Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We're alive. We're alive? What were the timing? Is the Senate Education Committee on May April 17. A couple of quick bits of testimony from the House members to the Rose on two different bills, but we're gonna start with Representative First of all, on age six fifty, the Educational Technology Provider. Can then say a few words about a couple of things. The floor is yours.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Thank you. For the record, Angela, our senior representative from Williston, one of the co lead sponsors on age six fifty. So, we definitely wanna start by saying thank you. I did ask if I could add myself to the witness list. I really appreciate having the opportunity to share a few thoughts with you all. So, I wanna, as I say, level set. I don't think I've ever said that, but we hear that a lot in committee. Just start out with the fact that, as you all know, this bill on the House side was a commerce bill, was in the Commerce Committee, very much a consumer protection bill, and that's how it was written. Just starting with that understanding. Backing up a little bit, to, I think it was explained in the walkthrough, but to say that all business entities in Vermont are required to register at the Secretary of State's office. This bill is using an existing legal framework and regulatory framework, and just applying it to education technology products for the purposes of consumer protection. The registry, therefore, is really a key to enforcement. We have to know and understand the universe of products and businesses operating in this space in order to enforce existing consumer protection laws, including Kids Code, when applicable, but other, we have laws right now that are being violated by EdTech providers and the products that they provide. So the intent is to cast a wide net and would want to include AI products. There's no standard vetting procedure right now before these products are offered in schools and used by kids. Data privacy agreements can only cover so much, and they're not enforced, nor are they always followed. You heard testimony on Tuesday from VitaLearn, which is a Vermont based group of school IT directors and personnel, that schools sometimes or often abandon software that they that schools thought would be effective and turns out to be ineffective. So I just wanna pause here to really let in what that means. So they've taken schools' abuse products, allowed kids, encouraged, required, in most cases, kids to use these products, thinking that they're going to be effective, safe, legal. Kids use the products, schools realize, oh, it's not really doing what we thought it was gonna do. We can let it go. And this is how schools end up. Some schools are, right now, employing over 3,000 different apps This is apps we're basically speaking about here, correct? Just apps,

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: or is it

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Mostly, bigger would say mostly apps. I use the term online and digital products, But we should also be taking a look at the hardware. So that would be the software side. The hardware side would be Chromebooks, iPads, the tools that students are using to access these apps should also be But the bill doesn't do that. Would say not directly. Because because it's not an education bill.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Okay.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: It doesn't sort of have a lot of, like, connective tissue to the actual how school districts would would implement. It doesn't have any. Right? It's just a registry It's of it's really setting up the, like, registry that happens outside of schools, and of course, involve the agency of education. It makes sense for the agency to be the state entity that sets up these criteria. I realized I had a great conversation with the folks who were representing the agency on Wednesday. What was it? Tuesday? And I realized that I was saying standard, and they were understanding that as, like, as we talk about education quality standards. I was like, oh, no. We're talking about, like, criteria for the products. Age appropriate design code. Similar to age appropriate design code, certainly it would things like how they handle data, how they collect data, what they do with it, and design is certainly a part of it. So I can get to that quickly. I have some thoughts on that regarding the AOE testimony. I wanna just, again, keep us grounded in that consumer protection realm and think of another product that kids encounter every single day and school that is not subject to any safety regulations. From the chairs they sit on, the desks they use, the food they eat, obviously their drinking water. Coming into schools are generally held to a standard. We've heard a lot about PCBs lately. I know you've heard the House canceling the PCB testing. Yes, yes. Completely separate topic, but Really related. Yes. Yes. Look what we're doing to clean up the mess caused by PCP and how expensive it is. We're creating a similar mess, and the really scary thing is it's in our kids' brains. What's the cost to clean that up, and what are we doing? How can we really be okay with that, knowing that these products are not vetted? Effectively, when you say we try these things out and then we abandon them if they don't work, that's saying that our kids are test subjects. This is not developmentally appropriate, nor is it in line with how we typically introduce products to a marketplace, especially where kids are involved. We need to move away from the presumption of use of these products, and from allowing snazzy marketing and ubiquity to rule in education. That's what it's up to. I know that school and district based folks believe that data privacy agreements are enough, and I believe that everyone involved in our schools is doing their very best. But tech companies are doing better, they're doing more, and they will always find a way to make money. This is a marketplace issue. There's an estimate, I think I just read, somewhere in upwards of $33,000,000,000 industry. I think currently the EdTech product market is booming. Our schools have become unregulated and target rich marketplace environments for EdTech products, which have never been proven to be safe or effective in education, and are increasingly being found to violate various laws, legal in sales should be the bare minimum, the very low bar. I hope you'll have a chance to hear from Andy Liddell, he's on the witness list from the EdTech Law Center, who can update you on various pending lawsuits that they have brought. They just received an encouraging ruling from the Ninth Circuit, making it very clear that schools do not have a legal right to stand in the shoes of parents when it comes to data privacy agreements. All these agreements that are being signed with schools and products are actually legally invalid for the students who are using the products, because parents are not Even these blanket every once a year, you have to fill out all these forms in PowerSchool, another problematic product, and consent to your kids using various tech products. Those consent forms are actually not legally binding or correct.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I'm not

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: supposed to call on people. That's need

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: for So the parents have a signature form at the end of the year for software, which is not, which is, should be, or is anticipated to be used during the year, but that's not sufficient?

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Right, it's anticipated to be used during the year and to apply to like, almost everything that the kids will encounter.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Okay.

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: And that's not actually legal. So what local place is that?

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: It would have to be individual consent for the, between the parents and the product maker. Good. So, it's the ruling, Ambula Dell can certainly tell you so

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: much more about it, but

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: the ruling stands to really overhaul the landscape, because the schools have been working under this presumption, and this is not the first Google additional services, you know, there was a lawsuit involved with Google additional services, they had to schools had to come back, even in Vermont, this happened a year and a

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: half ago, schools had to

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: come back to parents and say, oops, didn't realize we needed to ask you for specific permission for these products. Do you get permission, yes or no? The problem right now in Vermont, I happen to have two high schoolers, and they both go to different tick setters. I fill out PowerSchool forms for two kids for three different schools, and their responses are different across the districts. Some districts will say, Do you consent to these additional services? If you say no, they say, Well, okay, but you should be aware that you might be basically impacting your child's education. Like, I'm sure it's Google language. And then if you say no in other districts, they're like, full, we don't we already banned YouTube on all district devices, so don't worry about it. So there's just a real brain.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So, if I could,

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: we were saying this on software, yet if the school has decided this is a piece of literature I want my children to, your children to read, and you as a parent say, I don't concur with this. Usually you don't get asked. It gets put into the front, in front of the child in the classroom. And you might not even know that you see this literature because, you know, most parents, you're going to school, happen to come home and see the book, it's like, Wait a minute, I didn't want you to read that. Right. Nobody asked me. Yeah. Kind of the same thing that the school said, well, I said it's okay.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: But the lawsuit was about data privacy. Yes. About data privacy agreements. Right. I'm I'm just Yeah. Okay.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: They're they're taking their data. I I 100%

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: Yeah. Yeah.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Agree with that. It's like when you're going, when you sign that form, that I okay, it's no different when you send your child in saying I agree to what

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: they I hear you. Okay. I hear you. I have a couple thoughts on that. Alright. One is that the difference really is, as Senator Rutland said, that you're consenting in the data situation, you're consenting to your child's information, personal information, being used in whatever fashion the product or you can Now does make the

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: child put in their information?

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: On many other products, an account is required. On some products, it's not, so it may not be my child's name and identify. It might even be anonymized data, but it's still data. So there's this AI product called, I believe it's called Amira. It's supposed to help with literacy. That product uses a child's voice to train its models. No parent has consented to their child's voice being used to train those AI models. Interestingly, in the case of literature, I believe there was a recent Supreme Court decision that said actually parents do have a right to

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: opt their kids out of certain So,

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: we're gonna get your difference between the two touch centers when we get this, make this policy. This is gonna make that consistent through all screens.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Yes, that is the intent.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: That kinda goes back to the original cell phone bill, which had an opt out, a section in it that got taken out. Mhmm. The parents wanna be able to opt out. Mhmm. Now if we pass this bill and we set the policy, we don't have to have them.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: So, I have a bill for that. If you're interested, H-eight 30 is an opt out bill. This bill, six fifty, really, again, focuses on what's happening before the products come into the school. So really setting up that gate, that system to say, in order for a school to even contemplate using a product, it has to meet these standards. And we're asking the AOE to tell us, in this bill, we're saying, tell us what you would need to come up with that set of criteria. And because we have the registry, we would have at least a running start at understanding the universe of products. Long?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Is it the registry going to be a full time job for people to keep up with?

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Thankfully, no. We don't believe so. As I said, theoretically, these businesses are already registering. What the Secretary of State's office, and of course, I imagine you'll hear from them, what the Secretary of State's office has agreed to do is create additional fields in the form that entities are already using. Like a, you know, I guess picture a drop down menu where they can say that they are providing EdTech products, and then list the products, and then in that form they would say they have to attest to following all state and federal, applicable state and federal laws, so kids code, COPPA, and yeah. So it's really just looping in to the existing framework by adding a few fields.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So there won't be a view of every product, like, open it, using it to make sure it's more attestation that it conforms.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: I know it would It has a lot of requirement for someone to confirm that they have certain policies and Oh, for the for you mean the The AOE Oh, oh, but I think you're asking about the the registry in particular with the Secretary of State Yeah. Of Oh, because then So that's just There's a vetting.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: That's the registry.

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: Just the registry.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: There's a report.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: The registry is I mean, I don't wanna oversimplify it, but one way to think of it is this is something these companies should already be doing. What the registry portion of six fifty does is add a few boxes and fields that they have to figure out. So I I mean, I I don't know you were sitting here when I I looked like, does Chatchy PT register with the state? Right? They don't. They have, like, a canceled oh, OpenAI had the canceled thing with the state. I don't know what that means. But the really big problem I see with that piece is the bill says with or without a contract. Mhmm. So if you have an if your teacher says, you know, I see you struggling with this. I wanna talk to you and your parents about, like, Duolingo ABC or whatever. I don't feel like those register either. Also, because it's free. So so if you're Khan Academy or Duolingo or or then something less reputable, If there's no contract, I don't think they register with the state. That may be, but I'm not sure if that's if they're following the law. The I I we should look at that area of law maybe and talk to DFR. Think that the secretary of state could could help answer the Yeah. Of state's office could help answer those questions because, yes, right, there are already these requirements. We're really just trying to piggyback on the existing requirements. Mhmm. And I think if you looked at the secretary of state's, you know Yes. Database, you'd find a lot of companies that probably don't meet the definition of having a contract that has, like, a legally binding require a mistake. You're doing business to the state. But doing business, that what does that mean? The Yeah. Finance talks all about the nexus and DFR answers

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: those Who who did you have in from secretary of state?

