 The purpose of which is to review some of the documentation, both that's been released by different entities at the State of Vermont, but also some of the work that the WCSU boards have done internally, kind of analyzing and assessing some pieces of that. And so the purpose really is just to kind of go through the documents. And if people have questions or are confused by anything or want more information, we can try to address that. And if there are questions, we can take note of those and do what we can to get it. So, Bill, I know you were going to do some initial... Yeah, I know a lot of people can be a little closer together. Yeah, I mean, you can pull people and chairs in and kind of around. Maybe the mic's not even necessary. I don't know. The acoustics in here are going to be a little challenging. The mic is necessary for some kind of interference with the sound. The mic is necessary for some kind of interference with the sound. So, if you can open to your... I was going to do something with draft articles and I... What I went through is I think the place to start with the draft articles is to actually look at the last few pages of them. Because I think there's a good way if there's an index. There's a couple of things I would point out to you. In... There's a listing of all the articles on pages two and three. But really, if you go to the end of them... On pages... Starting on page 18. And they start to list the articles by the ones that... And remember, this is a draft. And it was a proposal to the state board on what could be... What they're proposing to the state board. They may change this. But it was the first draft looking at it. They looked at which articles by looking across all the statutes in Vermont, they felt that could be amended. They, the state board, they could do with this draft article. They're the ones that will set up draft articles for those districts that must merge. That they determine to merge. So, in doing that, there's kind of like four buckets. There's a bucket of articles that cannot be amended. There's a bucket of articles that can be offended by the voters across all the towns. So, it's like if you were thinking U32 vote, when we... Both the budget for U32 is a cold vehicle and a vote. There's a third bucket of articles that can be amended if approved by the voters in each of the towns. That's a third bucket. So, it's like you would have to have a pass in each... And the votes counted by each town. So, East Montclair, Berlin, Middlesex, et cetera, would have to get a pass without having to pass all five towns. And then there's a bucket of articles that can be amended by the new board once the new board is in place. There's also... So, if you wanted to look at that, those are listed by page 118 and page 19. On page 20 is a process for amending the articles of agreement after the data merger plus 90 days. That can be done by the voters. And then there's a very important time on page 21 through 23 that kind of outlays the process in the articles of moving from the current board structure to the new merged board structure. I can go through that and take Matthew, but... And then I would take questions. One of the things I did for myself, like three or four weeks when it first came out, is I took each article and you'll see with my highlighter, I kind of put by each one, even though it was represented in the fine print, which ones could be amended, which ones could. You could see how I have, like, a no or can't be amended at all. The voters, voters have accounts. Sometimes I have one like here, article 11, that says voters one year later, which is the structure of the board. That was my way to start this out. Maybe people need a few minutes just to look over those in the box pages. Yeah, sure. And I guess I'd like to also start with the fact of a standard. I'm not sure in what extent the folks here either on the board or who are joining us today even know what these are or had a chance to look at them ever before. I just want to make a couple of points about them. So these were released roughly a month ago, I think. Or so. And again, they are draft. So they're not final. They could be changed or amended or redone by the state board in some way. But this is what they released. It's sort of the current draft that they're working with. It seems like the agency of education has had a fair amount of input and responsibility for drafting these. The second thing is just to reiterate for everyone is that these draft default articles of agreement are the ones that would be imposed in the event that the state board of education mandates or requires a merger. So it's possible that, I know, people will also have a feeling of some concern during degrees of feeling about the state-wide plan and the likelihood or not that it's important to realize that these articles are contingent. Sean, are you bent? Yeah. That's good. So yeah, I think it'd be great to start with the timeline just so that people are aware of the speed with which the state board of these divisions these many steps unfolding once this plan is issued. And since I did a summary, I'm happy to take a stab at the answers. So the state board is required to pursue its plan by November 30th, but it's permitted to do so before, which is important to realize because there are a lot of dates, deadlines, and steps that come after the board issuing its state-wide plan at specific intervals of time. So board issues are planned on November 1st and 7th of November 30th. We need to all those dates and steps to kind of move up. The initial sort of triggering event is the issuance of this statewide plan. If a merger is required in there, then the superintendent, actually the secretary of education is required to warn an organizational meeting of what they call the document in the newly union district. So let's assume for the sake of the conversation here that the state board mandates a merger of the five towns that comprise Washington Central. Then within 60 days, the secretary of education would be required to convene, actually, an organizational meeting of all voters from across that new