 I apologize for delay, no problem. Thanks for joining us. You are the last person to join us to talk a little bit about eight seven 27 and I'm wondering if you could give us the big picture on it. So let me just run through it section by section. Yeah. All right, so it's my page. So very simply, 727. Most of 727 is everybody here. We have, I think, at least past five in the hallway, Peter Conlon House Committee on Education. 727 really, most of it is a rewrite of chapter 11 of title 16, and is really the work of the agency of education. Title 16 really covers the creation and organization of union school districts that we put unified union school districts, union elementary school districts, high school districts. You know, everything that everybody went through with that 46 creating unified union school districts. It was all in chapter 11, but this reorganizes it rewrites it heck of a lot more detail heck of a lot more specificity, so that in the future, if two towns or two districts are looking to merge. They can find their specific situation much more easily. So one stop shop for everything you need to know. And it may seem a little counterintuitive haven't we already done all of that through at 46 but in fact, there's currently a merger study committee going on in Addison County between two districts that were formed a four member at 46. So it's not not going to not happen in the future. So this was an effort by frankly Donna Rousseau Savage to take all of this rewrite it make it much easier to use for like a school board members for a citizen. I'm sure that you have down savages to be in ledge council now she's with agency of education, great attorney just really knows this. Yeah, yes. So when you go through it section by section with ledge council. And that's sort of the smaller areas of policy decisions that we made within that part. They are terribly consequential there are things like letting a union school district elect its clerk for three years rather than one year, or appoint the person for a treasure so there's a lot of small policy decisions in there that we made. So this section that generated the most discussion and was the biggest amount of work for the committee was the section on a town that seeks to withdraw from a union school district or from a union high school district or a military school district. The, we were sort of threading a political needle with this for those who believe that the State Board of Education is the last best protection for children. We're getting school from adults who might make four decisions and those who believe that you're not ever going to let an politically appointed group of so many people overturn the bill of the voters. So, just this is the part that sort of deserves more discussion. Current law basically allows a town to withdraw from a union school district. And all selected group of people can go around and get the necessary signatures to petition for a vote in their community that wants to withdraw and all the other communities. Do all of that, then go to the State Board at the end of the process. And as long as they can show that their students have a school to go to. In other words, if they are if they were to close their school or couldn't pull off creating their school, can they go to a neighboring school. And if they can show that which is a hard stretch, then the agents or the State Board basically has to approve their withdrawals. We sort of took that process and and reversed it a bit and said, you know, first of all, it should be more formal that if we're going to if we're going to take the time to merge districts with a lot of thought and care, transparency and accountability, and involvement we should probably be doing the same for withdrawals or dissolution of merge districts. So it takes that and says okay if you are a group of citizens who are seeking to withdraw your town. You got to go out and get the signatures but included in that your naming a group of three people to be a recognized public body to be the withdrawal study committee recognize public body meaning that they have to follow the meeting and truly about accountability transparency and providing as much information to the voters as possible. It also says that, you know, you need to essentially do a lot of the upfront work and the work is spelled out, and it seems like it's a lot but it's really nothing more than the State Board would be asking for anyway, at the end of the process. I was just asking for it upfront, mainly with the goal of making sure that the voters have this information before they vote. So it essentially changes the order of things and says, Okay, let's get all this information get all this work done up get an idea of what the state board is going to do when the town gets before the state board. So they have this information. And of course you know one of the most important pieces of information is how is your withdrawing to town. If they are to continue operating a school, going to provide those services that we call supervisory union services, business management curriculum development and most importantly, providing special education. Before you go to the voters, you got to have a plan, and you got to make that plan public, and the state board gets to weigh in, and they provide an advisory opinion, so that the voters have all the information in front of them. Let me go to the polls, both in the withdrawing town, and in those communities that need to ratify that withdrawal. The other thing that we do is we essentially take out the state board's power to stop the process. They are