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: David Paul and Lauren Hibbard. Okay. Yeah. And they've both been involved in

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: the conversation leading up to the session. No. My

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: colleague

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: If nothing else, you know, just to have to register the the the software hardware or the device, at least we would get it on the radar that this is something they wanna incorporate. It's like Chromebook. They were in the schools and nobody knew about it. Now the parents, now the bosses.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Yeah, mean, hope is that, again, and I should, of course, obviously that not every company complies with the law, and that's part of the hope that with a registry, with that option, or to check that you are an EdTech provider, we get a better handle on the universe of products that are available, and that can help the attorney general with enforcement. The enforcement goes through a different state entity altogether, but as you see in here, there's a requirement for the Secretary of State's office and the AOE to work with schools to identify products that have not registered. We So are trying to also capture those just by working with schools, saying, like, what do you see on this list that you're using? I would see that's not a list list that you're using.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So we have the registry in section one. Yep. Then in section well, more of section two, then we have the review. Yes. And that brought us to the of work, not that that's bad, but just so we understand it. Yep. To actually do the review of all these products once they're registered?

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Thank you so much for this The review is not a review of all the products once they're registered. It's a review of what it would take for the state of Vermont to establish a process through which we would determine

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: the And plus the report.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Yes, the report would not include, the report that's asked for in this bill does not ask the AOE to actually vet the products. We're just setting up It's like half steps.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Asking

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: them. We're setting up the registry. Yeah.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Okay. May come back and say, This is too big a job. There's no way we can capture everything. And maybe then we say, Okay, but at least, right, there are court That's why we actually have on page We ask on page four, which state entity should be involved in certification process and to what extent? And also, there's something about third party yeah, so, under, whether any third, sorry, on page five, line eight, whether any third party services, including internet safety labs, should be utilized to assist in certification. So, throwing it out there to the AOE, we aren't expecting that you can do all of this. There are independent research labs that do this kind of work, and Jeremy Corbat, who I think hopefully will testify, he testified in Commerce that some states have the opportunity to partner with state colleges or universities where this type of work can be done. It's not even trying to set that up yet, it's just saying what would work for you all at the agency.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Senator Weeks. Thanks, sir. So, why do we need to set up the registry and the Section I efforts before we have the Section II results?

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: I think that the registry is important to be established, again, just to provide better I'm not saying visualization, but that's not what I mean. So that we know how many products are we talking about, you know? The information we get by having the registry would help inform, I think, the AOEs work on the report. It will take a little bit of time for the Secretary of State's office to create this form in their system, so starting the process at the same time, I think the Secretary of State's timeline will still be a little bit ahead of the agency's timeline, and we've given them till, I think it was November 27, Agency of Education. Try to really build in enough time, knowing that this could be a big job, but after conversations, hearing their testimony and conversations in the hallway, it feels like they're moving in a similar direction already with what they were talking about with high quality instructional materials and things like that, so I think it will actually dovetail nicely. It's my my oh, that's my optimistic hold.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Cell phone and stuff.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: You I mean, in five conversations, you've talked about things that I I just think are more aligned with design code and basic educational principles we might wanna follow like the cell phone ban. Mhmm. But there's probably just an age where we shouldn't be giving kids Chromebooks anymore. You know, we have to think about academic freedom at the high school level. Mhmm. We probably shouldn't have like, we should look at what contracts even make sense for k through three education or just ban ed tech from k through three education potentially. I you go ahead. Yeah. So, like, we I I just kinda feel like two years to make all these, like, good actors and then maybe some shady actors, like, register just doesn't get it. What I think originally when we started with Chromebooks and and digital things, like, I just learned not as younger than me, but, you know, we you learn to type, like, in third grade on our computers, but they were a computer lab. Then we probably thought, oh, kids all need the same access to technology that other kids get at home, etcetera. So it's probably just an appropriate time to think about pedagogy related to screens and technology. I I 100% agree. Yes. And I still feel that this bill is necessary.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Since that's a completely different topic.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: I hear I think you're absolutely right. Like Yeah. I just yeah. I I personally don't think we have the bill that will get us there in the next two years while we're making a registry, potentially products that are obsolete two years now? Well, I think since they have to I think it's an annual registry. So the products will still be around, and they're proliferating like crazy right now. So I'm not too worried I hear I'm not too worried about them becoming obsolete. I think there is still as with as we said, those phone phone preschools, like, that is that was a an attempt at, like, a an upstream measure, but we need to go even further upstream. And I keep thinking of the Swiss cheese approach. You know, you do this is a multilayer mitigation situation, and so this is just another layer. I think you're absolutely right that we should be looking, and that that would be the work of this committee, you know, not the college committee. Right. Exactly. To dig in deep as far as what is the appropriate age for a one to one program. Why are we handing out iPads in kindergarten?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And so once it's, once the Secretary of State does the work and gets the forms up, it's really on the producer anyway to get registered. So those get our exactly. Give me a

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I have two actually, they're short. We took some testimony about an SDPA system, I think that relates to privacy. How is this, what's the kind of cross pollination between what you're proposing and that system, and how are they different?

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Yeah, that's the Student Data Privacy Consortium, I think, and the student data, the STPA student data privacy agreements that are largely, and the AOE testified that most Vermont schools are part of that consortium. Is about two thirds of schools are, one third or not. And I really appreciate that the AOE, their written testimony, said that they would entertain, and maybe this is something to work into, know, amendment to work into the bill, they would require, they would be okay with requiring all Vermont supervisory unions and districts to participate in the Vermont Student Data Privacy Alliance, which is part of, to get

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: to those

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: STPAs. The good thing about that, as they mentioned, is that those data privacy agreements are negotiated with more stakeholders, you know, and so they feel they have more leverage. It brings me back, however, to the fact that student data privacy agreements are still not enough. They're they're violated all the time by these companies, and and there's no enforcement against them or very little enforcement against the violation. And I think that we are we're still going at it wrong if all we're worried about is data privacy, and we're not asking the questions that that are wrong. Hinsdale is bringing up and that a lot of educators are bringing up now, which is should we be using these products at all? If we're going to, data privacy is incredibly important, but so is efficacy, and that's not contemplated at all in a privacy agreement. And I just don't I worry that the privacy agreements that are negotiated are still impacted by industry. They're impacted by the tech companies because even the national that handout,

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: you

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: know, with the the logos of all that, you know, I think you brought in, Terry, the Vermont Coalition created, shows some of the entanglements. It's another case of asking the regulated to help with the regulation. A lot of those agreements are come to, you know, are arrived at with help from the companies you're trying to regulate, and the, you know, they are serving their interests in those agreements.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay,

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: so all this boils down to what's the educational benefit to the student, what's the right timing and such, who do you trust to be the adjudicator of those decisions, is it Paley or

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: That's, yeah, we're asking the AOE to ultimately be the, the, the decision

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: That will come out of the report.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Yeah. Yeah, that, that's the intent for sure.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Can we just move on?

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: I just wanna suggest that we hear from Agency of Digital Services because they have the most tech savvy experts on all of these questions. They have groups set up on AI and advocacy. We'll say EdTech is something quite unique, and so it will be important to hear from EdTech specialists as well. So, yeah, if I can just add really quickly the Vermont Agency of Education, you know, in their testimony here. Really appreciate we have come a long way together, and I really, really wanna appreciate that. Again, I noticed that there is alignment. I think it's great that they're willing to have a lot of this language reflected in statute, but what they've offered here, it it doesn't get us as far as we need to go, and I think $6.50 helps get us further along the path. Still understanding there will continue to be work to do, to be done, yes. But we can't You know, they're talking about these two tracks, data privacy and educational efficacy, and they want to separate it out. I really encourage us to keep those together. I think that those two ideas, effectiveness, cannot be completely divorced from data privacy practices, because we need to know what the data privacy practices are to help determine the efficacy and the effectiveness. If our kids are just being used as data farms, I don't care how solid the product is. It should not matter. So I really thank you for your time and for taking taking this pill

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: out. No.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I think it could weigh I mean, at some point, somebody's gonna have to follow on this.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It's big

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: tech. It's big tech.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: And I could send a really great article that was just published this week about the entanglements even within people who've from the upper echelons of the Department of Education into EdTech companies, and then there's this

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Even politicians. That's the way it goes.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: That is life, but we're talking Military? Happens everywhere. It's true, it's true. I just think, you know, anytime we're talking about kids their brains and their future, because what Google has done, and this is one more thing, this is in millions of pages of discovery documents came out during the social media trials that happened recently. And these these are social media trials, but you would be amazed at how often the documents reference schools, and how often companies like Google, you know, because of especially because of YouTube, and even Meta, because of Instagram, they are targeting schools. It's intentional, it's by design. They're trying to You put a Chromebook in a kid's hand when that child is eight years old, and according to Google, they've got a appliance for life, they've got a customer for life, and they're gonna track that kid from the time they're eight years old. They're gonna know all of that child's patterns, habits, likes, and dislikes, and they're gonna market to that kid. So, we're It's happening in schools. What's just beyond the pale. Those schools should not be

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Right. In place. Question, do you Have you given your child a tablet or anything to use on the school? Certainly do. Oh, out of school. I'm asking you as a parent. Have you Yes. Have you given your kid any tablet My or anything to play

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: daughter I mean, my my mother so she lives near us. So my for her third birthday, my mother gave my daughter her old tablet Mhmm.

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: To color

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: with, and that and she was like, are you okay with this? I'm like, she can't be on the Internet with it.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Like, that would be a problem. But they still if it's

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Oh, yeah. Maybe she has a 70 year old woman, but

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So we'll get the trucker toothpaste on the certificate. So that's done. Shifting gears.

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: I wanna stay and listen a bit.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: You to be happy.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Absolutely, as well. Thanks, everyone. Nice weekend. So, Senator Chapin.

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: Thanks for having me. I'm Ella Chapin, for the record, representative from Eastmont Blair on the Environment Committee. Am here to share a personal story related to your chronic absenteeism, though. I'll just start by saying I'm Actually, let's just set

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: it up a little bit. Page six. This relates with age six. It's not

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: Yes. Need a minute to sort of switch over

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: to Line 30. Six. It's really lines like three through six, somewhere in that. Yeah. Page six, three through six, was a floor amendment.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: I have to add, I offered a

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: floor amendment, and it shows up

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: in And you're gonna explain why you offered that amendment.

