sense.

[Committee member (unknown)]: Yeah. We want your opinion. Testifying. You're here to just everything we're saying.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: I'm not regurgitating anything.

[Senator Scott Beck]: That's just

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: putting me at risk with some of my members. We've talked about that a lot as a board, and we think this has the potential to actually, over a period of time, help contain cause- Less important. And provide more services for kids. That's what we should be focusing on. Thank you. Okay? Yep, thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Jack. Lucas, next. Your lawyers are good. I know. You reporters are all like- Cheryl Pillow. Actually, Cheryl was up

[Committee member (unknown)]: there Hang for on. You can see Cheryl's She's not. But we don't know that. We actually said, Take my chair.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Oh, shit.

[Cheryl Charles (Chair, Rural School Community Alliance Steering Committee)]: He's up there at three of us.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: Wow. Yep. He wants to be here. Yeah.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So if you want to do it as a team up here, if that's if you want do, that's fine. Would that

[Cheryl Charles (Chair, Rural School Community Alliance Steering Committee)]: be all right? Yeah. I'll start. But we've got to be three chairs here. Three chairs. Yeah. Three chairs. Alright. So

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: So

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I will start, first of all. Obviously introduce yourselves. You will.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: Yeah, okay.

[Cheryl Charles (Chair, Rural School Community Alliance Steering Committee)]: So to begin, I'm Cheryl Charles. I chair the Steering Committee for the Rural School Committee of the Alliance and I'm here with two other Steering Committee members, Margaret Twertney and Kesha Doctor. Jenny Albert. And each of us will speak. So, our format, if that's all right, we've divided our testimony into three parts. And I'll begin with an introduction that Margaret will follow, then I'll fill in the middle section, and then Jenny will finish it up. And certainly, knowing you all, you can ask questions at any time. But does that make sense? Yeah. A good way for us to proceed. So, we are here representing the Rural School Community Alliance, and I think you know that we are now up to more than 100 towns and villages in Vermont and our members are typically school boards and select boards and they would have voted to join the alliance at a warned meeting of theirs. So, that's how that has has worked and so we're representing them and we we grew very quickly over this last year and I

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: think you

[Cheryl Charles (Chair, Rural School Community Alliance Steering Committee)]: know up to this again, more than 100, out of a real shared concern about the quality of education in rural Vermont being at risk, with much of the discussion that's been being proposed around educational transformation in Vermont. So we advocate for the importance of rural community public schools and for a democratic decision making that affects them. Our members are clear about transformation. We're wanting educational transformation to be positive. Think it could be high risk transformation that really destroys a lot of what is working here. And so our members are clear that we believe at least that mergers or that transformation won't work if lines are imposed, if mergers are forced. And we see the evidence that forced mergers in rural areas in particular don't save money. They would increase costs, take years of time, reduce the quality of services for students. So that's our background. We have three different categories that we're gonna be speaking to you about. Beginning with the rural communities have already demonstrated a will to save money and serve students, especially consistent with the needs of rural Vermont, but also consistent with the intent of Act 73. We actually strongly support the new cooperative education services agency model, and we'll give you some evidence for why we say that. And we have a lot of concerns around the potential for closing schools. And all areas concerns about equity and concern about keeping the tuition and process open.

