Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Unidentified Committee Member]: A while.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: If somebody can get that door on their way in, that'd be great. Thank you. This is the Senate Education Committee. After a short break, had a new draft of H95 to walk through and really just put the discussion that we had in committee and tried to incorporate it to get us to move the ball along a little bit. I think it will make sense to people given the discussions we've had. So we have counsel with us to walk us through their third section. Off we go.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you, Beth St. James, the Office of Legislative Counsel.

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: John Brady, Legislative Counsel.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So what we're going to walk through today, what's on your website, is draft 2.4 of a strike off permit. Last time, we had two documents to look at. We had instances of amendment and we had what we were calling a working document. And we've I have John and I have in fact, John's initials are not on here, and I don't know why they're not. We've taken the working doc and we've made it an actual strike all amendment. And there is a key at the top in the header of highlighting colors, which I understand is not ideal when it's being printed out. But I do think it's helpful until you get to a terminus to keep track of. Yellow are changes that you've made from the House passed version, but you've already seen them. So it's just to signify that it is a Senate change. And blue is to signify a change from the last draft you looked at. So, I'm going to skip yellow highlighting then and just focus on blue highlighting. And I will just note that I have not made any changes to any of the school district or supervisor union groupings that came over from the House yet. Those still remain the House versions. But I understand that may be something that you talk about at some point. Okay. The first change is on section two, page two. Oh, do you want me to share my screen?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I don't think that's necessarily a hard copy. Section two,

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: starting on page two, is the start of the amendment to Chapter 10, which is the currently BOCES, this bill changed it to Ceesha Chapter. And it's an amendment to Section six zero one, which is the policy section for the entire chapter. So it's basically the policy, the legislature's policy around cooperative education service areas. And you can see on if you start on line 13, it is the intent of the General Assembly that seesaws are utilized by member SUs to do some things. And then one of those that we're adding here, starting on line 16, is ensure every middle and high school student has a genuine opportunity to participate fully and to benefit from career technical education. And I will just note, took that language directly from, I forget the statute, but it is one of our CTE statutes about access to CTE. So, this is language that appears in the CTE statute, so it's a nice synergy. And then the next blue change is not until page 12. I had just inadvertently left out a word last time, and I've added it, so I highlighted it. We're in what the bylaws of a seesaw shall contain. Previously, draft you had before said, which shall be allocated to the amount of services. I had just left out the word according. So I've added that back in. The word according, I believe, was in the instances of amendment.