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: I am, and that's a bit of what I think will be a cautionary tale as you move forward with this bill, not around the bill entirely. I fully support addressing and moving towards a preventative approach for chronic absenteeism. I am concerned about the implications and how they would have affected my family for a top down AOE mandatory policy that all schools would have to adopt and the potential unintended consequences based on what could be in that model policy. And so I'll explain why. And just did you set some of the bill in front of Oh, can take mine. I just wanna tell you which lines it's on. Did you say which line

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: the two Oh, is too concerning here. It's how to address It's about which one? And this ability. Haze and graphic of the care. Yeah.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And Just to clean this up entirely,

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: not as bad as You

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: put this in as a floor amendment. The agency has requested that we take it out. And

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: And the floor amendment, how it's in your bill, it was offered as floor amendment. It's to people with disabilities, which obviously is covered as well as under federal law. But let me tell you my story and where I'm coming from and think about how you might address this in the bill. So, yeah, it's like a sentence or two at the top of page six about how the policy would address students with disabilities.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Which, is it as passed by

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: the House? As passed by the House, page six.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: And it starts out Vermont School Council Association? Yeah.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: It's a long sentence.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It's been a part that got added in. It's after the caramel on line Yeah. And then on line three, it starts with which shall the booth specific Okay.

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: So when I saw the bill on That's the notice calendar

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: what we're talking about. Alright.

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: I saw the bill on the notice calendar. I immediately was concerned about how this kind of policy could affect my child. And so I'm really just gonna tell you a

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: little bit about my child.

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: So I have a 15 year old. He's 15 now. He's in ninth grade, age 32. And we learned two years ago that he had a disability, a developmental disability that's fairly unusual. I'd rather not share the diagnosis on record because I'd be happy to explain it in more detail if it was curious another time. I would describe it as a nervous system disability where the more pressure or expectation or sort of top down, anything that sort of threatens his autonomy is perceived in his amygdala as a sprint and it makes it hard for him to do things. It's a a All growing up, he didn't really want to go to school often. We struggled to get him to go to school even though he seemed to have fun at school and to see him do well in school. When he asked why he didn't want to go to school, he didn't feel like he had an answer, couldn't articulate what the problem was. Now we understand that just school is a challenging environment for him. The more he spends time in those kind of triggering environments, the more his nervous system goes into sort of override and he goes into that if they do a fight flight freeze space. Some children who have this diagnosis, if they go more into the fight side, they get about 10 to five really young, four, five, six years old because they're biting or screaming and acting out. My child is Freeze's child. So, he goes into sort of shutdown and quiet and withdraws. And so, we didn't get this diagnosis until he was 13. I've met all the parents with similar experiences. School's just a really triggering environment. A lot of kids that have the same diagnosis and their child just don't go to school. After fourth grade, he couldn't go back to school and just said, During the summer, I can't do it. I wanna own school. He had written an article about unschooling in a parenting magazine that I had. We laughed. We were like, Of course, every child wants to unschool or not go to school. At the time, we laughed it off. I did end up homeschooling him from fifth grade. He went part time to a really tiny private school for sixth grade and then got him back into public school in seventh grade, August. During the year of seventh grade, he was incredibly depressed. It was a very scary time for our family. He went to school two to three days a week during seventh grade. And in the middle of the year, we got the diagnosis. We were getting letters from the state, You're not complying. Your child's in school enough. You know, thirty minutes, twenty days, you know, at that November time. Our school nurse, we were trying to figure out what was going on at that time. We got the diagnosis in January. We had a school nurse who identified that this was a major mental health, at least, issue.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Can I pause you there? Yes. Do you feel like another family might not have gotten the same attention? You were probably showing up and saying, We know, and we're struggling. That is part

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: of my story to you and my cautionary tale, that while we got a diagnosis protected under federal law, a lot of people don't. A lot of people suffer through like we did for years trying to figure out what's going on with our child, either not finding the resources because we just couldn't figure it out, or some people don't have the resources to get there.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Did the materials that you got that said your child is truant offer any help? Did they point you to the places you should go to get support?

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: The school really didn't have a lot of things. It really was our outside of school therapeutic support that ended up being like, I think your child's neurodivergent. You should get an assessment. We also went for an outside of assessment because when I talked to some parents who had had similar really challenging things going on to their kids, they suggested an external, know, was costly, not fully covered by insurance and not covered by the school district assessment, but it gave us a very detailed kind

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: of thing. How long did it take to get a diagnosis? From the time you said, Hey, you should go see a doctor to, this is what's happening. Six months. Six months. Once

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: I called the evaluator to get an appointment, it took about three months to get the appointment and actually they were able to fit us in because of cancellation. At the time, this was shortly after the pandemic, this is like four, three years ago, you know, so a lot of backup in this field. So, a lot of people were waiting well over a year. In fact, if I had tried to get one, a local, more publicly accessible one, they were scheduling out well over a year and a half. Wow. And the times were better call. So, and then it takes like the evaluation took two and a half months. It's a period of appointments and interviews and testing. Then So really what I want to say is in that, in our most challenging time, my child was in crisis and not able to go to school routinely at all. My child also has a really high IQ and this diagnosis is he tries to meet everybody even though he's triggered by everyone's expectations of him, he's also tries to meet them. So, he performs fine at school even when he only goes to school two or three days a week. So, luckily for us, he wasn't suffering academically other than not thriving. He wasn't He wasn't struggling to pass his classes. But I will just want to explain that during that time, especially once we had the diagnosis and a letter from a therapist that explained why the diagnosis was triggered by pressure to show up at school. Our special educator and administration at once I sort of engaged the administrative level at our school about the truancy issues. And we had a really good explanation and argument for why nobody should be pressuring our child to go to school right now. They had the flexibility to say, We know you're gonna keep getting these letters from the state. We are not gonna put any pressure on your child to be in school. We're not gonna call into the office to talk about it. We're not gonna call you and talk about it. We'd love periodic updates on how he's doing, but Or if you know he's gonna be out for an extended period of time, I'd like you to let us know, but I can't predict when my child's gonna not be able to go to school. So, she really went. So, that whole year, and in the middle of it, got that help. We had that conversation with the school. And that year, you know, really, he ended up in high school by the end of the year. So But he passed some grade, and we were putting significant sports in place at home such that by the time he started eighth grade, he was on the up and up. Was actually back fall. He was no longer depressed and really coming out of the depression part. You know, there's the depression part and the developmental disability part. We were focusing on accommodating for the developmental disability, which is the thing that relieved depression. Eighth grade, he missed about 27 to 30% of school days. And that was just last school year. This year, and again, we had the same conversations and the school continued to, and they were like, and we were developing a five zero four last year also. In that process, we built into the five zero four plan that truancy issues should basically not be addressed unless something changes and he's not doing well after his classes or parents have a concern. This year, he is basically unless he's literally got a virus, he has been in school at least. And I just so just wanna share that the discretion that the leadership of our school had to support us and really learn because they had never heard of this diagnosis. But it's within the autism spectrum. The diagnosis he has in other countries is actually a separate DSM, so it's not considered autism. So it's just, it's a very narrow developmental disability. Did you know

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: if AOE had heard of this disability?

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: I never engaged with AOE, or heard that they, but that's, but it's not what that's. Yeah. I have no normal treatment.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: That's part of the system. Know, AOE's doing what we told them. It's policy. So, you know, there's gotta be that discretion down to the school level. You know, a lot of schools to meet their school budgets. They they got rid of interventions that maybe could have worked with the family and found that, you know, got them to some help to to get that diagnosed sooner. And that's part of the problem. We, you know, we can't afford we can't get our budget passed, so they start cutting programs at what cost. So I'm I'm kinda inclined to say that they already did what they could, what they had to, but the school said we're going to vote. It's got to be discretionary.

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: That's the only thing I'm advocating for here today is that you just be careful about any policy that's required, that every school adopt a similar or stronger policy. I know the policy's aimed at prevention, and we're kind of moving away from just this punitive approach. I guess I'm just really concerned about a sort of top down policy model that could, for some schools, feel like it's a loss of that discussion. That's really all I wanted

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: to share. That's, that's, yeah. I got it. Yeah.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Mean, there's, so there's two threads to this, right, because it was my state's attorney at first who came to me and said, we should fix this kind of issue. Yeah. Did you have any kind of scary or or criminal feeling interaction with the state's attorney because the school said this is okay. Was the state's attorney completely relieved to not pursue this? Have no idea.

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: Sworn within our school administration basically says that what would happen is that the state would potentially come to the school and say, We want to enforce this. And then the school would have an opportunity to say, We do or don't. Okay. Sort of support a re Like, that's a really unclear area.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Mhmm. It is unclear. That's kinda why.

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: It's, like,

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: different in every county if the state's attorney is telling you to solve this or something.

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: Yeah. And so, you know, I've just felt lucky. Yeah. I didn't feel protected. Yeah. In that situation. Right.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: There again, you're a very good parent by the sounds, and that has a lot to do with it.

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: Yeah. And there's a lot. Know about all the students who don't have the attention or support or resource.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Or their parent isn't deemed a very good parent, even if they are doing their best. Yeah.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thanks. That's all. Great. Thank you a lot.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Thank you. Have a good weekend. You too.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So we were gonna spend a little time doing I show from the elected committee, which we have. We have have for the next hour and a half. I had thought that we might do a sort of line by line h 09:30 and see how close we are to moving this. But on the other hand, we have to we're now now talking about a little bit. No. Can go simple. Can just find it. That's right. So if you wanna do do that or if you wanna go straight to which 09:55 walkthrough, it's a year of an issue. No. We're not gonna do I mean, it's we gotta do both, and what's what's on what's

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: I feel like 09:55 is probably the priority of things that we should be doing. I don't know if there's much disagreement on issues at 09:30 that we wouldn't be able to do it particularly fast. Not saying rush, but next week, but that's fine. So you

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: can go both ways, not too much. Okay, let's just move to 09:55 then today, and we'll come back with point of time to do the line by line, this line third again with an eye sore, trying to get this I'm thinking, by the way, that we eat 09:56, but we can get out here next that's pretty neat. Okay. Our understanding that happened to tell us this is that we actually don't have a complete has passed yet. No. But we have in a way, we still have it in these two sections, one through 45.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: That's St. James, the Office of Legislative Council. So in order to look at all of what passed the House this morning, it will need to be as introduced by the Ways and Means Amendment, and then a floor amendment, offered by representatives Kornheiser and Kimball. You should have all three.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yes.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And then, as I was sitting here, Greg remembered that we have a timeline as well, so Daphne has posted that. I sent that through her while I was sitting here. But the timeline doesn't really make much sense unless we walk through the bill, at least detail wise. So, would take your lead on where you want to start.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well, think with the that's the first part of the bill, right, logically? And

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: before we start '9 55, the next app, do you have changes that you know you want to make to H-nine 30 that I could get going on?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: That's why I was thinking of doing it. Does anybody have in their mind anything in particular on the question really for us is going to be whether we accepted the agencies, the things that they wanted us to do or whether we don't.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: I was gonna propose that homeschool change, putting in that language back.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Oh, go ahead.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: From the miscellaneous bill that never went anywhere?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yes, that one.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Would you like to take out the study or the report back related to homeschool?