[Margaret MacLean (RSCA Steering Committee)]: So, that, Margaret, you're next. Sure. So, we are volunteers, and we work with volunteers. And we have our feet on the ground, and we listen to a lot of people. So our positions developed from that that conversation that we have with people. In June, when accident retreat passed, we contacted everybody. And we did that to the school boards, and we advised them to talk about the law and to engage in the public process that made sense for them as a community. So they did all kinds of different things. They invited legislators to speak at community forums. They had school board meetings, talked about what Act 72 would mean to them. They engaged in very different public processes locally to kind of figure out what what this accident usually mean for my community, for my school. So they did all that work. And it took a while because it was the summer, and school boards sometimes don't meet in the middle of the summer. So they staged it out. And by the August and September, they had false consensus about where they were. And in doing that, they passed motions, many of them. They wrote what they were willing to do to meet the intent of the law, what made sense for them to do. And they submitted that in writing to the task force. So the task force received information from numerous school boards. They also received information from surveys. They engaged with the commission, with Afton Partners, they got all that information. And together around 5,000 individuals and boards communicated with the task force. And that had an impression on the task force because what they heard was that there was no support for forced merger and that there was concern about the extent of the chain that some of the maps people were talking about would result in. So it's not so much the maps and the lines. From a centralized perspective looking down, the maps and the lines can be done in numerous ways that may be acceptable for people. But what people began to understand was if you're moving from a school district which takes care of town right now in one school, to a regional school district, you're moving from a very decentralized system, which is what we have now, to a highly centralized system, And you're not staging that. You're doing that one big And the outcome is very different from anything Vermonters have experienced and also very different from the way New England has historically evolved and treated schooling over the last couple of hundred years. So one of the things that school boards were really concerned about was with a map, like this map, what would happen is all existing school districts within those new lines would be dissolved. So they would no longer exist. There would be one new entity in that region rather than what might have now six So depending on the area. The other thing that they realized is it is unknown because it doesn't exactly say in our '72 what the school board would look like for that big new area. Would there be five members? Would each town have a member? Doesn't really say. They also discovered that voting would be in wards. There were voting test boards who set up. Voting wouldn't be by town. And the only thing they vote for in wards is legislators. They don't vote for school board members in wards. They do it by town. So that would change how things operate to them. And that gave them a lot of pause for thought, particularly as research shows or results from that approach around the country, particularly in rural areas. So this kind of scale of merger shows it doesn't necessarily improve student performance, and it doesn't necessarily save money, particularly in rural areas. So in our testimony, it's not that the other thing we got from school boards and talking to them was the fact that it's not that they're fearful of change. Okay? They're willing to step up and do their part. They're willing to meet the intent of about 72 people. But they they want to do that as partners with the state. They would like the state to give them expectations and guidelines so that they can work together with their neighbors to figure it out and make it happen. They are they understand the need for cost efficiencies. They understand the need. That's that's why we're here. I mean, there was an outcry about taxes. That's why we're here. They understand the need for savings and for dealing with the tax the tax system. And they also understand the need for improving standards and for making Vermont schools strong and productive and the best places for rural children. But they don't see this scale of change so dramatically as the best route forward. They see working more organically between with with their neighbors as the best way forward. So if you go on the agency of administration website, you will see all the public comment, and you'll see specifically public comment from school boards. And it says things like, we are already talking to This is who they're talking to. It says, we're talking internally. Grand Isle is talking internally about going from three districts to one. Essex North was talking with Orleans Central and North country. Caledonia Co op was talking. And in all that talking, what they decided and what they submitted to the task force, 26 school boards representing a 100 towns passed motions expressing their preference to remain in a supervisory union. In a supervisory union, where they work with their neighbors to have one superintendent rather than an individual superintendent for each district. So it's kind of the opposite of what Jane was talking about. Okay? These are the rural towns, and the rural towns find supervisory unions to not be efficient, to be effective. We'll get some more of that as we continue. So we feel the vision for the future of a modern education has to be has to be based on the real world. We're a system that's been built all the time, and we're the most rural education states in the nation, and our history and geography is really important. It can lead the way to the next stage of transformation. We need to do that together. We need to do that in the best interest of children, families, educators, and whole communities. School boards, rural school boards, are here to help do that. We need to get this right and avoid harm, particularly to our most vulnerable children, people, and places. So that's what we found from working with them.

[Cheryl Charles (Chair, Rural School Community Alliance Steering Committee)]: I'll continue, if I may, and I'm gonna focus on the shared services model, what the task force ended up calling cooperative education services, service areas, CISA. I prefer just to call it a shared services model. They one of the reasons we like it so much is that they will give us cost savings immediately. And I'm going to speak to the fact that Windham Northeast, the board that I chair, is already a part of the first of those shared services models being called the book cities in Vermont under Act 168. So shared services models are currently in place in Vermont. A supervisory union is a form of shared services model. Again, when the birthdays, we already share and transportation, food services, curriculum, administration, and so and obviously special education. But there's value in expanding the number of supervisory unions and districts that are taking advantage of those shared services to be more cost effective, but also by using that model when you have supervisory unions and districts coming together in a cooperative education service agency model, you still get community identity, you still get participatory democracy at the local level while getting those savings. Interestingly, the concept of a CSR or a shared service model statewide, we, the the alliance is actually very comfortable with every school district and supervisory union in the state being a part of even being assigned to one. And the reason that we can say that is that you don't dissolve any of the local governments. It's it's something where you're assigned. You look and you work together with your friends and neighbors to figure out how to save money. We also think that people should be able to move if they find out they've got more in common with someone in a different one. We we really truly think it will work to every district and every union in the state be a part of this new shared services administrative agency model. There is a misperception that we heard a bit that these shared services agencies create a new level of administration. We don't think so. That they don't create a new administrative tier. They don't replace the things that are working locally, but they help us with is things that we can't do as well. A a very specific example of that, I'll get to in a minute, has to do with special education. But we can't afford a full time person or we can't find one to meet the needs of our kids. But but when that shared services agency hires that person, then we only pay for a portion of his or her time, and we meet the needs of those of those kids. So the this shared services model only consolidates those functions that we can't remember as efficiently or consistently at the local level. But it does give us scale, and it does let us reduce cost. And so there are a great many benefits to this approach. And I'm gonna emphasize again, we're already seeking savings in in the Southeast part of the state now that we've joined and and are incredibly grateful for that. So the Southeast Vermont, what's called a voice both seats because it came out of again, Acts six one hundred sixty eight when that terminology was being used. We were officially approved by the agency of education in January. It's seven supervisory unions and one school district. And we actually have as many as 8,000 students in that new collaborative, that shared services or both these model. And we there's a chart in the testimony that we provided for you. I'm not gonna go through all of it, but you'll see significant savings. And in the example that I gave you about the specialized services we need with special education, we can save as much as a half of an FTE. We can save as much as 80% of the cost that we're looking at for those services. So we're actually genuinely excited about that. We also think that we've already been working together these seven issues in this one school district through what was previously the Vermont Learning Collaborative in the southern part of the state will now be this new BOCES. But there may be, as time goes on, in addition to the cost savings, we may find it makes sense to create some larger supervisory unions or districts. We'll see. Yes. Who headed that up to get that organization together? Jill Graham right now and I recommend that you listen to her again. She's very thoughtful and knowledgeable. She is the executive director of the Vermont Learning Collaborative. I think she'll probably transition into being the executive director of the new Southeast Vermont, OC's or whatever we end up calling it. As I mentioned, I actually chaired both the Westminster board and the Windham Northeast Supervisory Board, and we are already seeing savings from this new collaborative and we anticipate even more. So please know that we think this is a solid model that's already shown some evidence to work and we anticipate much more. Purchase the services? Yeah, it's two different things. As we start this off, the eight entities, the seven issues and the one district, we all pay a fee to be a part of it, but that's just to help it get up and running and it's manageable. It's a form of an assessment, but when we actually are working to get the services of a portion of a specialist's time, then we pay for the time involved. It's a prorated basis, but we don't have to employ and we can't employ a full time employee. It's definitely saving something. At a time, especially starting with special ed, when the cost of special education, as you all know, or just as the kids with special ed.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Does the special educator work for the MOCs?

