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[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: We're live.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. We're back after center education on the twenty ninth. We're back after, back after a short break, we have with us counsel in St. James to go through, walk us through a new version H-nine 30 on chronic absenteeism.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Thank you, God, St. James. Office of Legislative Counsel, you have draft 2.1 of your strike all amendment to H-nine 30 as passed by the House. Changes between draft 1.1 and this new draft 2.1 are highlighted in yellow, and you can see there's not a lot of yellow in this draft. So, the first change is on page two. That previously said. We're on H nine thirty. Stop. Yep. There's only one pill
[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: that's They were walking down their gates. Were walking were
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: walking walking their distance.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So, on page two, my previously said in order to promote consistent school attendance and student success, and you've changed it into in order to produce consistent school attendance and student success. No changes to section eleven twenty in the definition section. No changes, I'm on page four, to section eleven twenty one, the compulsory attendance statute, or section eleven twenty two, which is the folks on either side of the compulsory attendance, moving them into the compulsory attendance requirement if they are actually attending school, or enrolled in school. And then on page five, section eleven twenty three, this is your school absence may be excused statute. This is where the laundry list used to live, and we've completely shortened subsection A. Yesterday in the draft you looked at had three subdivisions under subsection A, which was the lead in language asks for the model policy to be followed when a school, a head of school or a superintendent is excusing an absence. And there were kind of three scenarios there. There was absence for a la carte de preplanned family commitments, and then may ask for justification. And we had a lot of discussion yesterday, just shortens that too. In accordance with the chronic absenteeism and truancy policy required pursuant to section eleven twenty four of this chapter, the superintendent of a public school or designee of the head or designee or the head of school of an approved independent school or designee may excuse a student's absence for all or part of the school day and may request justification from an absence period. And then on page six, section eleven twenty four, this is the model policy section. We've added to the list of folks the agency of education is required to consult with in developing the model policy, the National Association of Social Workers Vermont Chapter, which was included yesterday, but I got the name wrong. I believe it's now correct. The Department of State's Attorneys and Sheriffs and the Department for Children and Families Family Services Division. And then the model policy shall, I'm on page six, line 10, subdivision one. We had yesterday, this used to read, provide guidance for the reasons, etcetera. And then after all or part of the school day, it had including guidance regarding absences for pre planned family commitments or activities, which the school has been notified in advance. And we've gotten rid of that language. And then on page seven, subdivision two, this is where we had language that asked the policy to contain templates. We've changed that to the agency shall also develop all procedures to accompany the model policy, which shall include a template for documentation of actions taken according to the policy to address the absence, which constitutes the truancy reporting protocol. The model procedure shall also include a template for standard documentation. Then, we go all the way to the page 15, so no changes between page seven and page 15. You decided to leave the hearing factor enrollment language in for today and to add, also add back in the home study program attendance requirements report that traveled over from the house.
[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: That's in Section eight twenty, Yes. I only see that it has, that they're gonna
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: do a report, but they're not gonna do,
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: keep the
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: The enrollment hearings, is that what you're referring to? Yes. That's in Section seven. It's a standalone. I didn't change anything there. All
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: right. It's alright.
[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Thank you.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. We had testimony from the agency to the effect that we're do this, and have to fund it. And the agency was actually going don't to know if by today, give us some sense of what we're gonna need to add it for them.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I can't tell who you're looking at. I'm here. Yeah. I think we are in the process of, if we haven't already, submitting some written testimony. I did forward some written testimony, and it's Yeah. I would actually request if we could have some brief testimony from our legal counsel to actually talk through this more deliberately rather than sort of this ad hoc sort of policy development that's been happening, I would request that we could give about fifteen minutes to sort of walk through rather than trying to do this on the fly, which is how policies have developed thus far. You're welcome. No. I'm I'm I'm requesting that you request testimony from us.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Do that. We'll take
[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: tomorrow. Okay.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: We'll work on that. I will alert her right now.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay and there was talk yesterday about the School Words Association request for about the cost of health insurance. I talked to JFO. It would require JFO number one, thought language was so unclear they couldn't figure out what they were supposed to be doing. The other is that they, to the extent it involved actuaries, were going to have to hire an actuary at their curbside estimates in the 15,000 foot range. So I think it, I think this, it's not well enough bank to make it into this book.
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Without looking at a home, we looked at
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: a home here at 09:30. No, sorry, no, I'm sorry. I'm mixing things. Confuse you and I couldn't understand how it, I'm talking about the provision that the school board's association asked us to put in about health insurance. I was jumping ahead from this. Good. So Do you
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: want to save that conversation for then? Finish this?
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Oh, thought we were, I was finished because we were gonna wait for the demo. Okay.
[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: There's somebody has
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: a question, she'll ask it. I'll ask. So,
[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Jared, we hear what you're saying, but we also hear what the homeschoolers are saying, so I want to try to get a balance in there for both of you. So, because I'm gonna fight on behalf of the homeschoolers. Do you believe there's a compromise in here somewhere?
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah, so can you clarify what is the goal for the homes, from the testimony that you received, what do you perceive to be the goal that they're trying to achieve?
[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Is that they prove to you when they're under question, leave it open.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Close it. Open for your
[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: When they come under question, that they have the right to have a hearing to prove what they're doing is right, not just be able to, you know, have the agency of education go and do it soon.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Okay. So they're looking for a due process Yes. Sort of outlined. Yeah. I mean, I I think that that's something that we can definitely score. I do think having that as the question, I'd like to come back around to our legal counsel, our general counsel, and really identify what we can do, sort of what's already existing within statute, are we solving a problem that we solve through process, or does, do we need statutory change? So I think that's why it's important to actually have, and thank you, Chair, some testimony from the agency looking at what exists in statute, and then what's proposed, and understanding the goals of the homeschool community is really helpful.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So the recommendation for the study come from the agency?
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah, we did. I I'll mean, share with you. I had already passed my team internally with doing this study, so I was like, Hey, you want to do something in this space? Why don't we do something comprehensive? It was our recommendation that we do a study. Again, just as we've done with special education before we try to make big changes to the system that's actually identified with the current system looks like.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So this is the study is underway with or without the legislation. Yeah. The question for us, you to offer some testimony that has to do with the enrollment after. That's right. I actually have to move. Okay.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And I can clarify to Emily Simmons that that's sort of the stated goal. And if the committee has a different stated goal, that would be really helpful as well.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: The stated goal, I think, is to bring back what we have what we had in the past until it was
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: would I would indicate that what we had in the past was not found to be workable. So what I would prefer is that we actually offer something that will go. Fair enough. Okay, great.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So we'll get you in tomorrow. Just a little vague.
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: What we had in the past, there were all kinds of nuances, procedures, hand again, work, reevaluation, know, to see if it could just be a little bit different. What we had in the past, we removed a lot. We removed maybe too much, right? We're trying to put it back in, not the full.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So we'll have you in tomorrow. Yep. Sounds great. So okay. So with regard to the request of the school board association, and I thought once we get a piece of payroll, I don't
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: think he's scheduled till 03:30.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Oh, okay. We're ahead of ourselves. Okay.
[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: We're talking about the health insurance thing? Yeah. Is that I mean
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: had request to add.
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: What was that?
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We had a request to add providing protection. But you were gonna say.
[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Yeah, I mean, it seems, it doesn't quite seem like it's something that would be in this community. I mean, it's a health insurance question and it's a finance question.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I don't know what it is. I'm with you. So, yes. Okay.
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So why couldn't it be added to the bill and then forwarded to the respective committee on on the for their analysis? What's up being stand alone bills? And we all understand what the problem is. There's been no activity to try to solve that particular problem, although we've known about it years. So the way the bill is going. This this way is that no. We're worried about the way this way is that no. It's not really totally an egg problem. It's a wide, agency wide problem. I see it.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I don't know.
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I I don't see this. They were really opening up the aperture on this issue. I don't think it's that big. Okay.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well let's hang on, this part of the discussion we can come back to, but let them speak for themselves. So actually, we have so are we down to let's just make sure we're clear about this. We're down to the one issue of how we treat the action that perilous and there's some death by tomorrow from the attorney, and we're down to whether we do it or not, add something other to the request of the school board's association. We can go down for those two things.
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. But, again, you're two different bills.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: $9.30 is what? But you're mixing the two. I I am mixing. That's the. So on this one, we're down to single issue. The trauma I mean, the that's a TSB bill. Down to the one issue that we'll hear about tomorrow. Okay?
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And we have the performance contract. John, can we talk to you about that? I don't know how that is. I didn't know, while we're talking about all of them, I just thought I'd mention it, so don't know where that landed.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I think
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Look at it.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. Look at the. Okay. So if we'll come back to this, I was switching to a miscellaneous building.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yes. And I see no one's here.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So but, again, under miscellaneous bill. Right? Right. Yeah.
[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Okay.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Do you want me to get up and have no one sit down?
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well, we can get to it. Get to it.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: There's nothing in the bill that is going to prompt you to talk about it.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Well then we could do it since you're here. Yeah, yes, let's do that.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Nope, I could use alarm. Thank you.