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

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: All right. So now it's gonna get real hard to read if you're looking on paper. We're gonna jump to page 20. And maybe it would be helpful if I share my screen, since this is all highlighted and difficult to read, if you didn't adjust the saturation levels when you heard it.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: This is Seesaw Boundary Adjustment Language and the first draft we did, we took the language we've been using for supervisory needed boundary adjustments which in the plan appropriate process for charter amendments and is complicated depending on purpose of really I think the sense of the committee design that it was a bit much for something as high level as a seesaw boundary adjustment. So we'll try to really simplify the process. So that's what this is.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So we're adding a new statute to the end of Chapter 10 in Title 16, the end of the seesaw chapter for Seesha membership boundary adjustments or membership adjustment proposals. So we'll just walk through the language. The Let me get a little bigger. That's too big. Here we go. The board of a member SU may propose to the general assembly to adjust the membership of the seesaw it belongs to in accordance with the following procedure. Remember, because H nine fifty five puts CSO membership in statute, only you can change those statutes. So the process is as follows. The board of an SU may vote to propose withdrawal from its current CSO in order to become a member of a different seesaw. If a majority of the Supervisory Union Board members vote in favor of withdrawing from one seesaw in order to join a different seesaw, Supervisory Union Board shall transmit the results of the membership proposal vote to the boards of both applicable seesaw, so the one they want to leave and the one they want to join. Then the board of the current seesaw and the board of the seesaw they want to join will hold separate advisory votes to approve the membership adjustment proposal within forty five days after the results of the Supervisory Union Board vote. And then the SU board requesting the membership adjustment shall submit the results of the advisory board votes to the Secretary of Education with the following information. The minutes reported by the SU board that detail the origins and intent of the seesaw membership adjustment proposal, copies of the warnings and published notices for any public hearings held to discuss the membership adjustment proposal, the minutes reported by the SDU board that detail any public hearings held to discuss the membership adjustment proposal, including minutes from the meeting at which the board voted in favor of the Seesha membership adjustment proposal, and the results of the advisory Seesha board votes made pursuant to subdivision three of the subsection A. And then the Secretary of Education is required to deliver all that information and that we're still sticking because I didn't have any better ideas. We're still sticking with the charter change process here. Secretary of Education is required to deliver copies of all that information to the clerk, the secretary of the Senate, and the chairs of the education committees. And then the membership adjustment proposal only becomes effective upon affirmative enactment of the proposal, either as proposed or as amended by the general assembly.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: The votes, talking about seesaw membership changes, page 21. So the votes for the potential board and the current board, how binding are they? Are they just advisory to go into?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: They are. On line four, it says they shall hold separate advisory votes. Thank you. I think B is a little clunky, figuring out how this information gets to the legislature. I don't open to suggestions. This is really a policy area. But that's the process.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: in the last draft you looked at of an amendment to nine fifty five, you had two new sections related to the powers of a seesaw. You had a Section 2A and you had a Section 2B. Section 2A remains the same with a little change. So Section 2A, it's highlighted in yellow. So we know the Senate changed it, but we know it's not new from the last draft. You've already seen this. It took the suggestion of services that a seesaw could offer, professional development, curriculum coordination, development, transportation, and added it to the list of services the seesaw is required to offer. So, we're keeping that change, but we're also adding one service, and that is facilities master planning. Section 2B that you saw last time that there's nothing to highlight here because it's gone, required seesaws to actually required school districts or supervisory unions to avail themselves of all of these services, and that section is no longer in the amendment. Then.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yes, I could. Got a question more for the superintendents in the room. Superintendents in the room or former superintendents in the room. Page 23 outlines the duties of the seesaws. One of the line items, line item five, is curriculum development, curriculum coordination and development. Is this an appropriate assignment for a seesaw director as opposed to a superintendent?

[Unidentified Superintendent/Former Superintendent Witness]: So maybe you're looking at a three d program at the same three d program across your system, see if they come together so

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: you can

[Unidentified Superintendent/Former Superintendent Witness]: better vet programming. So I have issues in other states sometimes in that but Chelsea, Chelsea, I have seen it be used in other states. Haven't seen it used yet.

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

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you, Chair. And I think it doesn't relieve the superintendent of the ultimate responsibility for curriculum. It's more of a service.

[Unidentified Superintendent/Former Superintendent Witness]: Yeah, can be the current coordinator of the meeting that.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: For pledge counsel. As this is reading on sixteen and seventeen on page 22, at a minimum, a CISA shall offer services in the following areas to its members. Would that entail that the CISA essentially needs to have a contract on standby for, let's say, professional development if the SUs want to avail themselves of it? Or is it that they shall offer it if the FCC has come together and say, we need a group contract for professional development?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think that's a great question. And I feel a little disadvantaged because I think it's a matter of execution. And so I can see an argument in both directions, that shall offer means they go out and they develop the services or they have the contracts or whatever, and then they go door to door with their pamphlets and they say, here's what we have to offer you. I can also see it in the other direction, that offering the services is that they are available to offer those services when requested. But if no one's going to take advantage of them, then from a business perspective, it may not make sense to expend any funds until it's necessary. So, as with so much of my job, a lot of this, I think, is going to come down to interpretation and execution in the field. And I think you should figure out where your goal is. Is it that they have all of those services ready to go for you? Then perhaps we need to be more specific here. And if it's that they are required to offer those services if and when a member supervisory union needs those services or wants those services, then maybe we need to adjust that language.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Thank you. And if I get just a comment for the committee, a quick one. I hope we revisit the language here. Just to make it a bit more clear, I worry about some misinterpretations where CISA might read this as they have to create some sort of standby contract, expend thousands of dollars for something that may not be needed.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I think you're right.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Let's everybody want that and talk about it tomorrow.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Do you want me to take a try at some language for tomorrow? Okay.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yep. Sure.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think I understand at least your goal at this stage. Yep. Okay. So we're going jump to section 13, which starts on page 31 just to orient ourselves. This is the Union School District creation consultation and facilitation section. This is where all the study committee language lives. And the first blue change is on page 32. Just the subdivisions that give guidance to the facilitators when they are grouping school districts. So, the House passed language that said that the total average daily membership of school districts, I'm on page 32, line 10. The total average daily membership of school districts forming a study committee had to be a minimum of 2,000 students. Last draft we looked at had 1,000 students, and now we are at 1,500.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: What people are And talking then