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Yeah.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And put in the language from, I wanna say it was S166, maybe?

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: I think it was that.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: It was a miscellaneous, but I know what you're talking about. Yeah. That's more oversight.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: That was the hearings after a role that Yes. We

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: That's Yeah. Is that what you would like to do for a draft? Yes. Okay. Yes. Any other changes? I liked all of the changes that were brought to us by the restorative experts. Did

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: they bring that to us?

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: You know, all of like, they all were very specific about excused versus unexcused. Did they give us that in writing? Yeah. I mean, they gave it to us in their testimony. Don't know what they've done. Yeah. So I'm only asking, unless we wanna go line by line and you give me instruction, I don't think I feel comfortable reviewing testimony and making decisions on bail.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Just to just to the level of Okay. For now. So

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: then should I propose those?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: If you have the specific one.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: I do. If not, then we'll

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: do it. Okay.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We'll do it.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Next week. Okay. I just if you wanna move it, I will take that as a cue to propose an amendment based on what we heard.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So, and I think we want it today. Our goal for today is just to understand what's there and not have real straight stop of a discussion, just understanding, then we'll have, try to do a high level, just so we know what's in there.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Okay, so Next week you anticipate your representative column coming in and kind of giving us explanation of why.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. So, yeah, we just hear no. That was a joke. We always do it in the have Ben doing in the water, and then then Bill's sponsor, but, yeah, we'll we'll do that.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So when are you I have on my calendar, book till 03:30. Is that when you anticipate wrapping up for the day? Okay.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So we'll just get as far as we get.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Okay. So do you want me to go in great detail or just kind of talk more generally?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Kind of talk generally and through the bill. Yeah, you don't have to go into great detail. Okay.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And I hope that this is clear, but I'm only responsible for like a third of the bill. Okay. So I can't speak to the finance.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And that third would be the first 45 pages that we have here separately.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yes, again, but I also have a big chunk of the ways that we can Okay. Amend it as But you're gonna start by helping us understand. We're gonna This isn't a strike all. Nope. In fact, I am going to be proposing to you all that you don't do a strike all either. Okay. We'll see. Okay. So H nine fifty five, as introduced, this was a committee bill, so the House Education report is not a report, it's actually a bill itself. It starts with some legislative intent. Subsection A is taken directly from Act 73. In the interest of time, I'm just gonna let the language speak for itself. Subsection B is new. Do you wanna focus on legislative intent or go into substantive sections?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Let's go into substance.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Okay. So, I think reader assistance headings are extremely helpful in this, Bill. There's a lot of different concepts. So, we're in the Cooperative Educational Service Area section. So, I think I mentioned this when we walked through the miscellaneous bill, that there were about 12 secondtions that were taken out of the miscellaneous bill by the Waive and Means Amendment, and that was the change from BOCES to Seesha. And that is what you're seeing in large part. There's substantive changes too that we're gonna go over, but most of what is in most meaning page numbers, The bulk of the language under this reader assistance heading is just the word change or the term change from boards of cooperative educational service areas to cooperative educational service areas. So, I'm not going to, I'm just going to skip over when the only change is that language change, I'm not going to reference it. There were several substantive amendments made though, under this radar systems heading. So section two on page two, line 13, is an amendment to chapter 10 in the entire chapter in title 16, which is currently your BOCES chapter. This language would change it to your Seesaw chapter. It starts with the policy section. And the policy, I would say, has not changed necessarily. You'll see lots of strikeouts there. But the big change in section two is that no so under current law, both these are formed voluntarily. Supervisory unions get together and they decide to form a cooperative. The big substantive change in section two is that no longer is it a voluntary process. Chapter 10, section two has now put every school district in the state in, or supervisory union in the state into a seesaw and created those seesaw memberships in statute. So that means anywhere there was language that made it seem like it was a voluntary process, I had to kind of tweak the language a little bit to make it not a voluntary process. You

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Being that this is a lot of words, is there a do they associate a map in the section to

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: We haven't gotten there yet. Are you asking me to speed up? I'm not. Okay. I have a question about the

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: You're absolutely deranged. So

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: all that to say that I wouldn't suggest that the policy was changed substantively here. It was reworded to reflect the fact that there's no longer a voluntary process. Definitions, jumping to page three, section six zero two. No change to the definitions other than the language section or the language change, but they did add a definition here and that is to define the term cooperative educational service area. Means an association of supervisory unions created pursuant to this chapter to deliver shared programs and services to complement the educational programs of member SCUs in a cost effective manner. A seesaw shall be a body politic and corporate with the powers and duties afforded under this chapter. Do you can I this is where I feel like the whole question I have about the bill is what is a seesaw and what makes it special or different than other entities? And does this definition encapsulate that? It is a definition. Whether it encapsulates the rest of the enabling law, I think would be a policy opinion for you all. Okay. A CFOT is just what it says. It's a cooperative. Is not a government unit. Okay. It's not a body government. It's a corporate. It is a it is a it is a state created body. Uh-huh. Right? So in the same way that supervisory unions aren't governance units. Right? There's not they're not municipalities. They there's no school district governance within There's no board? There is. We haven't gotten there yet. But, okay. So, these have a board, their own board. They are BOCES. So, this just takes the definition of a BOCES and makes it a a required seat. Correct. Okay. That's it. I can move on from the which

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I'm not familiar with the body politic of corporate. Yeah.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: That is language that we commonly use when we're creating these quasi political entities within the state that aren't like a branch of state government, but they aren't a private entity. And you'll see throughout I mean, most of the questions that you've asked thus far have been great questions, but they all come back to the current law BOCES. And so BOCES, all of their employees or public employees were eligible for retirement benefits, for collective bargaining, for teachers' healthcare, all of that. There's language in current law. This bill doesn't change any of that other than the BOCES now it seesaw. It might still last longer.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I don't want you to hurry up.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: BOCES did BOCES have an unelected board? BOCES? Nope. We haven't gotten there yet. Okay. There is a there is a statute that is in this bill that has not been changed other than that name change that spells out the board for BOCES. Mhmm. The board for BOCES is made up of one person appointed by the Supervisory Union Board, and it should be either a Supervisory Union Board member or the superintendent or designee. And BOCES have that. Yes. That's been law for two year. It's what?

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Two or three years. Yep. Okay. We hope they have some area to take it.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: We're just requiring that they board this. Right now, you are forming it. We are

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: forming it.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yep. But we're still letting them decide who's on the board. Yep. Okay. With you still. So section six zero three, you can see all this strikethrough, right? This is the language that spelled out how supervisory unions would voluntarily get together and form a BOCES. But we're taking that off the table now, and we're jumping down on page four to line 15, and we're just saying that SUs are arranged into the following cooperative educational service areas. And then there are seven BOCES created, and then each of the seven, so if we're using as an example, the first one, the Champlain Valley North CSA, under that

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: They haven't given us a map show yet, right? Was a map. I think

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I don't make the maps of that. I believe there is a map.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I don't know what's that. But, anyway, that I don't know how old that was. But, anyway so something Something close. Probably. So you have listed the seven and which districts are within the seven?

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah. So it's the supervisory unions or members, and then I have put in here who the member school districts are of each supervisory. Can I ask one more? They don't put the CTEs into this list anywhere. The standalone school districts? Yeah. Standalone CTE districts? No. They No. Do Does that matter? Supervised So That's a policy question. Seesha's and BOCES.

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: Mhmm.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: The membership level is the supervisory union. And so those standalone CTE centers are not supervisory unions.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Well, can we write the policy to say they can be

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: in? Sure.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Sure. Do whatever you want.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I'm trying I'm trying to think through the policy implications of that, but perhaps that's not productive for our walk.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: No. No. It is.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: But I need to spend the weekend thinking of policy implications of leaving them out, which are also large. Advantage

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: of services from

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I think in the interest of time, I would suggest we skip over the membership piece. And there are maps. And I think if you contacted the house education committee, they would get you those current maps. The one the one piece I wanna point out is find it here. On page seven, this is important for the rest of the bill. On page seven, line three, number five, the Vermont Learning Collaborative is your one existing BOCES right now. So they formed voluntarily and they are up and running, and they have been for a little while now.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: And that's Woods, Connecticut Oregon, correct? In It's like window? We spoke to her yesterday.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I'm just looking at the names of the supervisory union. Right. Yep. All of the rest of the BOCES, there are seven BOCES, the rest of the BOCES keep supervisory unions intact, meaning the supervisory unions are not split between different BOCES, seesaws. And because school districts do not straddle different supervisory unions, it also keeps school districts intact. But in order for this bill, this bill relies on the Vermont Learning Collaborative to perform some duties later on in the bill. And so in order to keep them an entity that hit the ground running, right, that's already up and operational, h nine fifty five is passed by the house, keeps the Vermont Learning Collaborative membership as it exists today, which means there are I think there are some let's see. The math would be really helpful here. Yep. I guess I'll just note that this the membership of the Vermont Learning Collaborative is their current membership. And so then on, we can jump to page 10, line 20. Current law requires the operating agreement for a voluntarily formed BOCES to be articles of agreement, which by definition, that term agreement kind of contemplates a meeting of the minds. But we are creating these groups in statute now, and so we're gonna just relabel that governing document bylaws. And so there's no longer any requirement for the secretary to approve the articles of agreement or anything like that. We're just asking each see saw that you all or the H-nine 55 has passed by the House established to come up with their own operating agreement, and then largely keeps current law for what needs to be in there. The substantive changes on what needs to be in bylaws on page 12, no longer does there need to be anything in there related to method of termination of those fees or withdrawal because you can put their membership in statute, so they can't just decide to withdraw. And then the procedure for admitting new members. Again, you put their membership in statute, they can't just decide to to change those. Can I ask something? Is there is okay. Maybe we're getting to it. There's there's two things that I think would be spelled out more in a supervisory union. Number one is proportional representation. Is there anything about proportional representation? No. We have not gotten to the board members yet. Okay. But that is something about representation and how the budgets are voted on for a CSPA. We have not gotten to that. Okay. And it's all current law.

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: Okay.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: They don't make any changes. So board of directors is right on the same page 12, subsection C. You can see the only change here to current law is that both seats to seat that change. So, what that means is there's not a representation required. There is no proportional representation requirement in current law, and this bill did not change that.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: So you're gonna ask the collaborative how that goes actually?