[Nolan Langweil, Joint Fiscal Office]: Yeah. For the record I know. The Don't mind what drug this dog is I haven't been in this room in nine years. Wow. For those of you, I've worked with all of you except for you. You're on it. Yeah. Great. Members from Rutland, I've spent a lot of
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: time with them. Yes, we did. Yes, so Okay. Well, just to reiterate where we are, we've we've now switched to the miscellaneous bill, nine seventy one, and we're talking about the fact that we have the Western School Boards Association, to add some language. Council St. James yesterday, we were talking about it, suggested that we have a staff of JFO, faculty disability, and whatever they involved in doing that. You and I talked last night, and so I guess the, know how to put this, why don't you just sort of give us your JFO's response to both feasibility and the expense of what would be involved.
[Nolan Langweil, Joint Fiscal Office]: Sure. I've looked through the language and I guess I can either walk through each piece, but I guess the first question when I read this is I'm trying to understand what it is that people really want to know. I look at this and I'm not sure it answers the questions you really want the answers to. For instance, I'll walk through, assess the financial ability of the Ed Fund and Vermont School District to pay for current costs. I'm not quite sure what that means.
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Where'd that from? The language I saw from the advocates was one sentence. It's either we shift to a, we're all talking about the same topic and just saying, no, we're talking about negotiations for healthcare.
[Nolan Langweil, Joint Fiscal Office]: So I'm talking to, I mean, I'll answer whatever questions you want. The only thing I've seen So we need to settle
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: on what question, what it is you analyze to make sure it's
[Nolan Langweil, Joint Fiscal Office]: have those two proposals from school boards. There's three bullets. One is about assessing financial ability, the other one's comparing healthcare costs, and then one's actuarial study. First thing I'll say is actuarial analysis costs money. Lots of money. You're probably talking 50 to $100,000 depending on what it is you want done. The other thing I'll just sort of flag is that there's another similar but different study in S-one hundred ninety that looks at a public Sorry, go ahead.
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: My apologies, I'm gonna interrupt just for a second. Thanks. We received a separate note today from School Boards Association that had only one request. Okay. The three request was a day or two ago. Sure. They clearly realized that's not something.
[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Okay. Does anyone have a copy
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: of that? I don't know anything about that. Mark, see. Why not?
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Because because I wasn't sure if you all got it directly, I forward it to you directly.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: That was the
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: What I'm reacting to and have been reacting to is what we were requesting to do yesterday. Right. Remote side note, yes. That's what Lawrence here talk about. So why don't we finish that discussion actually? Sure. Go ahead. Go ahead.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Can I can I try to put us out of our misery here and and actually answer Nolan's first question and be as impolitic as possible? But I think the debate that's being had in an uninformed way is, is there some outsized benefits that are falling onto the property tax in teacher health care that the states around us are are not experiencing the same thought. And I think then the challenge becomes, are they more outsized than what the rest of Vermonters are experiencing as we have a different system than other states? But is there are there things that we should be looking at that put our teachers in a category of their own for their health care benefits that then property taxpayers are struggling to afford.
[Nolan Langweil, Joint Fiscal Office]: I think of how there's so many ways to comment this. First of all, every state is different, obviously. We have a statewide property tax, and we have a unified healthcare, the BI. There's two pieces. There's what are the cost premiums? Behind it is, what are the underlying costs of healthcare in general? I think in general, everybody struggling with healthcare costs every day. Vermont is no different. You'll hear a lot of people say we have the highest premiums and whatever. I can't say that's true or not, other than the fact that we all know that healthcare costs are a huge driver for small businesses. We know it's a driver for healthcare costs. Teachers, obviously, because the Ed Fund education costs, healthcare costs or the education fund is clearly a pressure on the Ed Fund. I don't know that looking at other states solves the problem. I think the underlying problem is we need to solve healthcare costs in general. Know, when you can play with premium levels and the types of plans and the richness of plans and HSAs and HRAs, but it doesn't solve the underlying problem of we need healthcare reform, that our costs of healthcare are just too high. Right. So, and I don't wanna weigh into whether benefits are too rich or not rich stuff. I don't wanna weigh into that. I don't wanna get into the bargaining piece. I would just say that it's definitely a driver in the Ed Fund because education costs, healthcare costs, certainly capture an education fund, and unless we tackle the underlying costs of healthcare, it's gonna be a problem regardless of the richness of the benefits.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Can I ask one more question? So if we were to have this conversation with you in economic development where we're talking about this other sentence that has come in and out of our inboxes that essentially says the mediator or the BLRB could could go item by item and pick and choose what benefit level they would instead of a a last best offer. There's that there's not a lot of precedent for that, I would imagine. Like, that's a big labor relations question, is if we let the VLRB decide individual line items of health care benefits.
[Nolan Langweil, Joint Fiscal Office]: I don't know the answer to that. Don't right, I wanna lean into
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: that. So
[Nolan Langweil, Joint Fiscal Office]: I don't know that I
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: can be helpful in that. Okay. Well, we should just continue with a, what is that harbinger here for this? I think we're ready to jazz in the notion that we're gonna do this study. Yeah. Because it's not foreign. It's not baked. And it was also no money through the actual portion of any of them. Right. So any any issue with that. These are due does it get to your question? Just gets to this one. Then the next question is so I My question isn't for JFN at all. I know that would be. So that's why we're getting, that's what we're getting. I'm trying to get you Well, because we were requested, this was the request from the committee. We have just arrived at the answer of it. I'm not gonna do it. Okay, so thank you for you inviting me.
[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Inviting me. That's all you got to say.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: That's why I like to talk about health
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: care. You will change your hair. Welcome
[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: to carpet meeting, now go home. Okay,
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: so we now have a request from Seth Bongartz to look at a different question, which is adding the sentence that's emailed to us.
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Which is a derivative of an answer point
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: of three bullets.
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: It simply has to do with the Without the point of negotiation, that instead of the mediator being required to pick one pest and lots off or a VALPO or the other VALPO that they can pick and choose issue by issue. It's a normal negotiation construct. It's the world I come from. No one ever comes to us and tells you only your side or your side will prevail. It's a mixture of the two. That's what the mediators do. It's their role. Not and, you know, to to change that construct, that's what this sentence does. It allows the mediator to pick Pick from the two best and last offers elements that make a good comparable. That is what the ridiculous That's what Yeah. I don't know
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: how we all spun off into it. We spun off because they asked us to. We don't have to do
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: everything they tell us to.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So that's why I asked
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: y'all yesterday. With that request. We handled it. Understood. Okay? And it's not conflict with that's why we would have to figure out if we'd have to have it for testimony on this. And let's hold that then for that purpose, for that discussion and go through what we have above us right now. That's the signature. The Long Beach Bill. Nine thirty one. I'm dissuading this bill.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: At St. James, the Office of Legislative Council, you have draft 5.1 of your instances of amendment to each nine thirty one is passed by the house. No change to the first instance of amendment, which is striking out the class size minimum clock starting language altogether. So you're just replacing it with the lead in.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And just so people remember, that's gonna now be end to the things, the nine fifty five. Yes.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Definitely do not remember to do that. But now I will make a note to Thank do you very much.
[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: And that is that the clock is gonna start ticking their class sizes once
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: the measure goes to a pattern.
[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: There we That's what we're gonna see.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And then the second instance of amendments by Priority C, I've made a mistake. It should be four new sections. It'd be sections sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen. So, no change to section 16, which is the Intercollegiate Sexual Harm Prevention Council language. And then if you jump to section 17. Just on 52. And it is just the section heading if highlighted in yellow, so that we, so that I didn't get that. This is the amendment to section five seventy, which contains the hazing, harassment, and bullying prevention advisory council language. And so, this amendment is only to subsection D on of this statute. And it essentially redoes the advisory council. So, you can see all of the current memberships struck. And you have, starting on page seven, line 19, going on to page eight, the membership of the advisory council. Do you want to go over each one of those folks?
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: No. Okay.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And then if you, so I'll let the membership speak for themselves. I'm happy to walk through it if you want. On page nine, line six, subdivision two, the duties of the advisory council. They're required to meet at least four, but not more than 12 times a year. They're required to review and coordinate school and statewide activities relating to the prevention of and response to harassment, hazing, and bullying. Required to review the model harassment, hazing, and bullying prevention policies developed by the secretary every two years beginning in 2026, and recommend updates to the policy if necessary. Generate and distribute school professionals resources on heathing, harassment, and bullying prevention response. Manually solicit input from students, parents, or schools on heathing, harassment, and bullying. Give you guys a report every year. And then you all would be required to hold joint legislative hearings with your colleagues in the house to review the report. And the council's required to submit the report to the state board at the same time. Members of the council are entitled to per diem under current law for an outbound call meetings a year from funds appropriated to the agency of education. And then no changes to subsection what is now asked, which is the definitions for the subchapter, but it has been re designated because we've added a new subsection above it. Then section 18 is new, adding an appropriation from the general fund to ALI in fiscal year twenty seven for those per diem and reimbursement expenses. And then the effective date remains the same as passed by the House, but we just keep pushing it down in numbers so it appears there is section 19 now. What is it? This is miscellaneous.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: This is miscellaneous.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And we were gonna look at the contract, performing contract language.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, that somehow fell out.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I think you had John in here and there may just, that may just not have been communicated to me as the drafter. So you'd like to see that language in here? Yeah.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Yeah.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: As it was given to you or did you make any? No change. Okay. Anything else you thought you would see in this draft that you didn't? Anything I missed?
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: No. What we do is we have to figure out this one remaining issue.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And I wasn't I I literally did take a walk and stretch my legs, so I didn't hear. Yeah. What is the remaining issue?