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: we have removed what used to be Subdivision 2 here, that the House passed version required school districts to be continuous on their study committees. The last draft of the Senate proposal of amendment that you looked at required school districts to have like operating structures. And we've just removed that guidance altogether and retained that school districts can be members of different SCUs. That language came over from the house. The blue highlighting is just a reminder, mainly to me, that there was something deleted there to remind you of. Then we're going to go to page 36. We're going to stay in section 13. We're going to jump to page 36. And we're in the portion of section 13, where we are laying out all of the requirements for study committees, what they have to do, their reporting requirements, etcetera, and adding a new subdivision that requires each study committee formed pursuant to this section to consult with area CTE directors and document such consultation and any recommendations made by a CTE director in the study committee's final report issued pursuant to subdivision D or E as applicable. D is if the study committee finds a proposal to form a new union school district advisable. E is if it finds proposal to form a new union school district inadvisable.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So this is just to make sure they have real conversations with every other CTEs.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We are going to jump to section 14A, which is Oh, yep. On page 42. And this is you added this language. This is not language passed by the House. We added this in your first draft of a proposal of amendment, and it's asking for an interim study committee report to provide information to you all on what's going on with the study committees before the final report. And previously, subsection A had read, starting on line 18, update on the status of each study committee formed pursuant to Section 13 of this act, including membership and final recommendation of each study committee. And so everything after the word act was removed, and that language is including membership and the final recommendation of each study. And then same on subsection B. This is asking for preliminary or an interim report to you all with preliminary recommendations for SU and Seesha boundary adjustments, taking into account any new Union School District formation that's happening in the field. And there was similar language here. So, on page 43, line five, it read seesaw boundary adjustments that take into account the final recommendations of the study committees for pursuant to section 13. And then we're going to jump to page 60. So if we're not talking about it, there were no changes. I'm on page 60. This is section 24. The House passed version was the language regarding no excess fees or tuition beyond the foundation formula amount. In the last draft we looked at of your amendment, you had deleted this section and Section 24A, which was a companion section with intent language around the effective date of Section 24. So Section 24A is going to remain deleted, but we're now adding back in a Section 24 to read as follows. It is the intent of the General Assembly that under the foundation formula, no receiving school may charge tuition in excess of the amount of tuition paid by ascending school district pursuant to Section eight twenty three of this chapter if the foundation formula contains a weight for high school students.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Is this the former section that was related to fees, except fee language?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, this was the stat.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Now that it's titled as a tuition issue, is the fee issue then settled as far as being able to charge extra money for athletics or trips?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I would say that both current law and your amendment of H-nine 55 is silent as to fees.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Okay, fair. Thank you.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Then we're going to just want to note that John made a list of all of the pages, so I didn't have to awkwardly flip through this. So thank you. The next is mine. Oh, great. Look at that.