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Subsection D on line 13 has been struck because this was eliminating the number of supervisors being in statewide, and now you are creating them in statute. On page 13, line 11, section six zero four, hours of seesaws. Each nine fifty five is passed by the house. Just two things to this section. One, on lines sixteen and seventeen, it adds some examples of services that a seesaw may provide, including professional development, curriculum coordination and development, and transportation. That's a may. Right now, current law, you can see because it's not structured, just says get together and decide what programs you want to offer that best serve the needs your members. So on line sixteen and seventeen, saying, and here's some examples of that. Lines twenty and twenty one on the bottom of page 13 requires seesaws to offer these services to its members. And on page 14, it's special education, including implementation and maintenance of tiered systems to support and the provision of low incidence, high cost services, business and administrative services, and union school district creation consultation and facilitation. So H-nine 55 is passed by the House requires CSAS to offer these services, but it does not require members to actually use these services.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: So they might go through all this work to get the services up and running, and the district can say, that's what you're saying, right?

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yes. Can I ask a question about I know this doesn't change how big currently we're, but are any entities brought to the table that aren't school providing, that are non operating districts? Are they non operating districts Yes. At the Oh, yes. Okay. So they have a member. They're part of every school district and supervisory union has been assigned to a CSAW. Okay. Regardless of their operating structure.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: They're assigned, but they don't have to work with them.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Part of the nuance here is that the responsibility and statute for some of these services lives with supervisory unions or school districts. And the purpose behind, I understand that this is The purpose behind The goal of the TESSA is just that, is a cooperative to supplement services. Whether that's a good idea or a bad idea is a policy choice, but there's nothing binding. Well, now everyone has to be a member of one. Okay. But there's nothing that requires, on a regular ongoing basis, anyone to take advantage of the services that are available to them and offer advice to some. Half of this bill, the introduced, the as introduced section does require some participation in something and we will get there. But if you're just thinking about ten years from now and you haven't made any legal changes to this language, you'd have to be a member of the CESA, but there's nothing requiring you to use their services. And then that was the last substantive change to the BOCES language, the CSAL language. Everything else under this reader assistance heading is just changing the Well, there's one exception that we'll get to in a second, but everything else is just changing the OCC. So, we're gonna skip. So, all of this remains current law related to the annual report, finances, public information, the employment sections, all remain current law. We're going flip to page 19.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Where's the section that deviates them from using these services? Makes it optional.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: It doesn't explicitly state you don't have to use these services. It's on page 13, line 20. It says that a seesaw shall offer the services.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I was gonna say it.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Can I I would have stopped by now? We would have seen a section that requires all of the member that has, like, some requirements of all of the members that this be sought, such as providing reporting in the same way. I skipped over those because there were no substantive changes in the current law. So so it went from voluntary required, but even in the voluntary process, you're supposed to the best of your ability provide all the school data and financial data of your supervised reunion to the seesaw. No. How do they do their work then? It depends on what work they're offering. I in the interest of time, I'm wondering if we I mean, this is all your direction, there seem to be a lot of questions around current law and how BOCES work. Have you had anyone from a national organization or our current BOCES in to kinda lay that groundwork for you? Okay. So we'd have the one BOCES in.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. We did. That's right. So But that's what I'm But I savings in that.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I guess for me, I'm I'm trying to make sure I understand. If a seesaw is not voluntary, it also has to commit we're asking it to commit to some cooperative, rescuing it to be cooperative. Right. Which, like, isn't spelled out. Right? Like, what does it mean to be cooperative? I think that is an interesting question that is inherent in its name. I guess not if it's required. Right? So I guess I don't understand your question. Well, just that there weren't we're not we are not defining what it means to say, you are now part of this cooperative and this is what you have to do to to cooperate. Would you like

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: to walk your current law?

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: If there's no requirement to share data, that's one of my first questions about cooperation. I don't know what you mean about shared data. So the seesaw exists. Or the BOCES exists to serve the member districts or supervisory unions.

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: So,

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: if it's part of that existence, right, current law, let's look at page 13. Lines 13 through 15. They have the power to provide educational programs, services, facilities, and professional and other staff that in its discretion best serves the needs of its members. So, seesaws, other than the new required services, right? And this is not a change in These are not LEAs, right? These are not local education agencies that's defined under federal laws, right? So they're not entitled to special education funding. They are to provide special education services that at their discretion best serve the needs of their members. And I think the BOCES that we have up and running, and there are national organizations related to education cooperatives, could come in and explain to you how those decisions are made, right? Like how that discretion is exercised. And then I think the inherent in Well, I I feel like you're asking me to justify their existence, and I feel uncomfortable with that. That's a great way of of distinctly like, distilling what I I am trying to say. They have the power to do a lot, but they don't have the com power to compel the districts to do anything. I don't know that I I can agree with that. Okay. I'm trying to figure out where they are the districts are compelled to do anything.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: I think it'd be But wise to have the BOCES that is already existing to see how that works.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Right. I I feel like much of what you're asking is how a BOCES operates, And I am just the black and white law person. Am not the take these words and then execute it. Right? Right. It's it says they shall have the power to do all these nice things for the group. But I don't see anywhere where they have the authority. And if they're not voluntary They

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: they work well, yeah, did not argue, but they work for the supervisor and they do what the supervisor needs to ask them to do. It's shared services for what the supervisor needs.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So thereby, in my mind, it remains voluntary?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: In a way it does because there's a few things they must offer. You are put in one, so that's not voluntary under that scope. Yeah. But it's so important to discussion. Put in one, it has a few things that it's required to do that you must allow it to do. Otherwise, the achieves that participate within it decide what they wanted to do.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Right. So I just

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It's a way to gain, at least in theory, some scale beyond the current But it's all necessary. Almost. There's a little bit of exception, but it's a part that lays out the few things they must do.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: But that's they must offer it.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. That's true. You know? Right. And as you can say, but you're probably gonna want to well, I don't I'm not. But

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I'm just trying to understand a different method. A supervised reading is non optional. A CESA is optional.

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: But there's no lines around.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Can I can I make arguments again? Can we look at it like a at a high level? That's what works.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: That's I think

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: the opinion is in that front.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So they put pen in this. Yeah. And and I I really like Rahul read the bill. I will do that. I've never read it. So I can ask questions rather than coming out

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: and see what Yeah, might as well do. Let's make sure we give ourselves time to get through these five pages. So, okay, let's keep going.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Do you want me to go over current law or do you want me to skip to the changes that are in the bill?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I just go to the changes.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: We're going to move to page 19, section three. We're still in the CESA Reader Assistant heading. Page 19, line three, section three repeals a piece of cession law from Act 168, which created BOCES, which required a kind of status report from the agency of education on how many BOCES had been formed and not the moot point if you are creating them in statute. And then section four amends these, what was formerly the BOCES startup grant program. I'm on page 19, line seven. This grant program still exists, and current law is that if folks got together and decided to voluntarily form a BOCES, they could apply to the agency of education for up to $10,000 for startup costs to do the work to form a BOCES. Because there's no longer, they're no longer voluntarily getting together, we have to make some language changes here, and so we're referring to it as startup costs, and we're also increasing the amount of money from a $10,000 grant to a $15,000 grant. And the first instance of amendment in the Ways and Means amendment is a change to this section. And so what Ways and Means did to subsection c would be appropriation for this. Okay. I'm on I'm on a different document now. Oh. I'm on the ways and means amendment. Just

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: the the sentence.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: It's a 102 pages.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Holly,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: this and on that document, you're on page two.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I'm on page one, the first instance of amendments. So my understanding is that AOE already has $60,000 leftover from the $70,000 appropriation that was made in 2024. We're increasing the amount of the startup grant from 10,000 to 15,000. And now you have six seesaws that need that startup grant. And so you need to kick in an extra 30,000 for all of them to be able to get 15,000. And so what ways it means, so house education appropriated 300 appropriated 30,000 from the jackal fund. What ways and means did and what passed the house was they made that $30,000 an allowable use of the education transformation money from act 73. So money that was appropriated last year that's still out there. This is not a new appropriation. It is just clarifying that out of that appropriation comes this $30,000

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Go. So

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: then we're gonna jump back to how, age nine fifty five is introduced, And we're on we're gonna skip we're gonna skip section five, which is conforming amendments for BOCES to CESA. We're gonna skip section six, which is the same conforming amendments to BOCES to CESA. We're gonna skip section seven, which is the same. Section eight, which is the same. No substantive amendments in any of these. We're just substituting. These are for both keys. These 45 pages.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well, So the other but go ahead.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Did did we already do they have an upper limit on how many staff the seesaw can hire? No. Okay.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Because it's their money. Their money flowing up to the seesaw.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Okay. I can't speak to the policy choice, but there's specific language in chapter 10 that says that seesaw can hire an executive director and any other staff if necessary. Section- Section 12, seesaw transition. I'm on page 25, line 16. So within thirty days following the passage of the act, every Supervisory Union Board is required to appoint someone to the board of their new CESA in accordance with what the law spells out for how those appointments are made. And then within forty five days following the passage of this act, the superintendent of the SU with the highest aggregate average daily membership of each seesaw has to call the first meeting of the seesaw together. Then they're gonna elect a chair and other necessary officers, and then they're off to the races. And then on page 26, line four, subsection C, the articles of agreement of the Vermont Learning Collaborative in effect on 06/30/2026 shall serve as the operating agreement of BTLC unless and until amended. That language is supposed to just make it clear that the Vermont Learning Collaborative can continue to remain in existence and keep going. They don't have to amend their articles of agreement anyway now that we're changing the chapter 10. So that's it for the Seesaw Reader Assistance heading. But the concept of a seesaw is going to be important under our next reader assistance heading, which is Union School District Exploration and Formation. And so just to explain what happens under this Reader Assistance heading is that the Vermont Learning Collaborative is required to hire eight union school district facilitators. One for each Seesha Region, and then one lead facilitator who would oversee the other facilitators. They're gonna assign one facilitator to each region, and then that facilitator is gonna group the school districts within the Seesha Region onto study committees, which is a concept in current law, Chapter 11, our Union School District Formation and Governance chapter in Title 16. And those school districts are gonna get together and they have to participate in a study committee, and then we'll go through some of the specific requirements they have to consider, and then what will be will be. They either decide to form a new union school district or they don't.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Somewhere

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: in here, the learning collaboratives facilitator oversees all the other facilitators? The learning collaboratives are only seesaw that is up and running. So H nine fifty five is using VLTC to hire all the facilitators. They hire BT BT BTLC hires eight facilitators.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Do you know the reasoning behind that?

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: The reasoning behind what?

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: That they have the ELC doing the hiring

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: of VA. I think that's a policy question for your colleagues in the house.