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Whether to add something that goes to how negotiations are conducted for healthcare. And we are not doing the language that we discussed yesterday
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: to
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: make that decision. So that's how but there is a closer than seven weeks to add a sentence, which I did not. Just to look at it. Okay.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I think this language has been I'm guessing this is language that's been floating around for a while.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well, it's a single sentence, so it's not the whole bill that he's in the field.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And I think you heard from my colleague Sophie Zadadni on this last year, right?
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I don't think so.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I think she had a PowerPoint on, the bargaining for healthcare and the lab best offer. Is that what we're talking about? Yeah. Okay.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So perhaps we should, if we're going to do this, we should have her in again. That'd be well, and we'll talk about that afterwards, then we'll need to figure out who possibly would need to have AIDS testify.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Could we like keep that separate from the rest of the bill?
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Have to Very now. But we'll add this question, are we otherwise set with this bill?
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So we read it at the performance section.
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yes, Joe. Sorry. I forgot
[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (AOE)]: to say it for the record. For the record, Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education. I wanted to signal that the Agency of Education along with BSA, BPA, and PSVA continue to have some concerns about the expanded scope of work and duties for the HHB Advisory Council. I did have a moment to sidebar in the hallway with Gail from the Domestic Violence and Sexual Violence Prevention, and I'm hoping that maybe she and I have an opportunity to meet and maybe provide some amended language. Specifically, our two areas of concern, which I'm hoping can be resolved, is the duties under B and D. So, B has the advisory council, that council, if I can ask you to read the exact words. Trying to do too many things at once. The advisory council shall review and coordinate state coordinate school and statewide activities relating to the prevention of and response to harassment, hazing, bullying. Okay. So, it would be very unusual to ask an advisory council to be coordinating activities that are the responsibility of the agency of education under statute. So, I think we have a conflation of roles and responsibilities here. Title 16 has very specific things that the agency's education is directed to do. This is actually having an advisory council doing those things. And then D, generate and distribute school professionals resources on easing harassment and bullying prevention and response. So, what I would recommend, since the agency of education is you received testimony from Courtney O'Brien yesterday, we are already undertaking this as part of our responsibility under Title 16, is that instead you might amend it to the Advisory Council Review Materials that are produced by the Agency of Education as directed under blah blah blah. So, what I'm suggesting here is that the advisory council in B and D is not acting as an advisory council. We don't normally have advisory councils implementing. So, that was one item. I'm hoping that we can have some consensus on that. I've been in conversation with the other fees. I did check with Colin, and we said BTMA has no position on this, but that would be our recommendation. And then the other thing that we wanted to point out is your expanded membership would result in a seven to five ratio with the majority of members of the advisory council not being education practitioners on what is a school HHV prevention advisory body. So, we wanted to signal that that feels like a misalignment. We don't object to this additional membership, but the HHB Council actually recently did a survey of what they would like to see in terms of more representation, And they were quite specific that they would like to see more educators on the council. So, we would recommend actually the addition of an additional educator, potentially someone whose role is specifically social worker
[Nolan Langweil, Joint Fiscal Office]: So we're fine. We
[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (AOE)]: are yeah. So I was I can't see if Gail's out in Can the
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: you come with that, Chewas,
[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (AOE)]: with I
[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: would love to.
[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (AOE)]: Yeah. I actually think that we can come up with some compromised language, but I just wanted to signal I don't actually think that this is
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay.
[John Gray, Office of Legislative Counsel]: That's fine.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: That's
[Jill Briggs Campbell, Deputy Secretary of Education (AOE)]: Okay, great. So, yeah, come back. I thought it is if we do, we'll get back
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: to you.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We'll back tomorrow as well. Great.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Good. I'm forgetting the name of it, but there is an official, like, coalition of equity practitioners among our school districts. And I feel like that would be a good place to get that member. I can look up the name of it. And I do just wanna say the Vermont Student Anti Racism Network, one of the young women who started it, Addison, who's at Middlebury, just received the Truman Scholarship for Vermont. So just want to note that it's a very important public service award for us.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It's from my district. So, okay, so we'll, so you're on tomorrow? Yeah.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: We'll include this and we'll be very efficient tomorrow.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yep. And we're getting there.
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yes. So we were told yesterday that it wouldn't be until July that you modeled policy with the allergists. Is that accurate?
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah, we always build our model policies working with advisory councils and the field, yes. And we always try to do them with policy, procedure, templates, tools, all at the same time. This policy, again, is the high level, this is what the board shall do, procedure is what the superintendents and the districts do, and then the guidance tools and templates is how do you actually get it done. And we're also putting in significant realignment of resources to do really investing in training in the field, so that we can actually start to move the needle on this.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Great. Okay. So we'll work to get the agency in tomorrow, and I'm thinking that on Friday, we'll have the Words Association, the NEA, whoever else wants to, and Sophie together on this issue, then this language I think it gave for the school board's association for the civil board's association. And but we're not gonna do that tomorrow because we got we got on that. So, we'll find out. I'm Friday with us. Yeah. Special. Otherwise, hopefully, we can check by tomorrow and actually perhaps vote out. They have to pay us a bill and we can be within a day of voting out the miscellaneous bill. They'll take a look and see. Well, every block checked except for the one that they bought me. Okay. So people are on to people are afraid. So we have it draft nine fifty five and one point one. And let me just set this up a little bit. I I did it quickly yesterday. But we've been working on this issue for a year, and we had masks that we'd been working on. So what I did is over the weekend is trying to use nine fifty five as a framework as a table from the house. Nine fifty five has CSAs, seven CSAs, then it has sort of preferred nuclear zones within those six zones took or facilitated a health bound for mergers and inspections. I took the map we had been working on with what we had sort of thought of as potential SUs. We're not doing SUs anymore per se, but I took our map and used that as a formative basis and left Chittenden County with the house in in Addison, all those other districts, the gray area, the old gray area, the way that the house had, left it. And but with our, Susan made those the preferred murkier areas and then redrew the seesaw boundaries slightly to fit around that concept. So that's what the map does. Beth, I did not ask Beth to spend time changing the towns listed in the draft of the appeals of the house which we do that for that so that could be a task that just takes more time to change at this time. So you have these materials so it's built around this and Bendo tried very hard to work with the house counselors and I think the cedars consular is not a ton of change in Cedar.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Does anyone wait. Is this a different thing?
[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: These two different things? No.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: One is the one is the the one with four blocks on it, of course, is the one those are the preferred areas, preferred virtual areas, one is right there. The the back you're that on top now is the seesaw boundaries. The C cell batteries fit over the preferred.
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Okay.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. So we have a new version because we've completed I don't remember when we completed our walk through with that. We came up from the house a couple days ago.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I have last week.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Did we finish it last week?
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: 09:55.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yes. Okay. So that's right. Finished it on Thursday. So a new proposed version to start the discussion started here with the committee, making what we've been working on all year and trying to put the two things together in a way that we hope to make some sense to you.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So the the interest I have where when this comes up for changes is understanding how this relates to the CP districts and ensuring that the CTE directors are required to be and permitted to be at the table from the beginning.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Within the CCEs.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Whichever conversation. Probably the CSIS. I probably the CSIS. Yes.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Need to figure out how that Okay. So with that
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Beth St. Dan's office with legislative council. So I I prepared two documents for you today, myself and John. The first is it sounds like not what we're going to be using, and that is your actual amendment to h nine fifty five. H nine fifty five is passed by the House with 144 pages, and the changes in this first draft were minimal enough that I recommend going with instances. That can be hard to put in context. So I I don't know what else to call this, a dummy document, a working document, whatever we wanna call it, which is h nine fifty five as passed by the house with your instances kind of inserted in as if it was a strike all, but it has not been formatted as an amendment. So, there's no lead in language that says you have possession of the bill and you're making this proposal to the house. It just says that it's H-nine 55. And so I just wanna be clear to this committee and anyone watching that the 144 page document I developed is more of a tool or a tool and is not formatted to be your amendment.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We do have that for work. Also part of all of this in this version. So we talked about doing this and I can call it a dummy document is fine. And we will but the thinking is that in the end, we'll do it with instances of the men who usually also out. But for today, let's use this. Okay.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So changes between and when we say this, we're talking about the under 44 gauge document that says draft 1.1 on it. Changes between the house passed version are highlighted in yellow. And I am going to, off to the side, use the instances to kind of call out I mean, obviously we can use the highlighting to call it out, but I'd like to call out the actual instances. So, the first instance of amendment is to section one, and it's the language change you see on pages on lines six and seven. So, ensure each student is provided substantially equal opportunities for an excellent education, the house pass version opportunities that will prepare the student to thrive, and you're changing that to equal opportunities for an excellent education that will prepare the student to thrive.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So just a quick explanation. It's said in the past, it simply just talked about equal opportunity. That can be at any level and it doesn't imply. I wanted us to be talking about excellence. Every, you know, people have made the comment that what the work we're doing doesn't, I don't agree with it, but that doesn't really go to education per se. And I wanted to make sure that it made clear that we're seeking an excellent education.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And also as opposed to an adequate education usually comes up as
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Talking about constitutional language, know, we're just talking about an and 10. An hour and ten is excellent. I assume that's.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So the next change, you have to scroll all the way. Let's scroll. You have to flip your page. I have to scroll. Piece of membership.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: While we're doing that, let me just say, just to reiterate, we've talked about this, but we are not touching pervy sections, so full pervy sections of the bill, which are the per view of the financing committee. We have the first 29 and then we have some at the end.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Here's a great example of how awful I am highlighting the language that I've changed. Page 11, the second instance of amendment. It's actually on page 11, lines eight through 10. So the house passed version, subdivision four, were in their bylaws, what's required to be in the bylaws. And so Subdivision 4 is passed by the house reads the financial terms and conditions of membership of the CESA, including any applicable membership fee. And your second instance of amendment will be adding the rest of that subdivision. So both of which shall be allocated to the amount of services actually provided to each member's supervisory agent.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Probably just making clear the intent.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: What but I'm not clear what it is. Yeah. I've so this is the this is the hard part for me. Woe is me. My tiny little violent. Of trying to do the instances and create this document. So it should read both of which shall be allocated according to the amount of services actually provided to each member supervisory union. So your membership, so this is trying to get at that membership fees and the fees for services will be allocated according to the amount of services actually provided to each member as you. The membership fees and the fees for services. The third instance of amendment is adding a brand new section to chapter 10 entitled Victory 15, which is your seesaw chapter. So if you go to page 19, line three, it's all brand new language from the to what the house had. This language is is essentially the language that you had in the language that you have been working on all session related to supervised reunion boundary adjustment requests. I have not spent a terrible amount of time thinking through whether this works. I think it's a little clunky, but I have changed that language that you all have been working on to make it applicable to speak on membership. So, the tricky thing about the state assigning supervisory unions to a SEASA is that you are doing that through law, and only you can change the law. So you can't so school districts or supervisor unions could not get together and decide, you know, I should really be a member of that seesaw and just make it happen because seesaw membership is in statute and the field cannot change statute. It's the exact same concept of charter change proposals.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So Michelle talked about being removed, doing the wrong thing of the move, we just wanna have a process for that to happen. It's it is clunky by all of my definition because it's a because it has to happen to provide the same process, but we wanna at least set up the process just like you have other nexus. Yeah. Senator Hashim. So under
[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: under the house version, there is no circumstance in which an s view can go to another citizen?