[Cheryl Charles (Chair, Rural School Community Alliance Steering Committee)]: That particular one does.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So you have to have enough money to hire the people first then And pay for the

[Cheryl Charles (Chair, Rural School Community Alliance Steering Committee)]: one of the things that was interesting to me, I learned in talking with Jill Graham recently, is that when we were only when the Vermont Learning Collaborative is a five zero one c three, but by moving into this new entity, it it has more leverage as an agency, a public agency, and therefore can get more monies that would not otherwise be available. So it's Grants.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Correct. Yeah. Okay. That's correct. Report. Yeah. Okay.

[Margaret MacLean (RSCA Steering Committee)]: So did you have

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: We no. Just we left it a kinda option. It's it's actually statute. Nobody man nobody was mandated. Think because everybody's gun shy, we're unfunded mandates. I I'm I'm sorry. Are talking to yourself?

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Yeah.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Right. Then what's saving money? Yeah, that's right.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: You made the model organization for the state.

[Cheryl Charles (Chair, Rural School Community Alliance Steering Committee)]: It's a very good one and we're happy you know again it's seven SU's of one district and the the SBA map is is too big but for us, you know, but we've managed to work together for some years and and when this opportunity through January came up, we took advantage of it in the southern part of the state. We said, okay, we'll be the first BOCES, you know, according to that law. And the one change that we're recommending now is that we think it's really okay. It would be valuable to have all districts in the state, as she was included, be a part of one of these shared services at Kennedys.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, let's not get hung up. I've got a lot of questions about it, but let's not get hung up I'm on that right

[Cheryl Charles (Chair, Rural School Community Alliance Steering Committee)]: going transition to Doctor. Albert Nash. Help us understand a little more about this SU model and how it actually does save money. Thank

[Committee staff/technician (unknown)]: you, Chair and Margaret. We included some charts, a bar graph and a line graph, and I actually did bring copies. I know that's somewhat discouraged, but in case people wanted to see a conversion, you're more than welcome. So I'm just going to go over a few things about these charts and the highlights around savings from supervisory unions and then touch on the last topic from our written testimony, and then a few closing remarks. So, the charts that we have, there's two on this page.