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: Thank you.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So that was a very high level overview. So starting on section 13, line e, subsection a of this section requires BTLC on or before 10/01/2026 to employ or contract with the services of seven Union School District facilitators who would then be responsible for organizing and facilitating study committees to study the advisability of forming a unified union school district. BTLC is also required to hire one lead facilitator who will oversee the work of the seven facilitators. A facilitator shall have knowledge of and experience working in Vermont Public Education System. And then BTLC assigns one facilitator to each seesaw membership region. And then we keep going.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I know you use your term story very specifically for purpose school. Why inform you a unified union school district? I know you've schooled with us several times on unified unions and such. What's the nuance here? Why a unified union school?

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I can't speak to why. That's a policy question for your colleagues in the house, but a unified union school district is a school district that is made up of two or more towns that's organized to provide for the education of its resident students in grades pre K through 12. Subsection B. So the facilitators are hired and then they are assigned to each seesaw. So on and before 12/01/2026, two things need to happen. The first is that each facilitator has to assign or group school districts within the facilitator's assigned region to form study committees to study the advisability of forming a Unified Union School District. The facilitator is required to consult with school district boards prior to finalizing the study committee membership. The facilitator is also required to use suggested school district groupings, excuse me, that we'll walk through or I'll point out section 14 at guidance. So there's two maps. There's the Seesha Regents, and then there's the section 14 guidance map. And then the facilitator shall group school districts together according to the following criteria. So total average daily membership of the school districts forming a study committee shall be a minimum of 2,000 students as practical. School districts forming the study committee shall be contiguous. And school districts on the same study committee may be members of different supervisory units. And the second thing that needs to happen on or before 12/01/2026 on page 27, line 15, is that each study committee is required to hold its first meeting. Can I ask you question? I'm trying to skip ahead, I just wanna make sure I understand. Okay. So the this isn't paid for out of the 15,000 per CISA. No. That's a start up cost. Okay. This is 210,000 from the general fund, and it may have changed to the I would I I absent skip me skipping to those sections and verifying it, I I would have to look at the But there's money appropriated for this. Yes. It's not they have to come up with their own money. So notwithstanding, I'm on page 27, line 16, notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, a school district is required, so shall participate in the study committee it is assigned to by the investigator. Then line 19, the study committee form pursuant to this section shall adhere to the processes and requirements of chapter 11, sub chapter two, which is your union school district formation chapter and sub chapter in Title 16. So current law, the current law process. And then everything under subdivision theory, with some slight modifications of that current law.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So current law would require school boards to be involved in or challenged even to be agreeing on formation of needs?

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

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: And then, again, I'm gonna because I don't fully understand it. On the bottom of page 27, line 21, and it says, the study committee, blah blah blah, may identify necessary advisable school districts. Seem to, this is all a BOCES still, right?

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: No, we're talking about forming school districts. Oh, that

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: starts with section 13. Okay, got it. Sorry, psychologically, you make the sounds. Yep.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So on lines twenty one and twenty two, a study committee formed pursuant to this section, meaning section 13 of the bill, may identify necessary or advisable school districts that are not already members of their study committee or are not members of the seesaw or both. And then they would work with the applicable facilitator or facilitators to adjust study committee membership incentives. Facilitators are required to follow certain guidance that you put up here in Subdivision 1A. But if the result of that is that once the study committee starts going, they recognize actually it makes more sense for this guy over here to be on this study committee. The facilitators can make that happen. There can be adjustments happening.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Facilitators of the seesaws.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: The facilitators are just hired by the CSOs. The facilitators are facilitating Union School District study committees. The CSO is the employer.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Oh, just

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So so what we have is the seesaws get warmed, then they oversee the work of trying to purchase drugs. Okay. And then try to and that's the that's the contract.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: But the entity holding the contract for all those facilitators remains the learning collaborative? Yes. Throughout the whole thing? Yes. That's a policy choice you can ask your No. No. I'm not, like I'm not trying to look at you for more answers. I'm just staring out. Just stay the So here's so budgets. So under current law, which is 16 BSA seven zero six and seven zero seven, Study committees have to form a budget if they were voluntarily forming out in the And by the way, this study committee process is what the school districts in your bill would be using, right? When they're getting together and talking about merging, they're gonna be using this study same study committee process, current law. Current law requires them to set a budget. And if the budget is over $50,000, then they have to go to their voters. Page 28, line four. So under current law, when a study committee is formed, it has to come up with a budget. And if the budget is more than $50,000 they have to go to their voters for approval for that budget. Spoiler alert, in the Ways and Means Amendment, part of one of their instances of amendment raises that $50,000 threshold to $500,000 But what subdivision B here is doing on page 28 line four is saying that notwithstanding current law related to study committee budgets, the study committee formed pursuant to the section shall be funded through appropriations made by the general assembly for this purpose. Provided however, that if a study committee's needs exceed the appropriations provided, it may elect to increase its budget according to the processes and procedures established in chapter 11. So we're gonna give you money, and if that's not enough, then go back to current law for getting more money. So, we're on page 28, line 11. In addition to the requirements of chapter 11, the study committee shall also explore the advisability and feasibility of a contemplated new unified union school district operating a regional middle or high school or both. A regional middle or high school contemplated pursuant to this section shall offer resident students increased educational opportunities and access to CT. So this is just a consideration for them to discuss. So now there's two options under current law. I mean, just in the universe possibilities, but under current law, there's kind of two options contemplated. The study committee gets together and it makes one of two determinations. It either determines that forming a new union school district is advisable, meaning we want to form the new union school district, or that forming a new union school district is inadvisable, meaning we're not going to recommend that. And so subdivision D, what we're about to walk through, is only applicable if a study committee determines that it is advisable to propose formation of a new unified union school district. They wanna make a new unified union school district. Current law, I recall.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: If I can, just before we lost over it, same page, line 15, the shell offer resident students blah blah blah and access to career technical education. What if what they don't have a CTE in their region and there there isn't one that's accessible. The shell seems to indicate that.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: This is just a consideration for them. So if we go back up to line 12, the study committee shall also explore the advisability and feasibility of a contemplated new school district containing a regional middle or high school. And then I would say lines 14 through 16 kind of define what a regional middle or high school is. So it may be that it's not feasible for that school district. Okay, so subdivision D is only, we're really talking about study committees that have decided to form a new school district. So current law requires such study committees to issue a report. And so we're saying here on line 19, in addition to the reporting requirements at current law, your final report pursuant to this section needs to include an analysis of the following. The educational advantages and disadvantages likely to result from the formation of the proposed Unified Union School District. I'm on page 29. The financial advantages and disadvantages likely to result from the formation of the proposed Unified Union School District. The likely operational and financial viability and sustainability of the proposed new Unified Union School District, and any other advantages or disadvantages of formation of the proposed Unified Union School District, including any advantages or disadvantages to the students and taxpayers of the region and the state. So the report has to contain that analysis. And then on page 29, line eight. If a study committee determines that it's inadvisable, they also have to issue a report before they dissolve. And this is what the inadvisable report needs to contain. So starting on line 13, the name of the school districts participating in the study committee and whether the participation was formal or informal, an analysis of the strengths and challenges of the current structures of all necessary and advisable school districts, The reasons why formation of a new Unified Union School District would be inadvisable, with specific references to any state law or rule of a study committee found to be an impediment to the formation of a Unified School District, with a specific analysis of why such rule or law was an impediment. And if the decision was not unanimous, an analysis of the minority view of the committee outlining the ways in which a unified union school district promotes the policy of chapter 11 of title 16. And then the study committee would transmit its report to the school boards of each of its participating school districts and the facilitator or facilitators that were working with them. And then on page 30, line nine, remember we're still under the subdivision, we're talking about study committees that have determined it's inadvisable to propose formation of a new unified union school district. Line nine, little triple I there. I still don't know what those are called.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Romanette. That's what Eric it's Beth.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Okay. And Allison Clerkz. Okay.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: My god. Romanette.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: This is basically saying, if you're assigned to a study committee pursuant to the section and you determine it's inadvisable, then you can go on to make any sort of studies you want outside of what's required here.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: What's the time period?

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: There is a timeline. And so if we jump at the great segue to line 15 on the same page, have until 12/01/2027 to complete their final reports. And if you remember back to the beginning of this section, they were supposed to hold their first meeting by December 1. So they have a year for the study committee to finish its work. And then the rest of this section is about if they determined that it was advisable to forming Union School District, what's the rest of the process? So now that I see their work product, I'm going back to page 27 to how they are formed. I think it's a question I'm trying to make sure I understand. The facilitator is hired by the one learning collaborative. They show up in the CSAC. Who's that?

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: We're not

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: The facilitator.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: This

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: is on this

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: But it says each facilitator shall group school districts within the facilitator's assigned CSA Region. CSA Region. Yeah. So they show up in the CSA Region. Yep. They get the supervisory unions together. The member region. So let's read that language together. So within the facilitators assigned Seesaw region member supervisory unions. So the school districts within the supervisory unions that make up the Seesha that the facilitator is assigned to. So they get all the school districts together and they form study committees according to the rest of the language. You have to read it all together for it to No. I I'm trying to read it trying to read it all together. So I'm just trying to be this facilitator because this sounds really hard to do. So they show up in a certain bucket of school district with a certain bucket of school districts that relate to the supervised readings and the CESA. Correct. That they they have some power to make all of those school districts meet for a year. So let's look at line six. Okay. Right? Just facilitator. So first step, uh-huh, consult with the school district boards. Mhmm. Who of you out in the community are already talking? Then, facilitator looks to the suggested school district groupings contained in section 14 that we haven't gotten to yet as guidance. Then the facilitator uses the conversations with the school district, the guidance from section 14, and put school districts on study committees together that meet the criteria on lines 10 through 14. Those are different study committees? Yes. So they're saying they might have five study committees. They might have five, they might have one, they might have two, depending on how all of the things the facilitator is supposed to take into consideration when making those study committees. And they need to have their first meeting before 12/01/2026. On or before, correct.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Just theoretically, theoretically these seesaw districts are coming together and they're looking for kind of like bonding. If they don't bond, they dissolve, they write a report in a different group, they come together, bond, they may be successful on successful in the iterations that they're all producing reports on pros and cons and the experience and what have you.

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

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So till the very end of it, whistle blows and everybody's in one seat or another?

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I'm not quite sure I understand

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Well, know, they they either try whatever it is, 2028 or whatever.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: There's a there's a final report back to you all with kind of the activity that happened pursuant to this section on by January 2029. But then there's a cleanup part at the bottom of '27 that says, if your study committee has two districts and they say, so and so should really be here, they just didn't get the memo. They can invite that school district. The language specifically says they shall work with the applicable facilitator to adjust study committee membership as necessary. So they're still working with the facilitator to say like, you should come to this meeting. Yeah. But if they don't, they're not required to be part of any study. They are required to participate in a study committee. Right? It says that right on page 27, line 16.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Seven weeks. Is there a option here for someone who's in a different seesaw to be attracted into adjacent seesaw?