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: There's no circumstance where they could do that on their own without an act of the general assembly, just by virtue of the fact that their membership is in law. Right.
[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And this clarifies how, well, okay. So so that's how it would be regardless of whether we put this in here, but this section six zero eight creates a guidelines as to how we would go about the process of moving them to another season?
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: It goes about the process by it's the process by which a supervisor union could request for you. So this is all based on, just like when we walked through it for supervisory unions, this is all based on the charter change provisions in title 24. And so it requires certain like public hearings and votes, etcetera, before even a charter change even makes it to the legislature. And then the legislature takes it up as they would any other bill. It's a policy choice of whether or not you wanna have that process or whether you wanna just allow folks to email you like they do now and say, we'd like this changed. Right? It is completely a policy choice on whether you build a process that has to be followed or you organically let folks approach you like you do for every other word in the green books, right? There's not a process to change every other word in the green books, You get requests from the administration, from the judiciary, from advocacy groups, from your constituents to change the law. That could also work for changing seesaw membership, or you can build a process, hoops that folks have to jump through before their request can even be taken up by you. And that's what this does. This says before the legislature is even going to consider changing membership, you have to go through this process. If you didn't build in this process, like the house didn't build in this process and someone were to ask me, well, would seesaw membership change? It would take an act of the general assembly. It would have to become law, so whether that's the governor signs it or the governor, you overwrite a veto or the governor allows it to become law without his signature or her signature or their signature. But how the idea to change that membership comes to you could come to you in any way, shape or form. This is saying the only way we're gonna take action could be followed this process.
[John Gray, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Got it.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Thank you. My
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: sense is, for what's proposed, it's, this would legitimize the process by the time something gets into the legislature would have legitimized.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Like I said, it's a little clunky because the process that we built for supervisory unions was on the school district level, and school districts have an electorate that is specific to them. And now membership is at the supervisory union level, and so it's a little clunky. So, if you decide that this is an avenue you wanna pursue, we may wanna refine it a little bit, or maybe you're happy with it, but I don't know. Let's walk through it. So, on page 19, line three, the board of a member supervisory union may propose to the general assembly to adjust the membership of the seesaw it belongs to in accordance with the following procedure. A proposal to adjust Keystone membership may be made by a member SCU board or, and this is where I kind of had to wing it, by a petition of 5% of the aggregate voters of the supervisory union's member school districts. So for a charter change, it's 5% of the voters of the municipality. And so for the supervisory union boundary adjustment, I just made it 5% of the school district voters. The supervisory union doesn't have an electorate. Each of its member school districts has an electorate. So, I think this is a policy choice here of whether you want it to be by, you want to trigger this process by a petition of the voters, and if so, what is that threshold percentage, and what is the threshold percentage above? I've tried to make it analogous to what we were working with and say it's the aggregate voters of the SU member school districts. So, without any further language, that could be, you know, one school district. Like those votes could come from one school district. It doesn't say anything in here about having to come from 5% of, you could say 5% of each of the member school districts to trigger all policy. An official copy of the CSOM membership adjustment proposal shall be filed as a public record with the clerk of, and the parent the, each of the applicable supervisory unions member school districts at least ten days before the first public hearing regarding the membership agenda proposal. School district clerk shall certify the date on which the clerk received the official copy and the date copies will be made available to the members of public upon request. The member SU board will hold at least two public hearings prior to the vote on the membership adjustment proposal. The first public hearing shall be held in accordance with subdivision 82 of this section at least thirty days before the vote. And if the membership adjustment proposal is made by a member SU board, the board may revise the proposal as a result of suggestions and recommendations at a public hearing, but in no event shall such revisions be made less than twenty days before the date of the meeting to vote on the membership adjustment proposal. If revisions are made, the Supervisory Union Board has to post notice of those revisions in the same place as the warning for the meeting, not less than twenty days before the date of the meeting, and is required to attach such revisions to the official copy of the request kept on file for public inspection and the office of the clerk of each of the supervisory unions member school districts. If the membership and the membership spelled wrong there, if the membership adjustment proposal is made by petition, the second public hearing shall be held not later than ten days after the first public hearing. The SU board shall not have the authority to revise the membership adjustment proposal made by a petition. After the warning and hearing requirements of this section are satisfied, the membership adjustment proposal shall be submitted to the voters of each of the applicable supervised reunions member school districts at the next annual meeting, primary election or general election in the form in which it was filed, except that the SU board may make technical corrections. From page 21, notice of each public hearing and of the annual and professional meeting shall be given in accordance with current law. Each notice shall specify the CSOT membership to be adjusted, setting out the new proposed membership in the amended form with deleted matters struck through and new matter underlined. And if the SU board determines that the membership adjustment proposal is too long or unwieldy to set out in an amended form, the notice shall include a concise summary of the membership adjustment proposal and shall speak that an official copy is available for inspection in the office of the clerk of each of the member school districts.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: But maybe walk through this in other places in the because I wish that they have goods.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I mean, is brief. This is your call. I think it's a really a different Okay. I think it is materially different because of the different
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. On. Okay.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Levels Okay. Of membership here. Voting on a membership adjustment proposal shall be Australian by Australian ballot. I've added that ballots shall be commingled. And I think maybe if you wanna think about adding a provision that the vote needs to take place on the same day in each of the different school districts, similar to voting for formation of a union school district?
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It seems most obviously, if you don't say the conference would be to be banned. So, yeah, let's add that.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And then the ballots shall be commingled is technically a policy choice. I put that in there based on how union school districts are handled. Okay. And then the ballot has to show the membership adjustment. I'll try and keep going. It's okay. So if we go So then the vote happens, page 22, subsection b, the perk of each of the applicable supervisory unions member school districts shall announce and post the results of the vote immediately after the vote is counted. And the clerk of each of the applicable supervisory unions districts within ten days shall certify the results to the Secretary of State. And then this is about, like, the information that needs to go to the secretary of state's office. So whether it was a board proposal or an electorate proposal, copy of the certified copy a copy of the official certified copy of the membership adjustment proposal filed with each of the clerks, copies of the warnings and notices, minutes of the meetings, copies of warnings and notices, a copy of the ballot and the results, and the results of the advisory supervisory union board votes that we're about to get to. If the voters do not approve the membership adjustment proposal, no further action shall be taken unless and until a new membership adjustment proposal is initiated pursuant to the section. So, seesaw membership is at the SU level. The SU has no inherent electorate. So if you want voters to be voting on whether or not a supervisory union can request for you all to reassign them to a seesaw, The electorate is the electorate of the school districts that make up the Supervisory Union. And so, if you're commingling ballots, you have no way of knowing which school district voted for what, so it's just a majority. So, if the aggregate of the votes is no, then the process stops, and technically, you should not be adjusting those membership boundaries if someone were to email you on the side, right? Like, if technically. If the voters do vote and say, yes, we do want this membership adjustment, Then the boards of the supervisory unions affected by the membership adjustment have to hold an advisory vote to approve the membership adjustment proposal within forty five days after the results of the school district votes. And so under the supervisory union boundary adjustment construct, this was really only gonna be two supervisory unions that were affected. The way I read this language now, it would be every affected supervised union. So, it would probably be all of the supervisory unions on the old seesaw and all of the supervisory unions on the new seesaw. Their boards would have to hold an advisory vote of whether they think this membership by change is a good idea.
[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: This might be a comment, maybe a question for you, Chair, but seems like a lot seems excessive. You spans very can you just describe a bit more on what this is meant to do? Excuse me. This section of the Yeah.