[Dr. Jeanne (Jeanne) Albert (RSCA Steering Committee)]: As I said, they're meant to highlight in slightly different ways the cost effectiveness that we've seen from the supervisory union structure in Vermont. Top one on the page, or the bars, is looking at spending per weighted pupil, just for fiscal twenty five-twenty six. That's since we moved to the long term weighted ADM weights. And you can see the green bars are spending per pupil, per weighted pupil in SUs, and then we also display spending for town and city supervisory districts and merged supervisory districts. So that's one way of looking at cost effectiveness for SCUs. The second chart, the one on the bottom, expands the window to five years. It's difficult to compare because you've got equalized pupils for some years, and you've got penalty WIDM for some years. So, this approach, instead, what I did was displayed total spending for the state. So the dark line, the solid line, is actual spending, statewide education spending, and the dashed lines, the green one, is what we would have spent statewide had we been spending at the SU rate. And the red dash line is what we would have been spending statewide had we been spending at the merged SD rate. And you can see, again, another way to capture the effectiveness, would actually see projected savings of $112,000,000 if we had the spending at the SU rate versus an added spending of around $120,000,000 at the merged SD rates. So, I think we want to focus on effectiveness of SDUs. I'll say a little bit more about that. But before leaving the chart, just wanted to point out that because of the higher level at the Merge rate, I think that's just another area of caution when considering a statewide system that's based on Merge SDs. Going ahead, just to summarize, we're sharing the charts about the cost effectiveness of supervisory unions to highlight both the value of this form of school district governance itself, especially in rural areas, but also to emphasize their structure as shared services models, as we've stated previously, but mainly as a sort of chronotype, in a sense, for CSIS, that have a successful track record of cost effectiveness. And these data from Vermont provide strong evidence, we think, for pursuing an expanded shared services model through the season framework. So the last topic I will address from our prepared for the written testimony that we submitted is regarding some concerns we have around rural school closure and equity. I think no surprise current fiscal pressure, along with declining enrollment, has placed intense pressure on rural public schools, specifically pressure to close them. Rural schools and their communities are often in the crosshairs of a number of policy levers designed to build pressure and force change. These policies unfortunately act as blunt instruments in contrast to careful targeted policy that supports adjustments while building on strengths. Examples of a few of the more blunt instruments are, some of these come up today already, removing closure decisions from the communities that will be impacted by closure, or defining some schools as necessary and therefore de facto others as unnecessary, and also establishing class size minimums, but with arbitrarily determined numbers rather than meaningful guidelines for size and staffing. In this climate, accessibility to schools for families from communities with closed or closing schools becomes increasingly. Plus, we have regions of Vermont where public school capacity is already filled. Indeed, many communities operate schools only in some grades, and some districts no longer operate any schools. As such, public education deserts increase, access to schooling becomes arduous for both children and families in the form of long bus rides for children and complicated employment travel routes and schedules. In towns with large area, in particular, in low population density, school choice does fill a need to enable life to function for families when their local school no longer exists. As we know, Act 73 reduced the number of independent schools that are able to receive public tuition. In rural areas especially, the remaining such schools became even more vital options for children living in age of a lack of public school capacity. Public comment on this topic overwhelmingly reiterated the importance of school choice. This was something that you've heard too, Margaret, to rural families as a pathway to equity of opportunity, particularly when public schools are closed. They see these schools as valued partners that increase the chance for all students to have access to opportunities that meet their needs. So, in closing, just to reiterate some of the main points, Vermonters are nowhere near any kind of consensus on a statewide map of school districts and are strongly opposed to forced mergers based on public comment. Trying to get voters to accept forced mergers into overly large districts would take an excessive amount of time, would not reduce cost, and would lose even more trust and acceptance of voters. In order for change in our education system to be successful, it must be organic. The RSCA grew very quickly because the alliance reflects the reality on the ground in rural areas of Vermont. We think while the cooperative service models get up and running, we do encourage action in the short term to hold down costs, possibly with some kind of flexible spending cap. If you can hold down the rate of increase, the rest can happen organically within districts and will result in cost savings and improved services to Vermont students. So thank you again for this opportunity, and I'm sure we'd be happy to answer any other questions.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So talk a little bit about the notion of the practical Pentagon. What does that actually mean? Officially, the gap and the urgency flexibility, and I realize, I think it's a distinction, you have to have some means of ameliorating the one instrument, in fact. Right. So talk to us about what that actually means to you.

[Dr. Jeanne (Jeanne) Albert (RSCA Steering Committee)]: I mean, one example I think that comes to mind when you think about, at least the way I understood discussion that's ongoing about a cap, It's a real challenge, especially in our smaller districts, because of course you could have increased spending because you literally spend more, you could also have increased, I should say, spending per pupil because you spend more, but it could also be because your number of pupils are decreasing. And so having some way of acknowledging that that's a different situation. And it's particularly acute, I mean, can happen in any district, regardless of size, but when you don't have a lot of students, even with the loss of a very few can increase your spending per pupil considerably. Though they really, you wouldn't really need to decrease staff, right? Because it's not really that you really are, you've only lost a few students, so you're not likely to do staff, but nevertheless, spending for pupil goes up So I think that type of dynamic is one where considering having flex, That's one way I think that's one of the bigger ones. And I think there are ways to handle that. Are, know, we could sort of account for that, it declines. It's not intractable,

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: but it's important to it. With averages over years.

[Dr. Jeanne (Jeanne) Albert (RSCA Steering Committee)]: Well, I mean, one way I one way I'd consider it is you could, well, averages over years is helpful because it, it deals with fluctuation. Then you could also commit to maintaining the spending level you would have if your people's hands got down. It's kind of a whole harmless stuff. Okay. So there are different ways to

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: do that. Okay.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Questions? Yeah. I can

[Committee member (unknown)]: just I just wanna say that, you know, as representatives of the rural school community alliance, we could talk all day about the points that you just brought up, but some of them are pretty inflammatory. And I just, well one thing I wanted to just pull out is the rural schools are not in anybody's crosshairs. They really aren't.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: It's just

[Senator Scott Beck]: the opposite.