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yes, It's not, this language does not adjust seesaw membership at all, but I hear you on using the seesaw boundaries as kind of the catchment area, right, because we're supposed to be. So, it's not that you could adjust seesaw membership, but yes, if you look at page 28, lines one and two, this is where if a study committee gets up and running and they identify that, hey, maybe someone's missing, they could work with the facilitator to bring someone new to the table. And those new people could be, do not have to be members of the seesaw. Good. So, I don't know exactly where we are right now, but I'll just put a pin in page 28, line 16 ish. I have a really big problem with us getting this far and CTEs not being invited to the table in any way, and then saying these study committees are supposed to figure out what makes sense for career technical education. Am I understanding that correctly? No. This is about the language here on line 16 is about, is required as part of subdivision C, it requires these study committees to contemplate whether it's feasible to have a regional or middle high school. Then the language on lines 14 through 16 describes what a regional or middle high school should be because that is not a concept that is defined in state law. Because CTE centers are not school districts in the same as a municipality, right? This is we're talking about school districts forming, getting together and forming new school districts. And so, all of the CTE centers that are being operated by the public schools would be represented by their school boards on, or whoever the member is on the study committee for wherever that CTE center is located. But Chapter 11 is only about school district governance for the municipalities that hold the taxing capacity. I think I understand that. I just wanna remind everyone that I'm non partisan staff. No, no, I'm I'm not sorry, I hope you don't feel I do. I feel like this meeting has been slightly hostile to staff. And I just want to remind everyone that I am nonpartisan staff and I am just here walking through this bill and you have not heard from the sponsors of the bill yet. Right. Okay.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: That's fair.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Lateral on the same page. And I apologize. It felt like that was directed at you. Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Okay. So we are see. Okay. So we're on page 30 and just highlighting that language on line nine. So theoretically, you could be assigned to a study committee. You could know right from the get go that you don't wanna be a part of this. They could write a report in a week and dissolve. Like, is a theoretical and then they could decide to get together and do whatever they want on the side, and they could do that under current law without any special language, and and is it? Romanette? Yeah. Romanette three is telling you, reminding you that that's not it. So study committee reports do on or before 12/01/2027. And if the study committee has determined that it is advisable, currently, forming Union School District, current law also requires them in addition to that final report to come up with some proposed articles of agreement. So the study committees have to send the final report and the proposed articles of agreement to each school board that was participating on their study. And then on page 31, line five, or line one, subdivision five, the school board is already required under current law to review Well, they're not required. They're given the opportunity to review a study committee's report and they can give feedback to the study committee. And so we're putting nine fifty five as passed by the house is putting a time limit on that. Current law doesn't give anyone a time limit, but section 13 is saying, school boards, you have until 02/01/2028 to complete your review. And so this is all following current law, right? You get study committee forms, they make a final determination. If the final determination is to form a new school district, the first stop is going to the school boards that were participating to review the report and proposed art of this agreement. The next stop is to the Secretary of Education. I'm on page 31, line five. If a study committee determines that it is advisable to form proposed formation of a new Unified Union School District, the study committee is required to transmit the required report and proposed articles of agreement to the secretary. That's all current law. We've built in another timeline here. So if the secretary fails to submit the report and the proposed articles along with the secretary's recommendations to the state board within sixty days following receipt of the report or on or before 04/01/2028, whichever date occurs first. Then the study committee doesn't need to wait for the secretary's recommendation. They can transmit the report and proposed articles of agreement directly to the state board, which is the next stop. And then the state board can take action that it's required to take under current law, regardless of whether the secretary has submitted the recommendation to them. And so I'm on page 31, line 17. The next stop is that the state board is required to issue findings. And we're referring to current law here, so we're not asking the state board to do anything differently than what's required under current law, but we are saying that they have to do that on or before 06/01/2020. And the next?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yes, Senator Hashim. I have a

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: question about timelines. So the POCs or the seesaws have to be created by 06/30/2026?

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: The seesaws, the boundaries are up and running with the effective date of 07/01/2026. And

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: the list of services that they may provide, I'm looking back at page 13, professional development all the way to the transportation, those have to be developed by when?

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: There's no timeline for when the CSA needs to begin offering services.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: And then the studies have to be done by 02/01/2028.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: The studies to whether or not to form a Unified Meeting School District.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Right. So, okay, so thank you. I think, I guess just for the committee, of my concerns here is if we're having these, if we're forming the seesaws, there's no timeline for when the services have to be in existence, and so it kind of leaves these study committees kind of almost in this limbo state of not knowing what they can access from the seesaw. You get what I'm getting at?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: So I just think it's problematic, but

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, and I've been wanting not wanting to go too deep into weeds here because the first question for us is gonna be whether we're interested. Right. And so we have a, you know, we have other, there's other approaches. This is one that if we get interested, then we'd probably not really understand it. But I just wanted to do a high level to give us a sense of what's in here and what we're interested in and what we're not. So, but yeah, I I I actually saw that lower head note of your question.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I think the seesaw, the only thing seesaws have to do with the study committee process is that you already have one in existence, and so they're gonna hold a contract for facilitators.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: How many years?

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: What the contract be good for? The the The legislation doesn't specify how long the contract is taking. It does set a specific amount of money facilitator would get. And somewhere in here there was, if they want to keep going, they have to pay for it themselves. It sets an amount of money that the state is appropriating to the study committee, not the facilitator. And if the study committee needs more money and that has been appropriated to them, they could then revert back to current law and tap into their own reserves or budgets or whatever. Okay, so there's an appropriation for the facilitator? To hire the facilitator, yes. And that have the timeline. The appropriation have the timeline? Is it like a one time appropriation Yes. For a So then it would be up to the study committees individually to decide if they wanted to keep that facilitator or put their own money together to keep studying. I believe the way this is contemplated is that the facilitator is going to be contracted for as long as it takes to complete this process. And so would be available to the study committees for the entire time they are required to be doing their work. The budget is for any of the work, the other work that needs to go into Like, our community school do you need to hire an expert for financial modeling? I don't know, I'm not in the field, so I don't know what a study committee budget, what goes into that. But there's, I think, $10,000 appropriation going to each study committee. That's for the CSOT. Yep. So, thousand for a study committee budget. We're giving them the facilitator, which is a cost in and of itself. And so, between the facilitator and the $10, if a study committee still needs more, then they can revert to current law and how a study committee would fund itself without these state appropriations. Okay. Somewhere in there. I'm still not clear how much the facilitator gets paid. It's not explicitly stated what the contract terms would be. There is an appropriation that contemplates $50,000 for each facilitator and 60,000 for the lead facilitator. Okay, so don't think that's enough money if we do this, but also wondering if halfway through they're like, this isn't the person to get us there. We need someone local or something. I don't know. They just could choose a new facilitator and talk to the originated contract holders, they the study committee. So let's keep going. Okay.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: But this is that's way down in the weeds. I really wanna understand what's in here.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I hear you. I just feel like the house is gonna wanna know if we just say, you know, like, that I'm gonna have a seat.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We can stick to that on the floor. The

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: next stop is a vote. A study committee, I'm on page 31, line 19, if a study committee forms pursuant to this section determines that it is advisable to propose formation of a new unified union school district, the voter of each school district that is identified as necessary or advisable shall vote whether to form the proposed union school district in accordance with current law on or before 11/07/2028. So, this is all a current law requirement for forming a unified Union School District. All we're doing here is saying that those votes need to occur before election day twenty or on election day twenty eight. And that is the whole Union School District study committee process. The rest of what's in, so subsection F is a status report. So you're asking AOE, this bill is asking AOE on or before February, in consultation with the facilitators to submit a written report to the education committees and the money committees with information regarding the membership and status of each study committee formed pursuant to this section.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Current law says they had to vote if they wanted to combine the make the new unified school systems. Yep. Let's stand out. The legislative say we we just if they came back and said no, it's good legislation saying we're common good?

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yes, but it would, as as, if you can remember back to Tucker and myself, actually that was for a different presentation, but yes, Dilla, you are a Dilla's rule state. It is legisl it is your legislative authority to create municipalities. You would need a million more words to actually make it operational than to just put a line in there that says right?

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: That's 2028.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Which means So

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: we're out of section 13. We're still under the same reader assistant petting, which is the Union School District formation, reader assistant heading, but now we're in intersection. This is this graph, this language represents them on page 32, line nine. This language represents the second map that you should be getting from house education, and that is the guidance for study committee groupings. So facilitators are required to use these groups as guidance when they're setting their study committee membership. And if a facilitator decides to make decisions that are different from this guidance, that's okay. They just need to explain their choices to the lead facilitator so that the lead facilitator can include it in the final report back to you all in 2029. And then, so there's 21 groups here, and they're all school district groupings. Move on. Okay. So that will take us to section 15 on page 35. And I didn't ways and means made a few additions in in section 13 that we just walked through related to study committees. So I'm gonna jump over to that before I forget. And we're looking at the one of the 102 page amendment here, and we're on page one, line 14, the second instance of amendment. So one of the things that union that the facilitators are required to consider is grand list values accounting for the homestead exemption and current education spending when they're forming their study committees.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: then in the third instance of amendment on page one, line 18, Just adding a requirement that facilitators are required to monitor your work related to education transformation and share the most up to date fiscal modeling with study committees. Those are the only changes they made to the union school district formation process. So section 15 is requiring, I'm on page 36, line one. On 01/01/2029, that lead facilitator is required to give you all a final report with the results of each study committee, and whether, and information regarding whether, and if so, how the following issues impact, excuse me, are influenced the final outcome of each study committee overseen by the facilitator, along with recommendations for legislative action needed to remove identified barriers to the formation of the new human school districts. So, did these topics come up and how do they come up? So, differences in staffing costs, differences in operating structures, geographic and topographic barriers, enrollment patterns and projections, and any other factor the facilitator found who have influenced the final decision of a study committee. And then section 16 on page 36, line 17, the agency of education on or before 01/01/2029, in consultation with the study committees and the State Board of Education is required to submit a written report to you all with recommendations for supervisory union boundary adjustment and seesaw boundary adjustments to take into account any new union school districts formed pursuant to the fact. So, were there no union school districts formed and we don't need any adjustments, or were there a bunch that means maybe we should look at some of the bigger structures and whether their boundaries need to change? Section 17, I don't think it's worth going over in the House version because Ways and Means struck it and replaced it with a brand new Section 17. So, if you go over to the Ways and Means Amendment, we'll be looking on page two, fourth instance of amendment, and these are all the appropriations related to the c thaw and the study committees. So the first in every appropriation in section 17 is education transformation money. So none of these are new appropriations. They are making it clear that the money required for these various grants are an allowable use of the education transformation money that you all appropriated in Act 73. So the first one is a study committee reimbursement grant.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: That's not going to be numbers, This is all just the anomaly that goes with each one.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yes, and there's some policy here. Okay. So the study committee reimbursement, the study committee, I said that study committees are gonna be given a facilitator and more money to do their work. That's in the form of reimbursement. So, committees submit receipts and then they get reimbursed up to $10,000 for their costs. And then, without going into the money, there is And then to make sure I understand that, the $10,000 is for each study committee. So you could have a CISA that decides they have six study committees and they would get $60,000 The study committee could be reimbursed for up to $10,000 depending on the actual costs they have spent. Right? They have to submit an invoice for their costs in addition to the facilitator. Correct. They don't have to pay for the facilitator at all. Okay. They're paying for legal and technical assistance. I honestly don't know what they'll be paying. That's a great question for the field. Yep. Okay. So then, subdivision B or subsection B on page three is the facilitator appropriation. Won't go into numbers. And then on line 16 on page three, we're gonna give every seesaw $50,000 towards hiring an executive director. But we're only gonna give six of them $50,000 because you already have one that's up and running and has an executive director. Is this like a match for getting paid by the district? This is just in addition to any membership fees or fees for services that CISA would collect. Mhmm. This legislation is contemplating in order to get you up and running, we're gonna give you 50 k for hiring an executive director. But not contemplating that that's all it would cost. Just like this is money towards hiring. I mean, don't know how much an executive director would be paid.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Right.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I agree with that one. It could be a surge, isn't it? Right.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Not a limiting amount of money, like a start amount. And that's the appropriations. If you don't want me to go into numbers, that's all there is to say about that section. Okay. Do you want It's $3.29. Do you want to keep going or do No, want those