[John Gray, Office of Legislative Counsel]: This this was taken in, but
[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: it was just seems like it was
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Only it takes information to the legislature as to whether, like, the new seesaw, the one they're trying to move to wants something. So we have the voters saying they'd like to go over there, and then another piece of information would be do they want them? And rather than have that be a major vote of everybody in that CSA, it would just be the boards saying, yeah, we'll give them an advisory basis if we want them, or actually we don't want them. And the theory is the legislature would wanna know that.
[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So the first vote is the first CISA and an SU saying we wanna leave No. It's the first
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: it's the people within the SU that want to leave. Okay. Wants to move. So the SU votes first,
[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: and then their CISA votes second, and then the next CISA votes third.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. So
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: it's not the CISA, and again, this is all policy. Like, there's anything, It's the s the way that this has been drafted based on what I have to work with right now is it's the FU's boards making these votes. The CTAB boards themselves are not actually involved in this process at So,
[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: the CISA or the SU that wants to leave is not VOPE, it's just the SU, and then the prospective CISA votes as to whether or not they're gonna exempt from leave.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Right, but because, so, if you have CISA, the A through B, seesaw one is made up of supervisory unions A through B, and then seesaw two is made up of supervisory unions, whatever, right? There's five and five, 10 supervisor agents. The way Sorry.
[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: No, go ahead. So, it's the SUs then. Yeah. This perspective sees us that vote. That's why we're not to allow US A membership change. Yeah.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: But again, if you want to continue with this kind of charter change process, you can require anything you want in here. It could be the boards of the seesaws take an advisory vote, not the supervisory union boards. And you get room to play here, and you don't have to have an advisory vote at all. I don't believe there's an advisory vote. Actually, don't know. I don't want to speak to the Charter to be processed.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, I don't have to. Yeah, I'm just trying
[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: to fully understand.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. It was really just trying to give the, in whatever form, the legislative information that would make a decision. So anyway.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So if the voters have voted yes, we want this membership change, And after confirming that the clerks have certified all of the list of things that they're supposed to do to the Secretary of State's office, then the Secretary of State files the certificate and delivers copies of it to the Agency of Education, the State Board of Education, the Clerk of the House, Secretary of the Senate, and the chairs of the committees concerned with CSOM membership of both houses, the general assembly. And that is taken from the charter chain process. So I don't think you need to have all of those folks involved here, right? Like this is really whatever process you want it to be. So,
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: where are we in which books could we potentially eliminate? Whoever you want. Literally,
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: whoever you want.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Which page?
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Oh, page 24, line nine. Obviously, the Agency of Education and State Board of Education are not involved in the charter change process. I added them, but the clerk, the secretary, and the chairs of the committees are that's language out of the charter change process.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: This is just who gets the Yep.
[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Okay. Then
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: it simply ends by saying the membership adjustment proposal should become effective upon affirmative enactment of proposal, either as proposed or as amended by the General Assembly, which is language directly from the Charter Change Customs Group.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Senator Hinsdale, offensive.
[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I I'm offensive. I mean, there there's a part of me that wants to say if you've got SU affirmatively voting to be the CSIP, and then you've got the second group of SUs, or the CSIP board, whatever it ends up being, voting to accept the new the prospective SU into the new CISA. It seems unnecessary to have the General Assembly saying yes or no to something that's gone through two separate votes, two different regions. But I don't know, it seems maybe a little top epic, but
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: The problem is the prosthetic about this place. They have to think about I can't trust that place.
[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I mean, what's to prohibit us from saying if there is a vote between one SU and the other SUs that doesn't need to be legislated?
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I can give this some further thought, but I think instead of thinking about the substance of the statute, just thinking about it as a statute is most helpful. There's nowhere else that you can just say, if you guys get together out in the field and you agree to this legal change, the change has happened.
[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Right, because it's sometimes in the statute. Exactly. Which
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: is why the process to get to you can be whatever you want it to be. A specific process, no process, there's no process to change the vast majority of the laws in the green books, but I mean, I suppose you could come up with a process that allows for that membership to change, but then your statutes are always gonna be out of date, and what grades of that we might even want.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I got it.
[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Thank you.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yep. So what should be the question?
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I'm just thinking about, you know, my musical cares analogy. It's already agreed upon. I think a lot of people have been talking about the bargaining voluntarily, and they go through this process, and then something is locked up. That's that's my concern. Especially if the bomb is bombing going very broad. I mean, that that should be, in my estimation, the way they document the bombings originally, we have to have bombing. They can get adjusted after.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So I think you're thinking about districts and making sure we don't have work with districts. Right? That's that's something we have to pay attention to, but that's not quite what's going on here. Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just thinking that. Yes. Okay. That's okay. We don't have to pay attention to equipment instruments. Do
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: you wanna keep talking about this or move on?
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: No, so the question for the committee is, we could do nothing. We can simply say that the answer that wants to succeed votes, that's it. Then we get that information, we can go forward, or the added layer appears that the seats are noted about whether they want to go or the thing or I think it's out of. So that's the Ah. Come out. Yeah. I don't have strong feelings. I just ask Beth to give us the exact process that we in hospital. Yes. Here's what we're do. So there is some mechanism for. And should they be congenital? That you can't have somebody that's,
[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: you know, dead center or one of these decide they want to
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: go for a different C center? It doesn't matter. Well,
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: what is the question we decide? We look at that and go, that's not a good idea. Can play over there. I'll sit you with the bill, I guess.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I need to picture this.
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yeah.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So I'm looking at both the maps. I think you only need one map. Oh, okay.
[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So it's
[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: We're just
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: talking CSATs right now. That's fine. It's not asking us to do both at the same time. What we just so, H nine fifty five, as amended by the house, and as your amendment would have it, does two things.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: doesn't make it. But for the purposes of this conversation, it does two things. Creates seesaws in law. It assigns every supervisory union in the state to a keep up. And so, they have to do the work to stand those up. And it asks every school district in the state to come to the table, to a study committee, to discuss whether or not to form a unified municipal district. This charter change process, membership change process, would be an in perpetuity situation. So ten years from now, when someone wants to change membership, or one year now, when someone wants to change membership, if you were to go ahead with this concept, would have to follow this process for an SU. SU For membership to change and membership is at the SU level, so it would be yes, but just the SU changing suit as you said.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So why don't we just note that we have to the question is, do we want it to be as detailed as this or we want to figure out a way to do it more simply to get to the But let's stick with that.
[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: More streamlined.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So then we're still on page 24.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yes, we're on page 24. We're adding a new section. This is new from the This was not included in the House Bill. This is a new section that you would be adding in your fourth in suites of amendment. And so the section 2A right below it is 2B, and there really don't mean much without their effective dates. So section 2A takes the changes made in September to the powers that we went over in my little chart. I think Senator Weeks asked the question, what's current law and what was added by the House? And that was that current law on line 18 just says Kesha shall have the power to provide, yada yada yada, that best serve the needs of its members, period. And then the House added including professional development, etcetera. And so Section 2A will take effect on 07/01/2027. And the effect of this section is that on 07/01/2027, the language on lines twenty one and one of page twenty four and twenty five, which as in nine fifty five are just examples of some of the services that could be offered, are now added to the list of the services that have to be offered on page 25, lines 11 through 13. And that change would not take effect until 07/01/2027. And then 2B is amending the same section of law. This section would not take effect until 07/01/2029. Oh, and I can see I've already made a mistake there. Need to remove some language there. Pay no attention to lines 18 through 19. If you go to page 26, line two, at a minimum, a seesaw shall instead of offer provide services in the following areas to its members who shall be required to avail themselves of such services. So it goes from nine fifty five saying you have to offer a couple of these, but no one has to use these services. To, in 2007, you have to offer all these services. To 2009, not only do you have to offer all these services, you're members actually have to use them.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Because we're looking at providing to save money here, and this is the vehicle for doing it. And this is gonna be that the seesaw is gonna be paying for saving money or anything saving money is. That should we should be able
[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: To that I'm thinking about some of the testimony we had earlier and thinking about, you know, if you have these different SUs coming together saying, I need a contract for transportation or you also need a contract with this other SUs in each contract. Let's split the cost. That makes sense, but I think there could also arise scenarios where they may come together and say, all three of us need contracts for professional development, but we've got our transportation pretty squared away, it's a cost effective situation, so we don't need to share that contract. So I worry about compelling the participation of these different services if it's not necessarily cost effective or not necessarily Yes. You know, in the interest of just students or the teachers. I don't know how to write that
[John Gray, Office of Legislative Counsel]: paper because it doesn't concern you.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well, I'll put a next item. Put some put a note next to the section. You're gonna you're not gonna be. But just running on to try to make it as soon as feels good. Yeah.
[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I mean, I I do wanna put a little more teeth into the thesis, but
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I just wanna make sure Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah.
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So I'm making an assumption here thinking ahead again, but, you know, all these school districts have got contracts. And at some point, somebody's gonna have to find out which ones have to be ceased. You know, we're gonna save some money by that possibly. Just wanna think I I don't think if I'm making assumptions, it's not addressed. Yeah. That's a whole different dynamic. It's a relevant topic. So
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: there's one more thing that I was thinking about here and not saying it because I think it's well taken, it's a better machine. What I trying to do was get to the point that these services are provided at this level and the superintendent becomes really the educational leader and develops curriculum that otherwise doesn't have to deal with all of this crap that we can move on. That's kind of what I was thinking about. Yes.
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So I hear what you say, but both lists, line five is curriculum development, coordination and development, which leads the superintendent doing what?