[Margaret MacLean (RSCA Steering Committee)]: I know that

[Committee member (unknown)]: that's Hang on, please. So listen now for We're 45 actually trying to support the roles of leaders, keep them relevant and survive. We're looking at the efficiencies, we're looking at a policy which looks at the efficiencies of schools that are, you know, there's potential overlaps in geographic areas where there's a number of schools that are lower performing, they're under attended, the populations have dwindled over time, and we're looking to increase their academic, enhance their academic programs. But to come back and even write that rural schools are the crosshairs of these policies, I think is completely misleading and I just want to highlight that. But again, we could talk all day about the points that you made in the memo because I find them a little exaggerated and I don't know, they're obviously exciting a lot

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: of people and I think they're kind of going down, they might be going down the wrong path.

[Committee member (unknown)]: Stop there.

[Margaret MacLean (RSCA Steering Committee)]: Can I respond in that we can understand, sitting here, that that's not the intent, to have rural schools in the crosshairs? Rural schools can feel it that they're in the crosshairs. Why? Because

[Committee member (unknown)]: because somebody's told them that.

[Cheryl Charles (Chair, Rural School Community Alliance Steering Committee)]: No. That's

[Margaret MacLean (RSCA Steering Committee)]: Because they understand the mechanisms of the role will lead to closure.

[Committee member (unknown)]: I do. I just respectfully disagree.

[Margaret MacLean (RSCA Steering Committee)]: Yeah. Well, that's that's what they feel. They feel this pressure. And we're reporting that to you because that's what we're hearing. Okay. That's what we're hearing. And while hearing that, we're also hearing would would they recognize issues of declining enrollment, sustainability, and cost. And they're willing to step up and help solve the problems. When you look at the letters to the task force, they all said that. They wish to meet the intent of the law. They're not saying no. They're saying, we would like to work with you to reach these goals. But some of what was presented as the pathway to reach the goals, the large districts, is a huge bridge for them from current state to new state. And the sense of loss between current state to the new state is huge for them because of how they've evolved as rural communities historically and how they operate.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Thank you. So I can't speak for the the whole committee, you know, I'm I wish for everything you said. I didn't find many things I disagreed with. I think one of the buckets that we all as a committee need to understand is that, like, phase four of the transformation is we're gonna have to consolidate, you know, contracts for printers and, you know, school buses and all that. You guys have already been kind of the vanguard of that. Sometimes I actually think maybe I wish that we'd mandated that that happen, but everything takes two years anyway so we would be right where you are now. And I mean that the whole the whole issue that we're talking about came about because of excessive excessive spending. You know, if we could actually quantify what we're going to be saving right now to the consolidated or CISA or BOCES, I think it would take away a lot of pain. Want to personally let let your people know that we don't have crosshairs. Know, we we understand that it's you can't do it without I mean, the school houses are where they are and the population centers are over there too. So, know, we just need to look at it in a different light.

[Committee member (unknown)]: Yes. We've we've spoke, and I have in our district, we have at least three, if not four schools that are now facing the same dilemma that Lincoln did. Lincoln did a very good job. They became their own district and are making it work. And we've sat and talked about this quite a bit that someday it may not work and when it doesn't work, that's when you'll address it. Beamon Academy, same thing there, that they're having to address, but it should be a community based thing. We can't go off our feelings when financially we just cannot continue to keep schools open. That's when the reality comes in and then getting the community to go And Beamon's kinda kinda having that happen now. It's like, what are we gonna do as a community? Because we love our rural school. We do not want it to close, just like Ripton. At the end of the day, Ripton decided with no push from the school board that we just cannot afford the economics of it, and that's what will drive, I believe, all this. This committee Yeah. Both committees are not looking to close any schools. Everybody realizes with the mandate that or the act that that is gonna be fallout from it. And, you know, we, as committees, are not looking to go, school's gotta close. And that's I I agree with my fellow senators that said, we don't even talk about it, but it just gets in the conversation what it's gonna happen. And that's right, but we want communities to be involved. And as all, from our principals to our superintendents, when it doesn't, when nobody wants to make that decision, it's probably gonna have to come up from the state, and I'm hoping that the local community makes it so that it's not what they wanted to do, but they realized it's what they had to do.