district that they're creating. So voters from all five towns would be eligible to participate in an organizational meeting. That meeting, rather, has to be held within 60 days of the statewide planning issue and it has to be warned at least 30 days in advance. So I think I'm voting my summary of the plan as issued on November 30th. They warned the meeting on December 1st. The earliest can be held is December 31st. And probably the latest can be held is roughly January 29th. Depending on how you count 60 days. And it would have to be warned 30 days prior to that December 30th or so. That meeting, at which the secretary of education or his designee would call the meeting to order. And then there are a series of things that voters at that meeting would be required to vote on from the board. That would be like a town meeting, essentially. And I can list off all the things, but essentially it's are we going to vote on board members by Australian ballot? What's going to be the date of our meeting? There's a long list of things. Most of them are procedural or sort of basic. They also swear in the traditional draft depot articles and vision, a traditional board which would be comprised of or comprised of either of these. The chair and clerk of each forming district, each district that's being merged into the new union district is called the forming district. And the chair and clerk of each of those districts as of July 1st, 2018 would automatically be appointed to that board. And so we have a list in our packet today, the folks who are the chairs and the clerks as of July 1st of this year, the 6th of this year. The traditional board basically operates as a board with new union district as a special duties. It has to prepare a draft budget for the next school year. It has to warn and hold a special town meeting to members of what will be the new board of the union district going forward. It's all fun town. It has all central school districts in Washington Central. Voters from close would be warned to come to that meeting. So it could be potentially quite a crowd. That's the piece of whether you're going to do things in Australia about if you want to look at the details that Matthew's explaining this right now you'll be in article 8 and article 9. So it would be a kin to something similar for U32 with grade 7 to all the right counter district. Our annual meeting for U32 happens on town union. So what happens is that I just want to say that first meeting at the board of the union specifically says this is wrong. Well that will happen later but at that meeting there will be no distinction about where voters are from as long as they are from within Washington Central S.U. That sounds better. Yes. That's right. Yes, although and again I didn't get ahead. Do we know something? It's just I used to work where they just talked about it. I'm assuming that the 6 districts that currently make up Washington Central will be designated as warning districts. So that's all 5 K through 6 elementary school districts plus the U32 school districts. So there will be 12 members on the traditional board that chair and declare each of those. Pretty quickly there's a process that's laid out It's a different constitution when you get to the new board. So what will happen at that point is that Again, assuming that no other school districts outside of Washington Central are mandated to join with us which is an open question. Let's assume it's the 5 towns then the board of the union district at first would be comprised of 10 members 2 from each town and each town would nominate by petition candidates that would then be all assembled together on one ballot and the voters of the entire district across all 5 towns would vote on each again. The question is representative representative Matthew, I'm not sure this answerable question What's answerable is that there has to be 2 residents from each town they're voted on all by all the voters in all 5 towns That's illegal I can't say that they're representative all I can say is that they're a member on the board from that town Okay, so we can continue equal representation No, I don't think so There won't be equal representation in the end in the end in the end Okay, I misunderstood that So the division in here is the new union district would have 2 members from each town It will still represent 2 from each town So Is that right? 2 from each town Yes Although they must be elected by the voters of the entire district Does that make sense? So Matthew, just to clarify He's coming with us Thanks Sorry, just to clarify When you asked earlier about whether these representatives would be representing each town that would, at least my understanding is not be the case They're representing the whole out large district I understand that they have their town at heart So they're going to work on their town That's not the idea Perhaps, yeah I would expect that to be the case but it probably depends on their That's why Bill is saying it's hard That's why I'm asking the answer It's up to the individual to see 2 representatives from each town Yes That's not your question So the data isn't specified for electing those members but the draft article suggests that might be on town any issues have any collection on the large but it requires pretty speedy action on the part of calling the original municipal board having as many meetings as together if that is possible Once the new board has its first meeting the transitional board dissolves as the last official act a requirement is to present its draft school budget So there is one other time requirement As Bill mentioned earlier there are some articles that can be amended by the voters of the new union district before they take effect So that meeting has to take place within 90 days of the statewide planning as you said that happens very very fast I believe the transitional board is required to be responsible for warnings of that meeting and there would have to be some process by which I suppose people indicated whether or not they want it So I've been trying to catch up on that Matthew and Scott and Scott Lord stopped me