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I think this is I'm sorry. You have a fair point. Fair question. The the end at the end of my mind, anyway, is the superintendent would still be responsible for making them, so there's a little bit of a conflicting thinking there.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Well, the responsible for implementation.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Implementation. Maybe the yeah.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah, fair
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: enough, actually. Maybe that's what it but anyway.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I'd like to consider having the list represent Facilities Master Planning somehow, and I don't really see it.
[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Seek some of entities, focus on facilities.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Well, they they We have PCB testing we wanna do and, like, you know, we want facilities master planning to happen. That's expensive. It's better done in regional coordination. There's nothing I remember from the chart that said the CISAs can't do Correct. Facilities master planning.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I can note it right there.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: That's when you do hire experts like architects, engineers, building health scientists or something, you know?
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Not just master planning, but regional master. That's the that's the real nuance here. That's really the target we're going to lead.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: It could be. I mean, you you still might want them to help streamline costs of of local facilities decisions. It could be I I I'm, like, I'm not gonna at some antics, like, past a certain hour and whether or not that's what we are doing. Portion. Portion. So I'm open to either construct, but I I just wanna see facilities master planning stuff.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. And I think center reaches onto something too here Mhmm. At the same time with thinking regionally about that. Regional master planning, actually, like
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: regional facility planning, regional,
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: something like that, I
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: don't I want facilities
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: to let's be just make our notes.
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yes. Mike, you got a clarification for that. I know you said it, but I missed it. In 06/2004, the due date, and I tried to find it, I couldn't find the due date for that section, goes into effect.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Section 2A on page 24, line 16, would be effective July '27, and section 2B on page 25, line 14, be effective July '29.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Shifting from awkward to combined.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And then we are going to jump all the way to section 13, which is on page 34. This is the Union School District Creation Consultation and Facilitation section. This is the section that talks about the study committees and what they need to do. And so, this fifth instance of amendment occurs on page 35, line seven. This is some of the criteria that the facilitators are required to use when they're grouping school districts. The House passed version had the total ADM of the school districts forming a study committee at 2,000, and your fifth instance of amendment changes it to 1,000.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So circle that. That's arbitrary thought. Just wanted to raise that issue and thinking about size of dystrophin. I don't know what the right number is, but I also think rural areas that point to not not be we're not forcing anything. So one hand, the other hand. So the quick the question's what's the right number of students? Perfect. Wonderful study committee. And the house has 2,000. I just threw in 1,000 too.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I am losing track of where they form these. This is a visa study committee. Yeah. This on that. Yeah. There's nothing voluntary about this. Okay. This, yeah, is a guide for the facilitators Okay. To use when they are grouping school districts together to form study committees. But it's just a guide. And this is a guide to the number of 1,000 or 2,000.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well, well, not necessarily. Go ahead.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Maybe. Yes.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Within each of those zones on that, there'll be multiple study committees, presumably, depending on how many students are in each of those zones. So the question is, like pick one of those zones and that's group or whatever. Do we want to have the study committees focused on 1,000 students or 2,000 students or how many? There therefore be either two, three, four study committees in each of those zones, depending on the number of students we look at.
[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Yes. So, these are the union school districts?
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: No, these are school districts. These are and I did not I actually just saw these maps for the first time today. So, I'm making assumptions based on my work with the house that every one of these squares is a municipality in Vermont. And some of those squares are already grouped together to form school districts. And some of them are standalone school districts because they are town school districts, city school districts, and corporate school districts. The colors represent the area, the geographic area within which a facilitator should be taking school districts and putting them on a study committee or study committee. So, each one of these different colors is gonna have a different number of school districts in it. And then within those, so let's say that there's three school districts represented in this blue, this aqua up here. Then the facilitator really doesn't have much to work with there, right? There's three school districts, there's probably gonna be a study committee with all three of those school districts.
[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And they go outside the bounds of the colored area?
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: In the House language, which you have not changed, the facilitator is allowed to make adjustments. And these are just guidelines to start with. Okay. The facilitator is not required to stay within those colored areas, but is required to give a rationale for why they went outside the colored areas if they did. Thank you. The fixed instance of amendment on line nine, the house had that the facilitator needs to group school districts together according to Or that school district needs to be contiguous when they were grouped together? And you have replaced that with school districts that need to have the same operating structure. I just wanna When we put a pin in the 1,000 versus 2,000, the mean school district size in the country is 1,500. So I'm not just saying that arbitrarily split the difference. 1,500 is a pretty average size for a rural community to get some scale. And then, of course, it still says we're practical, which I think would so I'm just gonna
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yep.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Put out that.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: K.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Do you want to keep going? Okay. So the seventh instance of amendment, we're staying in section 13. We're going to go to, we're going stay on page 35. We're going to go to subdivision three on line 16. Subdivision three requires the study committees to follow current law in Chapter 11, Union School District Formation. And then everything under subdivision three, all of the letters A through, I think E, are some slight changes or some augmentation to what's required under Chapter 11. And so this first section, we've struck what the House had in here, and we've replaced it with a study committee formed pursuant to the section to only identify school districts with the same operating structure as necessary and shall identify a school district with an operating structure that differs from the majority of study committee members as advisable as those terms are used in current law. So, necessary means that the union school district can only form if those school districts all agree that they want to be part of the new school district. And advisable means it would be really cool if you joined us, but we're gonna form regardless of whether or not you decide to join us. And then on page 36, continuing with that new language, nothing in this act shall be construed to compel the merger of school districts with dissimilar operating structures. And then the rest of line two through six is the theme that the House offered. The eighth instance of amendment, we're gonna go to We're adding a new section, so we're gonna skip all the way to page 44.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Before we get there, just to note this for anybody watching, starting on page 40, the guidance for committee groupings, everything listed is not. That's the whole House Bill of Drugs and all. Just haven't spent the time on page. So now on to page 40
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Page 44. Four, we're adding a new section here to require some interim reports. You're getting a report, the House version, and you kept it, requires a report back to you all in January or February of next year, which updates around statuses of study committees. And then the House version has a final report coming to you in 01/01/2029. And so Section 14A basically adds some interim reports. So in January 28, the lead facilitators are required to submit a written report to you all with an update on the status of each study committee, including membership and the final recommendation of each study committee. Their final reports are due December. So the facilitator should know whether the study committees are recommending formation of a new union school district or not recommending it by January 28. And then on page 45, subsection B, another interim report for the agency in consultation with study committees and the state board to submit a written interim report to you all with preliminary recommendations for SU battery adjustments and CSAW battery adjustments that take into account the final recommendations of the study committee formed pursuant to this act. So the final report asks for those final recommendations for whether there needs to be SU boundary adjustments or seats on membership adjustments. And this is asking for kind of a preliminary report based solely on the recommendations of the study committees. The new union school districts don't form unless the voters agree to it.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So this would be potentially a quicker, easier way to adjust boundaries of the seesaw's In the medium term.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: In the, yes, in this moment in
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: time. Yeah.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: If you envision these thoughts as a long term, then this moment of time is going to pass and you may still have the occasion where folks want to change membership. Okay. But yes. The next instance of amendment, we're going to jump to section 24.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Before you move on actually, it goes back a little bit to different pages, but when the facilitator was working with a about a larger arm, and the facilitator or the people working COVID with Ross sees some eyes.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yes.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. And plus language.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I'm sorry?
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Plus this language perhaps about the seesaw adjustment.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yes. Yeah.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yes. Got it.
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Okay. Just for clarification, it's off of page 45. Looks like AOE, State Board of Education, and the study committees form are all trying to answer the same question. What's the appropriate boundaries for both SUs and CSAs. Correct?
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: It's the agency's report and they're required to consult with the study committee. Yeah.
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Right, very good. Thank you.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Okay, so we are gonna jump to sections 24 and 24A on page 61. These were the sections regarding the prohibition on charging fees beyond tuition. And your ninth instance of amendment strikes both of these sections and just deletes them. It doesn't replace them with any new language other than the deleted litigation.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So I'll just note for people's people who remember these sections, this is this was added on Ways and Means with zero not zero testimony, and we got the letter the one letter from the principal and Kressler to the effect that it was like, we don't look back, there'll never be another French trip.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Another what?
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: French trip or any trip. Oh, trip, right, yeah, maybe not. Because there's no ability to charge fees, so it would never happen. So it was zero testimony, not even remotely paid. So it just it's not necessary in this bill. No testimony.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: The 10 principles of amendment is section 27, which is on page 65.
[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Sorry, I, before we jump, I'd like to go back to 24. So that removes both the tuition and the fee piece, right? So not just the piece.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah.
[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So my and so I thought we were moving to a system in which group independent schools will be charging the same tuition or receiving the same tuition if equivalent to the foundation. And We think with the Yeah. With the Yeah. Same. And so I get the fees aspect. But I think if we're if on if we undo that tuition piece, that's a pretty big
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It's not undoing. If we just revert to what was in f seventy three, which under which is just recall the everybody guessed was saying. But the the fees part the the tuition fee, there was no testing fee for this, and it's actually complicated, that's what I'm saying. And I think it's mixed together, the fees and the tuition, and it's
[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Yeah.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It's not paid.