[Dr. Jeanne (Jeanne) Albert (RSCA Steering Committee)]: Well, gonna, I just wanted to offer and so one of our, we have five members steering committee and one of the members, they're currently having those really hard conversations, not because anybody made them happen, because they're aware, they care, they care. And I think we've always felt that, and provide another testimony, that it's really more about involving the community early, having an orderly process about sustainability going forward. When enrollment is and projections, you know, you can kind of see them heading in a direction where you just aren't getting the new kindergartners coming in, getting so few. And I think that's where, again, it's about partnering, about wanting to be in that conversation with the state. What are the best ways to use this dope maybe if we can't continue medical school there? But not have it imposed. I think that's really the key that we're after. We certainly didn't, we weren't really looking to be a volunteer. So I that's taking face value. It was really just expressing what we're hearing. And obviously, we want to move out of that mode totally. We don't want to be in the mode of feeling biblically hurt for our members.

[Margaret MacLean (RSCA Steering Committee)]: Marlborough, this is what Jean was talking about. And since June, when we said you should have these conversations, they've had consistent community conversations. They will vote in March to close this school. So this is this is happening. I can give you a a different example. HM is a small school where I live, which has 60 plus students, and it has steady enrollment. One of the reasons it has steady enrollment is after Act 46, a community group came together, formed the Fijian Children's Center, and the Fijian Children's Center is a nonprofit, which hires a provider and has opened a childcare center for zero to three year olds in the basement of the church. This children's center is attractive for families, attractive so much so that it has a waiting list, many people coming from far away to bring their baby for childcare. It's acted as a feeder into our preschool program and our elementary school program, and our enrollment has been similar. Our enrollment's not going gangbusters, but it's also not declining. And we thought about it as a community sustainability issue. And there is an organisation, the Council for Rural Development, that helps communities look at sustainability, look at their future. And we believe schools that feel threatened because they understand this issue would benefit from that kind of process to help them plan for sustainability. Because we know, research shows us, that when a community loses its school, depopulation follows, declining home values follow. And young families don't move to that town. They move to the town of school. So it has implications beyond schooling for family. That's really the key. We also believe the community should vote for this reason. Communities will vote yes to close. Marlborough May, Holland voted yes to close. When they are assured that all the issues for their children are taken care of. The reason why you have a very controversial situation between Montpelier and Roxbury was Montpelier and Roxbury merged during that forty six, and then a very different in size. Montpelier, large town, Rocks pretty tiny. They weren't contiguous. They were there's another town in between. It's a long way to get from here to there. They had a small school there, which was reduced to grades pre k four. When the budget didn't pass in '24, that school was closed. There was one vote from the two Roxbury reps on the board of 10 or 12. Roxbury did not have vote. They had no voice in the decision. Their store was closed for monetary reasons, not for academic or other reasons. And because of the difficulty in getting bus drivers, etcetera, these children are now on the bus two hours and twenty minutes a day. They have a long ride in the morning or a long ride in the afternoon and vice versa, a ride the other end. So it's not two and a half hours divided by two, but it it's split. It's a considerable amount of time. And there's a large percentage of families in Roxbury who homeschool now because they don't want their children on the bus. We feel if the community votes, they will have made sure that all those things are taken care of before they'll say yes. And all those things should be taken care of in the best interest of children before they say yes. There's a reason they want to make sure their children are taken care of. The other issue in Roxbury is they now have an empty building. That empty building isn't in a school budget anymore, but it's a $100,000 to maintain that building empty because there's no one in it. And they have to maintain it because what might happen if they don't take care of it, it's an asset in their job. But they are a world too. Unlike, you know, in towns and bigger towns, there isn't another getting getting people to use that building effectively and pay for it is hard. There's plenty of volunteer groups who use it for meetings and whatnot. But to rent out that space is isn't easy in a rural place. So you have those issues that come to play the role of towns with school closures, and this this adds to people's worries.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you. But it is possible that you recognize that we do not have you in the crosshairs at all because we don't like to do that, but then as a matter of the policy you seek, it feels like you want it.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: I think that's what you

[Margaret MacLean (RSCA Steering Committee)]: need to say.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. I think it's There's There's a way to separate those two things. Absolutely. So thank you.

[Dr. Jeanne (Jeanne) Albert (RSCA Steering Committee)]: Thank you very much.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: Yeah, thanks. Thank you. So

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Good afternoon. I I will endeavor to do my best to get you out there well in advance. So for the record, Jeff Fanning, executive director for. I was asked to speak to the maps that were distributed last week. So I'll stick to those comments that I think had a robust conversation.