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: we're close enough to the 45,

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: page one, the house education actually, we're not gonna look at section 18 in the house education. We're also gonna look at the Ways and Means amendment.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It's the 102

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

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Not the 102

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: which

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: With a fifth instance of amendment. Yes. Page four, line six, we then instruct the section entirely and replace it with a new one. These are amendments to section 70 of Act 73, which is the effective date section for Act 73, which is where all the contingencies for the foundation formula live.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: please don't ask me what some of these sections are because they're largely finance sections. If and when you have John and Kirby in to talk about the finance and tax sections, they could give you more detail on what the changes contemplated in the December 1 sections were. But for the purposes of our discussion, can see on line 11 that the house pushed the effective date for section 48, which is related to the December 1 letter out from 07/01/2027 to 07/01/2029. Subsection f is the big contingencies for the foundation formula. So, you can see that a lot has been struck through on lines 14 through 19. So, what the House did is they moved the effective date for the foundation formula. It's still contingently effective. So if the contingencies were met, the foundation formula would take effect on 07/01/2030 instead of 07/01/2028. And then they created three new contingencies and kept one of the current law contingencies. So, law requires that the new school districts contemplated by Act 73 have assumed responsibility for the education of all resident students. That language has been struck and replaced with subdivision A on line 20, page four. So, the school districts have had opportunity to study the advisability of forming a new Unified Union School District, and the clerk of each district voting on a proposal to form a Unified Union School District on a report 11/07/2028, have certified the results. So, this contingency is basically saying school districts had to have had an opportunity to participate in the study committees. What is an opportunity? I think absent an act of nature that would prevent folks from actually getting together, that part is probably gonna be mad. Right? But if there is an earthquake that cuts Vermont in half and we can't get everyone together, then I would argue there has perhaps not been an outbreak. Absence of active nature, that's probably gonna be able to happen. So they have an opportunity, and if there is a vote, to the extent that there are any votes that come out of that process, this contingency would be met once those voting results have been certified. So it doesn't depend on specific outcome of those votes. It's just that the vote was certified. On page five, line seven, subdivision B, this is current law. This is a current contingency in Act W3. The expert tasked with developing a cost factor foundation formula is provided to General Assembly with 45A report. This is JFO's contractor report related to the foundation formula. Subdivision C, on a report December, JFO has provided the General Assembly with an analysis using fiscal year twenty seven data that compares the total appropriated state funds each school district received under Vermont's existing education formula with those the school district would have received under the foundation formula as it was established in Act 73. And then the fourth contingency is that legislation has been enacted to address the following. Suitable geographic measures for determining sparsity within the foundation formula, whether it costs more to educate a secondary student than an elementary student, and if so, an appropriate weight to capture the cost differential. I'm on page six now. How to account for the provision of state seat leave within Vermont's education formula, how to account for regional differences in operating costs, including those driven by regional differences in cost of living and legacy collective bargaining agreements within the foundation formula, and how to fund special education services, school construction, renovation and repayment of school district debt, transportation and universal pre K. There have been some sections related to finance deleted. And so I'll let either the finance committee deal with those or I'll have John come you should have John come speak to you about those. And then the next substantive change I would point out is page seven, line two, subsection G. These are two parts of the tuition statute that would only take effect if certain provisions have been met. And the same contingency changes that were applied in subsection F are applied here. So, moving the date from 07/01/2028 to 07/01/2030. And then instead of new school districts being operational, you have that there's an opportunity to participate in a study committee, and if there is a vote as a result of that study committee, the results have been certified. And then it keeps the rest of the contingencies. And then if we jump back to the as introduced version, we're very close to the end here. We're on page 42 now. Slide eight. We're in a new breeder assistance heading regarding pre k. Section 19 is some findings. In the interest of time, I'll let them speak for themselves. Section 20 is legislative intent. I'll let in the interest of time, I'll let let that language speak for itself. And then section 21 requires JFOAM on page the very bottom of page 43 going on to page 45 requires JFO to contra oh, actually, I'm sorry. This is another waste of hands. If you go over to the under two page one, On page seven, line 18, ways and means struck section 21 in entirety and replaced it with a new section. Keeps with some legislative intent on page eight. Data and reports that requires the agency DCF and Building Bright Futures to establish a system to jointly monitor and evaluate Pre K. And Building Bright Futures is required in consultation with AOE and DCF to report annually to the general assembly in January. It also requires Building Bright Futures on December 1 in consultation with AOE and DCF to submit a written report to you all with the following information. Building Bright Futures has a federal grant right now related to preschool development. And so, we're asking BBF to report on the status of their work under that grant and the data collection that they're doing. What are their initial or updated findings related to student demographics and number of hours by pre K program by district? Are there any outstanding questions or gaps in data? And any recommendations for legislative action and other consideration? And they're also required to give a progress report to you all on that work on or before October 1, I'm sorry, to the Joint Fiscal Committee on or before October.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Senator Williams. You have a separate bill with notes that says check or go back to the relations committee on my

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: No. I'm doing this all by memory. You will get it just takes quite a while for the clerk's office and the draft day operations team to put it all together.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I'm thinking I'm thinking if I go back this weekend and read it, I wouldn't want to go back.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I'm not I'm not quite sure that it'll be ready this for this weekend. And then on page nine, line 19, JFO is required to contract with a contractor with expertise of Vermont's education funding system to conduct an updated cost of care analysis to account for the provision of pre K within the education finance system. The contractors are required to utilize the results of some recent cost modeling studies that are spelled out. And the study shall provide estimates for the current cost of providing pre K for children three, four, and five years old not yet eligible for enroll in kindergarten. And there is a $75,000 appropriation from the general fund to JFO for this work. And then JFO is separately required to report back to you all regarding different funding mechanisms that may be used to distribute funds for education costs within the new financing formula, including grants, inclusion within the education opportunity payment itself, and different forms of categorical aid. And that is all that the House did. The effective date of the entire H-nine 55 as introduced is a beautiful just 07/01/2026. And that is not what you will be getting when the May 18 amendment is, you know, when everything is rectified.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And do you, just for future references, we think about scheduling, do you have sections in? I do. That's what Bobby said. And just so I know, we know which section. Which section? Yeah.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So I have the seventh instance of amendment, which is on page 11. And then for the eighth instance of amendment, I am responsible for sections 22 through, 22 through which ends on page 29. And then there's also another floor amendment that will get wrapped up in there that I, Dawn and I both share. This one? Yes. And these are the only things that passed. Only amendments that floor amendment. Yep.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I said, this is. Don't I don't I have

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: But we'll have a spouse.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I see it's not him?

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: It is. You help me out just for a sec, Bob? So going back to the ways and means, then I'm on page 10. The whole study about providing care for patients with children three, four, and five, you help me remember the daycare payroll tax that we created was to affect what changes?

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Oh, don't know. I can find that out for you, but that was a Katie McLennan. So Katie has all the pre sections of the No. I have the pre K sections of the bill. The work on, Act 76 related to the child, the income, I that was not me, but I could get that information for you.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I just wanna try to get a differentiation between, you know, pre K and day care and what's being proposed here.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah, so what this, I might be able to help clarify that. I can't answer your question specifically about that, but pre K, this is asking, so pre K education is defined in statute in section eight twenty nine as pre kindergarten education for children three, four, and five years of age nine eligible to enroll in kindergarten, and that's provided according to the rules. Those children are also going to be eligible for daycare and CCBAP depending on their family's financial circumstances. So there's quite a bit of overlap there.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And it's a mixed delivery system.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: It is a mixed delivery system, right? So right now, the state pays for ten hours of pre K. Do you still want me to check-in with Katie on that?

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: If we decide to keep this section, it would be prudent to get five minutes of differentiation. What we've already done, what we're studying.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We might just want to get Katie out and go that direction.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah, you might not need Katie necessarily if it's more of a question related to what we've done and what this is asking for, because this is asking for JFO to do something. So, I think they would be able to speak to what was done in Act 76 from a fiscal perspective of what we're asking them to study and recommend for you all. Do we have a fiscal note for this bill on the committee?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I don't think so.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: There is a fiscal note. There's a fiscal note. Can you put that on our page, Stephanie, or email it to us?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you. We'll figure out the schedule.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Okay.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Are you asking to hear the second part with finance or just separately? I mean, this whole

[Rep. Ela (Ella) Chapin (East Montpelier), House Committee on Environment and Energy]: 102 page thing?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. We'll I think we want our own we want our own run through probably Dawn and Julie in some fashion.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I think it depends on where you are or if there is any lines being drawn between the work that your committee would be responsible for and the work finance would be

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: responsible Yeah, just have baselines. Yeah. That's what the baseline for us.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Want curvy for any of the PACS pieces, the regional the RAD whatever RAD stands for. Assessment Districts. Regional Assessment Districts. Yeah. Well, need to Appraisal. Appraisal.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well, need to renew. Need. So it's a combination of John Kirby.

[St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And me.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. For life counsel. For your Yeah. Sections. Okay. Yep. Next. Okay. So we can adjourn for the day.