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: So the next one is mine, and it's starting on page 70. It's section 29. This is a relatively technical thing. You'll recall that I spoke last week on the updates to the small schools and sparse school support grants to instead of using a small school numerical threshold of fewer than 100 pupils in the school. It's going be more granular and focused on average grade size. What to do about rounding? That's the question that is addressed here. And the update is on page 71. So you see starting on line one, subdivision one is the average grade size. This is the numerical check for determining whether or not a school is eligible to receive a small school support grant. And previously what we discussed was the yellow highlighted without the blue, except the quotient resulting from dividing a school's two year average enrollment by the number of grades above pre K operated by the school. So what do you do if someone is at a figure that could be rounded? This resolves the question of rounding, and it just says rounded downward. And the practical outcome you would expect from this is it means schools that might have been at the borderline and could have been rounded upward to 12, which is the check that you see on line nine. Small schools, public school that has an average grade size of fewer than 12 students. A school that previously might have been rounded upward and hit the 12 students would now be rounded downward. And so this would maximize within that range schools that would be eligible to receive the small school support grants. It does not affect the determination of the grants themselves, which are in any event determined based on multiplying a dollar figure by the two year average enrollment, which is not rounded. So this only affects the kick in for eligibility for the small school support grant. There's a different way you could do this also. Instead of rounding this figure, you could say has an average grade size of not more than 12 students. But then you might still have the question, what if someone's 12.3? By opting to have this rounded downward label, you eliminate discretion for, I suppose, AOE in this instance to determine what to do with an unrounded figure. It's a technical change, but that's the thinking. And it could, conceivably, if someone's at that threshold, slightly expand who would meet this. And

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: we're going to jump to page 73, section 29A. In the last draft you looked at, we struck 29A, we just had it deleted. This came over from the House as the amendment to section 16 section 11, the definition section. And you removed that language, but we had a place for an open spot for me to add class size minimums like we had in Section 29A. So, is language that was traveling in your miscellaneous bills, in the miscellaneous bill, and it came over from the House. This is the not starting the clock for clients with class size minimums being held against a school until the House had a date certain, either the rules were in place or 07/01/2027, and you have replaced it with until the foundation formula is effective? It's a little different. The concept is exactly the same. However, just to make it clear that this language also approves to independent schools, I've split it out into two different subdivisions. So Subdivision B1 is about public schools and Subdivision B2 is about grouped independent schools. Public schools have built into Section 165, which is the Education Quality Standards Statute, a whole process that happens if they are found to be not compliant with an education quality standard, including class size minimums. But for independent schools who do not have to follow education quality standards. What Act 73 did was say, state board go into the 2,200 rule series that governs independent school approvals and come up with a process for what happens if an approved independent school is not compliant with class size minimums. And that process needs to offer a, I think I have the language right in here, maybe not, substantially similar process as public schools have. But those rules haven't been enacted yet, so there's no language for me to borrow from what that process is. So for independent schools, we have language that says, and approved, I'm on page 74, line three, an approved independent school's failure to comply with class size minimums shall not count towards the period of noncompliance that enables the secretary to recommend action to the state board and that may render the school ineligible to receive public tuition until the foundation formula is in effect and all contingencies to the extent there are any contingencies that are required for the foundation formula have been met. Provided, however, that the approved independent school has to still meet all of the other requirements than it needs to meet under state and federal law in order to be eligible to accept public tuition. But failure to comply with class size minimums for that same period of time is not going to be the failure that makes them ineligible to receive public tuition.