[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Yeah. Yeah. Because I'm seeing the next piece on line seventeen and eighteen of the as passed by the house, that the tuition fees is that they are prohibited from requiring tuition, dot dot dot, above the amount of tuition paid by ascending school districts pursuant to section eight twenty three, which is the foundation formula.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. Right now, there's no high school weight. And so well, if we want to get some testimony, we can but there hasn't been any testimony in the section. Okay.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I I would.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It it's a. Like. Because I think without this section that that the same remains true that under Act 73, school districts. Is it silence on that issue?
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: The tuition section, both under current law and Act 73, it's just about money changing hands between the school district and the receiving school. Spending district and nothing about what could be required by the students or their families themselves. I I did think our intent was to ensure they are living within the same
[John Gray, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Foundation formula.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I think that
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And not charging a family more money. I think it would be I think we need to That's the whole point.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: But that's yeah. I think it's
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Or school district. Yeah.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I think like I said, talked to public principals, there's issues here in the public schools. Right. It's more it's more complicated than this, but not to stick with Bennington.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And I and I I will say, I even have my this conversation in my district when my husband says we went to race and you had to pay to go or whatever. Any school should be finding a way for students who can't afford that to go for free.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And they do.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: There should be no, like, nothing about you can't we're not going to France anymore because because we can't charge, you are still providing a public education. And if you have that trip available, you should be figuring out how all the kids can go to take French flag.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Right.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So but I don't wanna let that go that, like, I don't want them to be able to charge fees either as a required as a requirement for students to be able to participate in something.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So this is a sea change for the way that these things happen. Yeah. And if we wanna really delve into it Yeah. We can, or we can just leave, except that it was thrown in without any testimony.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: No. Like, if anything, I would I would speed up the foundation from when I would speed up this no no money on top of the foundation formula. So it has to happen at least at the same time that the foundation formula. Okay, look,
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: we got some testimony. Okay.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Chempting suits of amendment, it's a section 27 on line 14, page 65. It strikes this entire section 27 and replaces it with a new section 27, but the only changes between the house version and your version are highlighted in yellow. There were just enough smatterings of them that it was easier to strike the entire section rather than do several instances of amendment. So, this section requires the agency to update the district quality standard rules to establish criteria for inter district budgeting. And we've added a modifier here that that inter district budgeting is for under the foundation formula, and that those rules need to be developed on or before 12/31/2028. The House version had that as March 7, March 31. And then the criteria is required to provide guidelines for inter district budgeting that affords Vermont's children opportunities and excellent education that are substantially equal in quality. Your eleventh instance of amendment is to section 29A, which is on page 73.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Did you do the page 71? They have great size.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: That's John.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Oh, okay.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: It's coming up. Yeah, okay. I'm going in order of the instances of amendments. So John will jump back in. This is my last one. Section 29A in the house passed version was oops. Sorry. Yeah. 29 a in the house passed version was the definitions, the Amendment 16 VSA Section 11, which added several definitions to your master definition list, 2016, and this amendment just deletes that section.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: That's under the current legislation for Yeah. This was I see this '29. What what did I pay?
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I'm sorry? What's the question?
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, I was on the wrong page. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And then I think I'm gonna turn it over to John now.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So just so people know this is work underway right now with the state board. We assigned this task with the state board last year and this just sort of short circuits the work at the state board and. Yeah. That would exist. Okay.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Alright. I don't want the trash. I'll get it.
[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I'll go over there.
[John Gray, Office of Legislative Counsel]: John Gray. I should be pretty quick. Just a few seconds here. You are in the I do wanna try to track you guys' preference with documents. So I have the sense that you are working off of a large Copilot doc. Can keep doing that. The easiest way for me to jump around is to look at the instances of amendment, call out a section, and then I can jump to the big doc and tell you what page that's on, if that works. I'm happy to screen share if you would like, but I know that Beth was not, so I don't know what your preference is.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: You don't have too many, so. Okay.
[John Gray, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Starting with the twelfth instance amendment, that's section 29, which is on page 71 of the compiled stock, I believe. Yes. Just to frame what's happening here, this is an amendment to the small schools, smart schools for France. If you recall, the disease world were set out in Act 73, and they are contingently effective like the remainder of the foundation formula. This is not a proposal that touches the dollars that blow. It is a technical piece related to what's the numerical threshold that kicks a school into being a small school. That's all that this is about. You will know that a small school definition requires two prongs. One is an objective numerical assessment. Under Act 73, it's fewer than 100 pupils in the school, and then there's an additional discretionary check you need to ensure that they're small line sensitive. So two pronged check, but the first of these is basically a numerical check. The chair raised the possibility that this 100 pupils per school may not adequately account for the variation in what schools are covering. They might have different grade coverage. If you just made it based on size of the number of pupils in the school, but that school only covered two grades, maybe that means something quite different in school that offers different grades. So this is a proposal to change that numerical check to be about grade size rather than about total school population.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: But I think that I'm thinking about in it, In particular, has maybe 130 kids or something across kindergarten through 12 and yet they wouldn't qualify for this because they have more than 100 students. It really doesn't make any sense. And you have, by contrast, an elementary school that's k through three, they've got 25 kids class, and they're a small school. So I really just figured it made sense to make this by average class size so that it actually has some merit on the the challenges that the school is facing because of Good.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Can I better understand why we're leaving pre K out? Because they also help increase their numbers at the school with incorporating pre K.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: The only reason I left them out is because pre K is a little so unsettled, and sometimes it's like, and also we're get him out of county.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: But I like to give them the opportunity to count. I mean, that's, again, Kanan is, I think even my MMUSD school district, they're doing the pre K in house, and I I don't know what that I like, I just don't wanna
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I did it only for simplicity. That's what would answer.
[John Gray, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So maybe I can, it's like what the potential practical impact of excluding the data. So the exclusion is exclusive to this section. That's the first thing to note. Right? It's about the small schools as far as small schools grants. There's two, at least to me, obvious changes that this would result in. One is by excluding pre k from the enrollment count for the purposes of determining what is a small school, you potentially make more schools, small schools, eligible for this grant. So you potentially, I don't know, but you potentially expand the number of schools that have been in this bucket. On the other hand, the size of the grant that you receive is determined based on the small schools' two year average enrollment, which would now exclude pre K's count. So you might expand the set of schools you would expect to qualify for the small schools grant, but potentially shrink the size of the grant, if that makes sense. That, to me, is the practical consequence of doing this, and I'm happy to walk through I mean, I'm
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: sure it makes sense. I just need to, like Yeah. Have it written off the board.
[John Gray, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yep. For sure.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: But, yes, I
[John Gray, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And maybe it will become clear if I walk through what's on page 70 So, I'm just gonna be talking definitions. I think it's gonna be pretty intuitive. The average grade size, that is the quotient that results from dividing a school's two year average enrollment. So, that's the count that's already used. Taking what is your average enrollment for the two most recent years. Then you would take that and you would divide it by the number of grades above pre k that your school offers, and that would tell you, the intuitive concept, your average grade size. Enrollment, as you're hinting at, means the number of students and the new addition here in kindergarten through grade 12, so to the exclusion of pre k, who are enrolled in a school operated by the school districts. And then your small schools would be a public school that the language has an average grade size of fewer than 12 students. But instead of the as past the old version had has fewer than a 100 pupils into your enrollment, you now have has an average grade size of two to 12 students. Again, that's taking how many grades does your school offer, dividing your two year average enrollment, which counts all above three k students, averages across two years. You divide it by the number of grade, then it gets you an average grade size, and this says the numerical prong that is checked to determine whether you're eligible for a small school grant will be that you have an average grade size of fewer than 12. I should say, to complicate what I said earlier, because you were dividing by grades, it's gonna be a wash, right? You've decreased the number of students that count in the enrollment, but you've also lowered the number of evaluations divided because you've removed pre K. I don't know what the numbers will be, who qualifies, and who doesn't without it. That's probably part of the question that you're gonna have, but yes, it's now a determination based on average grade size, and you would expect that the grant itself, which is determined on an enrollment that would now exclude pre K, would be lower because literally the enrollment would be lower. Because you're taking your enrollment, multiplying it by a dollar figure, you decrease the enrollment, and you're getting fewer scores.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Mhmm. Yeah. So I guess, overall, I don't wanna penalize schools, small schools that are doing pre k in house because that probably means they also don't have a lot of other pre k around them and that they're being more efficient by bringing pre k in. I think that our MMUSD district that does Pre K in house pointed out that the excess spending penalty penalizes them for actually having Pre K in house, and I don't wanna do that.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I just didn't know how to quickly how to deal with the fact that pre k is cumulative and everything.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Right. So Ideally, it's not. So if they if they do have pre k on campus, they're probably doing it at forty hours. Just,
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: like I said, just for simplicity, to make apples to apples.
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So, yes, again, just for clarity, small, as far as schools, if the community could remind me, does the State Board of Education still have an active study or analysis out there that's speeding back to us for this answer? Don't they have a
[John Gray, Office of Legislative Counsel]: You have a memo on this, but there are some updates in the bill as well. I think they may be in that sections, but you'll recall that one of the requests in the memo that you had received was that on an ongoing basis while the state board was making those recommendations, they were suggesting that AOE was better positioned to make the annual determination itself based on standards consistent with those pieces. I think that the bill contains measures to cap AOE with making that regular determination, and I think there's a rule making piece as well to put into rules the recommendation
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: that My you rule question says it conflict with the direction we're getting here at this point.