[Jeff Fannon (Executive Director, Vermont-NEA)]: Was it fair? Yeah. I'm happy to hear it. It was gonna be the fall was the the maps, especially the hybrid. And then just and if you wanna say about the notion of maps. Gotcha. I'll do my best. And if I if I I miss it and you want some more, I'm around. Yeah. Obviously. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to this. I haven't yet listened to the secretary's comments last week. I've only looked at the documents. So if I seven it, it's good for that information on my part. In short, three maps, the v s a VSBA region map, regional high school map, and combined with a hybrid map. They initial for me, they initially raised more questions than they answer. I believe all three proposed map force will force the merger of SPs and SUVs into every into very large districts. Although that isn't quite fairly clear to me, but I think they are forced it's a forced merger. I don't think it's voluntary, I guess, what I'm saying. The size of these new districts, no matter the the map adopted, is too large, and I think it's out of sync with Vermont's community values. This may work in other states where there's existing county government system or other larger government system structures, that are already baked in the state's CNA. But that just is not the case here in Vermont. The size, therefore, is too large. Moreover, I've seen no evidence that the districts that that are this size will improve student outcomes, which I believe is the purpose of educating students. Of these two large Vermont maps, we remain supportive. Instead of these two large Vermont maps, we remain supportive of the redistricting task force's, call for a reasonable approach to forming local public school districts. The task force called for incentives to encourage schools to merge, and we support this approach. In addition, it's voluntary mergers. The task force recommended five CSOs or public education service areas that are similar to the BOCES, that 40 states already have in place. And finally, the task force, as does the administration, I think, recommends larger comprehensive regional high schools that would be voluntarily created, by newly merged school districts. And, of course, any of these new schools that are necessary to accommodate larger number of students, including a regional high school, would need to be accompanied by a a restarted state aid for school construction funding program. You may or I served a couple of years ago on the school construction task, which I forget who was on it with me. Have to We have a six today, we have six to nine billion dollar school construction need. That was two, three years ago. So I'm guessing it's gone up. We have the second oldest school stock in the nation. So it's not surprising that we have a lot of need for, school construction. So if you're going to incent behavior, around merging, we think, to your question earlier, we believe that school aid for school construction necessarily needs to be accompanied by these mergers. You just can't do it without it in large measure. It just can't happen. So state aid is is critical. Additionally, any education transformation, these are reasonable timelines. The task force address that. We agree with that. Can't these are big issues affecting a lot of kids, a lot of communities, and they and if they don't happen with the flip of the switch, Unintended consequences don't happen. I don't what they are, but they do happen. You know that. These are complex systems, and we should take a do no harm approach because behind all these maps are people to students, and we shouldn't forget that. So in essence, we we think the task force did a nice job and reasonably, looking at the facts, the evidence they heard and went with voluntary with incentives, significant incentives. And I think that will by the way, those incentives, they're not we're gonna have to do it anyway. So we're we're suggesting that take what's already a need for the state and direct it into policy changes. So, Jay mentioned earlier, Rhode Island and their school to say aid for, construction. They they had, a modest amount of state aid at sort of the baseline. And then if you did the school district then did took actions. If it took actions to do things that the state thought was necessary, they got bonus points. So you have more slightly more aid for this or that depending on what the bonus was. There's a lot of systems set up. We think it was a great approach because and you have this need. We have just desires on the start of part of the state to give communities an incentive to doing what we want them to do, carrot, and and that is stated for school construction. So, I mean, that's a good approach. The maps here don't talk about them. I think, again, it's one of those huge questions for me. What do they what do they wanna do with with that, that need that's not addressed here? But if these big maps are created, first of all, it's just not as Jay talked about earlier, these folks in these big areas have not worked together previously. And it's just something out of the the the DNA of those large communities. And then, again, you're gonna have to build schools, a lot more regions. And so, why not do it in a way that works with Vermont and addresses the unmet need? What would you help to build schools within that model? It's our belief that well, I I I don't know if you do. That's that's a fair question, but it it seems like you're not gonna wanna operate schools as you know it and that those schools are falling down North Country, for example, North Country High School. It was it's at its end like as I understand it. Last year, they put 7 or $800 into PCB remediation. And a school that by, I guess, engineers or or some school construction experts was at the end of its its life. And I grew up in a family where we were told repeatedly, I'll say by my father, mantra was we're too poor to be cheap. And what he meant by that, he said it loudly at times, Buy good things, take care of it, and don't waste money on things that are not valuable. And if these schools that in these large areas are already at end life, which I believe is the case in many of them, then why should we throw good money after bad? We are too poor to be cheap, and we're we're too smart to to do that. So I think that's why I I think the reality is you're right. It doesn't require that. It it doesn't necessarily mind. Yeah. What you're saying is probably true with or without the maps. Absolutely. So the maps, though. Yeah. It's just okay. Yeah. So if you want people to do things, and I think you do, they need to do other things. Tie the two marry the two together with vendors that they've got they need. We used have state aid for school construction park system prior to 19007. That went away. It was supposed to be a temporary recession in 2007, which should take a temporary measure. And here we are a bunch of years later and it slipped out of balance. Question for me was, what do we do to drive down? And so I ask this question not as somebody who actually wants to drive down because I understand the needs of schools. You know, we actually picked up a lot about that as we move around in our restaurants and we know it from our own districts but at the same time, we're based on the situation where the rate of increase right now is just I think by any measure is not sustainable and we are know, let's switch every year dumps money into buy down the rate and the money just of life will not be there again after this year if it's done

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: to be able evolve. So what do we do for next year?