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

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So I understand what this does, but what was the impetus for it? Does it change?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It doesn't change. I don't believe it changes anything other than make it clear that, well, I shouldn't say that. The language that traveled over from the House and the miscellaneous bill was essentially subdivision one on page 73, line 15. It just said a school, failure to comply. And because public schools and independent schools are technically treated differently, because

[Unidentified Superintendent/Former Superintendent Witness]: we've

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: got a statutory process for public schools for noncompliance, and the noncompliance process for independent schools is gonna be in rules that we haven't seen yet, There seemed to be some confusion over, does this hold harmless provision or does the clock not start ticking for independent schools as well as public schools. And so because the two processes are not totally analogous, I just did a whole new subdivision that creates the same hold harmless provision specifically for approved independent schools when it comes to class size minimums. Class size minimums is one of the requirements in order to be eligible to receive public tuition.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: But even when the foundation formula is in effect for the approved independent schools, the class size minimums still won't apply under this language?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No, it's the same language as for the public schools. So the clock does not start ticking for that is just the easiest way to say it. We're all on the same page, until all of the contingencies have been met for the foundation formula, to the extent that there are any contingencies, and the foundation formula is in effect.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So that language then, what you just said, applies to the second subparagraph?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's in both. So it starts for subdivision B1. It starts on line 19 until the foundation form is And in then for subdivision B2, it starts on six.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Thank you.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Sorry. I'll work on how to explain this more elegantly. Yeah, I'm done.

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. So you're currently on 74, I think, but we're going be making a big leap to the next change. You've actually already heard about this next change when we spoke last week. We'll be jumping all the way to page 125. It's section 67. And while you're flipping, I'm happy to talk about why we're leaping so far. You will recall that Kirby's sections the sections that Kirby drafted fill out the middle of the bill. Yeah, it's page 125, section 67. And those relate to property tax classifications, regional assessment districts, a number of measures that are not being touched in this committee. So that's why you're jumping so far forward. And we are now into the school construction sections. The change that you see on page 125, section 67, is cleanup. You may recall last time that there was a slight divergence between the instances of amendment and the working dock. And so this is just aligning that piece there. The rulemaking for state aid for school construction needs to be completed on or before 03/01/2028. The draft that you saw last week said March 31. In any event, this is basically that pushing back by a year from the House proposal. So this is consistent with what we talked about last week. It's just now here in the draft. And then the last blue highlighting is at the very end of the bill, final page, I think. It's the effective date section, page 149. And I think this is actually just cleanup changes to the subdivision numbering. So it's not a substantive change, so not really anything to note. Just didn't want you to see blue highlighting and think we missed something and talk about it. That's it. That's the set of changes in this draft.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Any expectations for the next couple

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: of days as far as the agenda? I think it's this this along. Ethan, I think we actually go to the walk up start to develop. The

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: What date are they posted on?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: That's not or in the months. No, not to fatigue, but we'll talk after this. We'll get that straightened out. One suggestion we heard today, and I don't have a, what should we want, on page 71? If we talk about it at that time, anyone? Yeah, page 71, we had the testimony to the effect that we should not just have a cliff back from the middle class size. We had one over 12.1 and all of a sudden get something, whereas a 12 or whatever. So question that begs the question, does it make sense to give us kind of a sliding scale as you go over, literally over the government, number, but that's dialogue.

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: And just to call out, that's fine, you can take different approaches. But that is in Act 73 and similarly here, the structure has been you're in or out. It's a checkbox. Are you eligible? Are you not? You receive it or not. So you can propose to change it, but it would then just be a different conceptual structure for how you award the grants, which are at this point a fixed dollar figure, right? So you can do different things, require more than simply changing that eligibility kick in.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Maybe it's just a bit of a to avoid that.

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, and the other way to put it is that whatever threshold you choose, folks will come to you and say, well, this threshold kicks me out. At some point, a decision is

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, well, I think we're good for today. Yeah, just on this, with the 12 student, we left in a three year flux, right? Yeah. Yes, so it could be fourteen, one year, but then next year drop back to 11, which keeps the average. So there is kind of a built in scale. Three year rolling. Okay. Okay. So I think tomorrow is

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: Glad you guys got this room.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It's all live. What did you say?

[John Brady (Legislative Counsel)]: I'm glad that you guys got this room. It's a warm cupboard.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yes, it is. It's very soft. It's still hot. It's still hot, though. We can't use the cupboard.

[Unidentified Superintendent/Former Superintendent Witness]: Well, that's the weather today.