[John Gray, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Sure. That's something I thought about before I came up with the chair is, is there something about the memo, for instance, that is keyed off it being 100 in school rather than a grade size determination? My quick read was, and it's truly just a quick cursory read, was that I don't think that this is in conflict with the memo that you received. You would wanna talk to those folks. But the I have a quote in front of me. The general framework that's set out, I'm just gonna read a line from it. Since small and sparse are already established thresholds in statute, the committee's definition of by necessity should determine whether a school meets one or both statutory thresholds, is small sparse as a function of unavoidable geographic or demographic circumstances. You'll recall the factors they set out related to safe travel times, whether it's difficult to consolidate and the like. I don't know that any of those are necessarily hindered by a shift, but you're correct to think about the fact that you switch the underlying statutory language on which some of this constructed rule. It raises the basic question, well, are you disrupting the process? Are you yep.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: That's the problem.
[John Gray, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Instance of amendment. The thirteenth instance of amendment is section 67. It's a very minor one to explain. That's on page one twenty one of the face document that you're looking at. This is to and I'll wait for a second just because I know you're flip things. This is specific directives for AOE to hold banking on small construction. And this is just proposed pushing back essentially by a year to be required dates or will likely to occur. The house construct had 03/31/2027, so pretty quickly. And this is pushing back roughly a year. And the instance of amendment is 03/01/2028, but I know Jeff will just pile up this huge document to give you guys helpful information. So just know that when you see the depending on other updates we make in the document, you may see this updated to 03/01/2020. In any instance, the proposal to push back by roughly a year, that due date to provide more time for school maintenance, which is tied also, I think, to the school construction division staffing, right? Which there are positions, but you don't have to budget for those positions to fully staff out in the division. So simple update in that thirteenth. So what I meant is just moving back to date or we'll make it.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And we don't think that impacts other dates, like in this whole sequence of date changes, but it seems to cascade.
[John Gray, Office of Legislative Counsel]: It is I I think my easy answer is not really because the question was always gonna be what was practically achievable anyway. That's the last step. Yeah. So it's let's say you would post a deadline of 07/02/2026. No one's gonna make it right. Uh-huh. And I don't know if 03/31/2027 is achievable, but this is fitting within the other parameters, but providing more time to do the work. So I I take it to be, but I can share it a different position, a pragmatic offering that doesn't disrupt other flows. It is true that the sooner you can get the rules, the better, but I would offer that one of the quicker ways to do that is to staff your school construction division.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay.
[John Gray, Office of Legislative Counsel]: The fourteenth instance of amendment. This is section 74. You're not gonna see anything there. I've shown you a page that's on. It's on page one thirty one, which I have to remind you of what this actually is. Section 71 is the legacy debt a section. That was the piece that said school districts eligible for a 100% save for bonds related to cost of renovation facilities, construction that a district has as of the end of last year, 12/31/2025. So that was a provision that created eligibility for cleaning the slate effectively for outstanding school construction that is the end of last year. It did not identify a revenue source. In any event, it would have been subject to annual appropriations. So in the absence of revenue source, that made would not have gone out. And the house contract construct that would be effective this summer without funding, and this proposal just strikes that legacy debt pay provision. Another approach you can take in the absence of revenue is to make it to tensions like everything else with the Foundation Boards Club, but that proposal here is just removing the legacy debt aid section.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It's slated to potentially cost up to $61,000,000 a year out of the hedge fund.
[John Gray, Office of Legislative Counsel]: That's the maximum expected yearly impact.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yearly impact is to pay make the debt service payments.
[Nolan Langweil, Joint Fiscal Office]: And Yes.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: The question is, is that there and then all of the marketplace over a handful the schools that funded and also those schools that haven't funded have deferred maintenance of. So that way they're paying place some level. So and I think it's not something that needs to be dealt with now. We can see how the workers that's not even tied to mergers. Just simply paying off the debt at the start of the line. Struck me as something left out as left out of as being there. So
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I well, while we're just talking about any changes to the school construction piece, I think the language creation of new school governance structures, whatever, that's who gets priority. I don't I don't know that I agree with that PUPBY language. I I would I would say priority should go to regional high schools.
[John Gray, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah. Can certainly be more specific. Think the thing that I was telling you guys yesterday during the joint hearing as well is there's kind of a generic language call out.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Mhmm.
[John Gray, Office of Legislative Counsel]: This consolidation of school governance structures and educational access. That was intended to capture general purposes of the bill, but absolutely be more specific. The more specific you could be, particularly when it comes to the role they gave, the clearer the agency will know what it means do.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah. I don't like the fugniness of that language, but I also, when I talk about the date by which rule making has to be done, I I wanna make sure we're not asking schools to envision certain forms of consolidation without any ability before the rulemaking happened to think about what that might look like. So I thought the piece about legacy debt was to kind of create a bridge that this might that might help with conversations. It's not guaranteeing them that, but it might be saying, they just built a regional high school or they just bonded for that, that's gonna become the that's gonna become the high school that the state is willing to pay for, even if they took on that debt before we were ready with the group. I'm just trying to make sure the sequencing doesn't sort of leave people not able to have real facilities conversations if we're not if we're not giving them, like, a bridge to say we might consider some of this debt as part of the consolidation process, or Which I think
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: they can do on their own.
[John Gray, Office of Legislative Counsel]: We don't know what they're going to do. Certainly, way that senator Ram Hinsdale is characterizing this is the kind of justification that we were hearing on the house side behind why to do the legacy debt aid provisions. The thinking was that you might affect even some of the incentive structure for folks choosing to merge or not, right, that the fact that someone holds significant amount of debt could serve as a disincentive to joining up with them. Of course, they wouldn't know what the arrangement would be, but the thought was clear the slate so that it's not essentially part of the conversation that folks have. Of course, you can complicate the analysis there by saying someone with the debt may have to do it some of these that are tracked to someone without the debt, but that is certainly the kind of arguments that I was hearing on the House side as to why he was
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: we have the intro, we have the reports about how the consolidation discussions are going. We have now the interim one to identify where issues are emerging and whether this is going to be developed potentially.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Mhmm. I I just don't want school construction the school construction conversation to once again become so disconnected from the consolidation conversation that we've missed an opportunity. And I think this could I think there was that I I didn't talk to anybody in the house about this section, but I one could guess from that that they're trying to use school construction as a helpful tool in the conversation and us saying, We're just gonna ignore anything that happened before this rulemaking in 2028 doesn't help us. We have real consolidation conversations, but something more flexible in your point by
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well, I'm not a great point, but there's total flexibility. As they're talking about workers, they can talk about how to deal with things. The question is whether all of them are gonna pay off that debt without any of at the time. Right.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: But, well, I guess you said the question is, is it fair? I think each case will be unique if we're talking about a district that just built a high school.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And I think that's a fair point. Each case will be unique, and this is a point in paying it off. And so I don't know. It just and I think if it emerges as sticking points, then when you think about it, I think depending on how we're we're getting by to actual return before we pay off. I don't know.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Okay. That I'm open to. I just
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I I
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Don't wanna create more uncertainty, you know, when we're trying to give them more carrots to merge. It's like the only carrot for merging.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So we do have a can we have a list of where the dead is that we can look at? Perfect. And in fact, we can post that page. So.
[John Gray, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I only have one more thing, and it's not really something for me to explain. It's just that the BIPP reinstatement updates the effective dates at the end of the bill to reflect all of the new things that you have here and remove the deleted sections, their corresponding effective dates. If you have any questions about the sections I just spoke to, I'm happy just talking about them. In general, I can say that most of the school construction sections that I have were effective this summer. Any pieces that spoke to SD, the supplemental strict spinning, transition pieces with obviously a contingent like the foundation formula effect on 07/01/2013 provided the newly updated section 70 m one. All those conditions are better.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So if it's school construction, it's considered our section to tinker with versus finance and
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: What do want jurisdiction about that? Okay. Sections are against joint jurisdiction. I think the way the House bill is written, as it relates to the foundation formula, if you bond the bonded indebtedness, it's not doesn't count toward your
[John Gray, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Oh, If you're asking in the future, the idea is that there is no cap on supplemental electric spending applied to school construction inspections. I think that's where you might be. You could exceed the cap if it's for payment. Yeah, so it's possible that the cap would actually be small enough that you could pursue a school construction project, it's saying that's not gonna stop you. Other things might stop you, like can't finance it, but the cap will not be the thing that stops you.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: K. Well We did well. We've done a walk through. So we'll pick up tomorrow. Yeah.
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Alright. Just just a process question. So I'm learning communities. People are gonna have to work on this. Yeah. Definitely need
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: a bigger room. Oh, sure. That's actually a fair that's actually a fair. Bear.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I don't know who we're requesting maps from, but I'd like to see the CTE districts overlaid on one of these.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I think we are ready to adjourn, right?
[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: On behalf of
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: the actually, staff, let's recap the meeting for tomorrow. I think we know where we were. Probably not the we have a little bit of both on both absenteeism and misogynytheists.
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: We're trying to focus this too, doc.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Well, we'll see. Because we have the one issue, so we'll potentially
[John Gray, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah, there was the miscellaneous, I think, was
[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: either tomorrow or Friday, depends on how.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Tomorrow, on the miscellaneous, we have the agency coming in, and then we have the issue with the Sorry, sorry.
[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Your answer to your question. For miscellaneous, I had BSBA, BPNEA, and the elected council, and that's for 09:30. I know about the AOB, and I think that's it.
[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We'll Section
[Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel]: of the Yeah. Hospital We'll respond on both. We'll be efficient. So 931 and
[Nolan Langweil, Joint Fiscal Office]: 941. Thank you.