in a advisory role only. We felt that put it making sure that all this work and information is provided up front was enough to sort of satisfy that. And so the state board issues and advisory opinion at the front end. The other parts within the withdrawal area there are three carve outs for three districts that are have either been through the process or are in the middle of the process these are ripped in, which has been all the way through. The state board has approved their because they have really much of a choice under the law approved with a lot of sort of cautionary notes, their withdrawal stow, which has voted in stow and then have their withdrawal ratified, and then Lincoln same situation. So basically in those cases, they already in process, they're already in process, and they basically need to provide either their plan or status report. They're in the final part. Yeah, yeah. So to haven't been before the state board yet. One has already been to the state board. Yeah, there's only three that have voted, or they're in process. Yeah, there are others who have been through the complete process and are already sort of. So you kind of have first hand experience. Yeah, I mean, not only do I represent Britain also on the school board that it withdrew from. So, yeah. But, you know, but they before this came to us they had already had their approval by the state board. So that was the first hand experience. Yes. Yeah. So those are sort of the big things in a nutshell. And then, you know, you're going to good, you'll get a good education in essentially differences between all these various kinds of unifying school districts in elementary school districts, high school districts as you go through it. Like I said, the vast majority of this is rewrite of chapter 11, it's existing law that is made much more user friendly. Great. And I guess I will say, I, I've been sort of the lead on this in our committee. I know it intimately. And if you ever have a question, they want to know why we did something to stop me right me whatever I'm happy to discuss it. I think that was brought by AOE, or is like, yes. No, it was, it was. So, this was always something that that's, this is great question that I wanted to point this out, something that the AOE has been working on. And this year with the field saying, don't take, don't do any great new initiatives with the AOE saying please don't do anything big and having to leach councils assigned to education. Now or never. And the same chance that was hoping for never. That's true. Please center. Very reasonable. I don't know if this is an appropriate task, but what was the floor vote of out of the house. The floor vote out of the house. Well, so our committee passed it 11 zero. Then we went to a roll call on the floor. And you know this. I can't explain why, but a lot of it does have to do with sort of past simmering resentments over forced mergers or mergers that took place that people didn't want to be part of ultimately or fear of school closures. So I think there was a 90 to 45. And you know you will hear, as you go through the testimony, those communities that are concerned that that this makes it too hard to to leave. Our philosophy all along has been, it's basically asking for the same thing that's being asked for today. But in a different order with this with a special focus on accountability transparency and as much information to the voters as possible. Yeah, it's all over center chin 90 to 45 out of the house of the partisan vote or typical partisan vote. In all things act 46 partisan has nothing to do with it. Yeah, it's about your own local communities. Sort of experience with that 46 almost. Yeah. Yeah, I think a lot of it I can't explain. I can start just having over you again reminded me what cat 46 is, et cetera. Yeah, yeah. That's really helpful. Thank you. Any other questions for representative comment. No, I know, but like I said, you know, there are there are some political decisions that you make three and if you ever want to know more about the debate we had happy to help out. I think you'll probably get a lot of the same testimony from from people just fine. And the three times that you mentioned are in the process. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there are there is session law at the end of this that addresses them. And it provides for a little bit more accountability, but basically, they are sort of freedom. Actually, one thing in those I will point out is, we did give the state board one power. And that is with those three that are in process, if their town decides, we don't want to do this. We don't want to vote and say we're abandoning ship. And we gave the state power to essentially wave avoid all the votes that took place and let them just sort of stay as is, the fact being that under current law, they have to go back and get voted back in by every single town in the union district. You can see where they don't want to be alone, but all it takes is one town, perhaps feeling a little bitter over what happened, voting no, and they'd be floating out of this, this world that don't have a home. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, that's great. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, we have one on our. Yes, well, it was the same country, but at different times. Oh, you were with my wife. My wife, I was a family. Yeah. Yeah, in the building. Yeah. I really appreciate this as well as the opportunity to be helpful. Yeah, really. I know you guys put a lot of time into it and you know, it's really important to get through this year because of all the all the foundational work that's been done by the Great. Thanks. Thanks a lot. The same things we are not going to go through course, the entire. So, I think what we'll do is we'll do schedule. How much time would you, please, absolutely. I was hoping with the kind of game plan. Yeah, okay. How much time would you say we would need I was thinking about starting with somebody come in here. I'm back on this committee after a while there's some new folks, sort of a quick overview of act 46. And then I thought maybe you could follow that person and take us through the bill. Sure. And I was thinking maybe a Thursday. Sure. I'm just wondering how much time you need to give us a good overview. And that would give us time to just sort of at least skim it. So for act 46. Not that this is my lane. Yeah. But you could have the attorney that I worked with that AOE is Donna Rousseau savage who also drafted act 46. Yeah, please have done it. I'm sorry, you are thinking Donna or we're thinking you would Donna. I'm just saying Donna and Donna and I worked very, very closely on the house side to get this where it is today. Great. I think it's pretty much in every draft and everything at the direction of the house. So savage from AOE. She's great. So as far as how long it would take to present this. So I would suggest for your consideration the way the house handled this. Remember this is a committee bill so it came in chunks. Yeah, but they handled it and I used the word chunks. They handled the like big bill of the rewrite portion that kind of non controversial reorganization detail added is one chunk. Okay, and that took me about three days to get through in house going line by line. Three days to present it, not three full days three days in committee free time. Because it is the vast majority of the bill. Now I have been through this many, many times now so I suspect that will be a lot faster. Okay. Two days. Two days. But you know what you're talking about. Yes, and I think I was in committee, an hour to an hour and a half each time. So it just depends on how detailed the committee wants to get in the walkthrough of what is the majority of it is current law. And then the next chunk that the house considered were the withdrawal sections and that is new law. And then the third chunk was the session law to address the withdrawals underway. All one bill ripped in Stowe Lincoln there's also a fourth piece of session law that basically says, if you start and you hold one vote but you haven't held all of them before this goes into effect you got to start all over again under current law. The three towns or the three pieces of session law that still addresses our communities where the both have all taken place. So that's actually for four pieces of session law but the fourth one is essentially a page and a half. So if you want to do, you want to look at it just linearly, the withdrawal sections if you're right in the middle of everything. If you want to chunk them out, we could do current law and then focus on the withdrawal and then the session law. What do you think we should do if you haven't done it. The first chunk is what the easiest to digest the easiest to focus. So if we were, for example, to start with Donna resource savage definitely looking to you on this also on Thursday for about a half hour on act 46 and then for you to come in and do the first chunk. And I'd say an hour. There's an outline with page I've made an outline with page numbers annotated. So we can kind of go through the outline and then I can stop and we can dive into the actual language when the committee wants to look at it and I can provide kind of an overview of section by section. So I'll ask them to print out that first chunk that you sent to her so everybody has a copy of what you're talking about that I added page line or line numbers, okay, as pass by version doesn't have that and with a bill this big I felt it would be helpful so we can say online seven. So, just so I know so definitely is what will you email for the entire bill has passed or just one. I've already emailed her the entire bill is passed but then I can split it I can split it up so that you've got the entire bill and then we've got current law I'm using air quotes here. withdrawal and then session law. Okay, so you've got four pieces to work with and we can work with anyone at any time here. So we'll start with the first time the current law this Thursday after we hear from dinosaurs. I think it's like at least controversial mostly clean up language. Sure, the, I would suggest, we provided a policy consideration document for the house. Okay, it's several pages long and they went and made their own policy considerations I will annotate right where the house made those decisions but you may want to clean up a little bit for me from Ali for your own reference of, you can see the decisions they made, and the places where they didn't take any further action. Just a suggestion, I'm assuming Donna will make that suggestion. Okay. And then we'll talk about the second shot, etc, later in the week probably Friday and then we'll go into action a little bit. Okay. Yeah, we'll work with you. I've had an hour on the second hour. Okay. Thank you. You don't mind sticking around for a few minutes. Tomorrow just everybody knows we are jumping into all of our work on military families and hoping to get a good sense of how to move that tomorrow so we can get that done since it's also I don't mean it's going to house that I think it's going to military cares. Just kind of move that as quickly as possible. Okay.