[Jeff Fannon (Executive Director, Vermont-NEA)]: So here's what I would say. School budgets are being discussed and soon very soon. Actually, about the year after. No. I I know. Because they're they're voting on those those year after budgets, I think, right now, And those are being finalized as we speak. It's my understanding for my colleagues who work all around the state that there are school boards that are doing the work they they think necessary to, educate their students and reduce their costs as much as they possibly can in a in a in a fair and balanced way that works for their community, works for their students, and then, serves the kids they need to do they need to serve. And the the rifts, there were 400 or so last year. If one employer in the state laid off 400 people, we would have a SWAT team from the Department of Labor going in, helping them, and that happened around the state. Small numbers here and there and some large places. It was large numbers here and there. CBU was 84. I guess, Jay said, I had heard for two years. For over two years. Right? I know. I heard 88, but either way, over 80 people in the last few years at CBU have been riffed positions. And I don't know if they'll repeat that this year, the number, but but it does happen every day. So I think the answer to your question, Senator, is school boards are managing right now to try

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: to lower the cost.

[Jeff Fannon (Executive Director, Vermont-NEA)]: What I would also add is we talked a few minutes ago, we talked about Rockstar. My understanding that they had they were projecting a 2% education spending growth. I don't know if it was per pupil or overall, was a 2% growth. And that was leading to a 12% property tax increase. Yep. I heard on the radio last week that Plainfield, Massachusetts of Plainfield and Marshall, there are two communities that are similar demographic or anything. One, it was, again, a two or 3% modest education spending increase, followed by one of the school districts had a more than 20% property tax increase, and another had an equally, similar number decrease. There is no explanation for that in my humble opinion. I don't I understand that there is. And my understanding is in my opinion, Roxbury. There was a long discussion about that, and it left people more confused. The system is very confusing right now. It's been layer upon layer upon layer upon for twenty years. And I think you need it shouldn't be a need a PhD in math that's determining your property tax if your budget is going up 2%. Nowhere does that mean a 2% budget increase should not mean a 28% property tax increase. I don't get that math. That's what I mean, that's as you go. That's the system. And so we're to figure out what to do about the issue that you're raising. You're raising exactly the issue. Yes. And I guess right. We we last November 2024, we believe that, the income tax is a better way to go. It's ability to pay, and it, it gets it eliminates it abolishes the residential property tax. Right now, for nonresidential property tax, have to do a fixed rate, and that's understandable. But if you're a resident, you pay a variable. And that is not understandable by anybody. And, again, I don't think you need I don't think you should have a PhD in math to understand your property taxes. By the way, the property tax overall is an antiquated system. It's a it's based on a 250 year old notion that one's ability to pay is based on the property wealth, And that's simply not the case today. I think we have a we need we go to our citizens to update that that antiquated system.

[Committee member (unknown)]: To that point, have you had any request to testify before the senate, finance committee or

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: would it

[Committee member (unknown)]: be ways and means on the health side to talk about how to support education funding whether it's property tax or something. I was wondering if there's anybody else.

[Jeff Fannon (Executive Director, Vermont-NEA)]: I I talked yes. I mean, I talked about it. I know that other people have talked about it. I know that there are challenges with income tax.

[Committee member (unknown)]: But, I mean, like, this session Yeah. Is have they have they reached out to say, hey. We're gonna have a conversation about this, or is it so we all just kinda talk to each other about, you know, other concepts and I don't know.

[Jeff Fannon (Executive Director, Vermont-NEA)]: Not yet. Although I have been in Senate Finance earlier, they talk about the the education cap that was being discussed, the variable cap. But not the specific. It came up during the conversation. So yes. And maybe not directly, but yes, it's come up. Thank you. You talked about the cap. What did you say about the cap? I wish I had had it with me, but we don't think the caps work. And they in the last been around the building for a few years. And the last two times that we had caps, they were repealed within a year before they moved to our back, because they they have unintended consequences. If my school district has a sudden emerging need for other unrelated, the cap doesn't it's it's not forgiving. And schools understood that. It they've I think it's it's driven by the notion that schools are spending unnecessarily, and I don't think there's a school out there that is. I don't think there's they're deciding to spend frivolously. And so when you have a cap, and they have problems or issues they need to address, it's unforgiving, and it makes for, really bad consequences for for those schools, communities, and students. So we we spoke out against them again this last week I did as well. And the last two caps were as I said, both were appealed before they went into effect. Because school boards, communities did not like the way they were having their their. Any more question? Any questions, anybody? So a helpful day overall in its entirety, overall in its entirety. So thank you for letting me get the job. Plenty of time for hours early. So, yeah. So with that, we are adjourned.

[Jay Nichols (Senior Executive Director, Vermont Principals’ Association)]: Thank you. Thanks.