if I go somewhere where she is I would say I'm the expert on this but I would read everything there is here It looks like that you put together a committee and it can be or it can be it doesn't have to be a transitional board but it can be a committee and you can warn them after 90 days if you have adjustments to the articles as long as they don't need they're already required and the voters can amend and where I got that was from watching the state board meeting and Don Russo Savage explaining this to the state board last week I do remember the mention that's why I'm looking at Scott I just watched it on the video today So the last the last thing that sort of is more required in here is that the new board would then have to call another special meeting on the New Union District to have a vote on a vote school and there are some timing issues all there again I believe they said May 5th we're trying to get everything up by May 1st May 1st night but you're right, it's very tight it's 14 days after the district meeting the new board the new board comes together to adopt a budget proposed to the electorate then we need 30 days of warning 30 days of warning and all that but the idea is that our budget numbers as well as the budget numbers of every school in the state has to be reported to the state so that they can compile the ball together and use them for calculating tax rates it's a rather I want to use the word extraordinary but it's an ambitious timeline and set of things to kind of have to contemplate so that's that timeline I guess I wanted to very quickly go over each of the articles and just there's 14 of others to mention what they are, what topic they cover and also what the agency recommended in some cases the agency or the state board has said categorically this article either can or can't be amended by this entity or that entity there are other cases where it says I think it's the secretary of agency suggests, but I have any questions about the time yeah on the institutional board I have this idea can we reorganize I think it's an awesome question I have not found any provision in this document for that situation I have not either I see if there's someone that can serve on the transition it's been the clerk or the chair it's been pretty tight that it says it's been the clerk or the chair as of July 1st, 2018 is someone resigned or is it able to serve or there's no contingency to that it's not that this is proposed rules the state board the state board has the authority on this that may be something we want to give feedback one thing that I might just point out is that it looks as though we're operating in parallel universes for indeterminate periods of time in which in one universe we continue as we are in the other universe we're emerged and we have to somehow prepare for both in one universe some of us don't exist whereas in the other virtual universe there is a specific group so it's going to be hard to work through it's got to be an old definition for that so when other murders have happened the boards as they're constituted now we need to keep operating past June 30, 2019 because the board that's in existence right now is responsible for the budget of FY19 our current school leader if there were to something come up where the board need to come to a hearing whether it be student or parent or otherwise related the current boards would have the authority for this year the boards have if there is a new boardage board why that has to operate and this is something we're talking about later on in the agenda and mom's planning even more there usually about now this time of year we're already planning for the next fiscal year and so the boards help us with that there's a lot of this going on internally but the boards are helping with direction and priorities and things like that so I've already started to deal with discussions as you all know with all the boards and the audience and I'll talk more about that I hope that helps yeah, thank you great, so just very quickly I'll run through the articles here so article 1 is the creation of the new district it specifies who the forming districts are about the legal name of the new district which students it's responsible there are three parts to this article one is specifying who are the forming districts that cannot be amended by the school board of voters so once that's handed down by the state board if he's drafted it was going to affect they're saying that won't be able to be the name can be amended by the school board who the entity educates in this set as being the students presiding towns maybe let's say voters can amend that article 2 has to do with the system operates under our tradition two specific years two years after the consolidation would happen this article can only be amended by the voters it specifies there's a number of articles in here that specify that really nothing should change in the two years after the consolidation we should continue to operate the same grades the buildings the school that we have should continue to serve the same grades no buildings can close so at least for the first two years the motion is that kind of committed that paragraph cannot be amended by the board of voters because it's the goal for the implementation of the requirements of Act 26 in Mexico and then I look at the first page draft default articles for consideration by the state board have these draft articles gone through rulemaking because I'm just wondering where does the state board get the authority to tell a local school district that can or cannot amend articles do you know any of the background of that at all at this point Mike I know it's actually specified in law Act 46 and 49 that this is one of the responsibilities of the state board of education is to publish these draft default articles of agreement so that's why they're doing it I think that's why they feel they have the authority to do it whether their legal interpretations are correct or not or whether they're these are can be questioned Mike I was at the state board meeting in June when the presentation was made and apparently the doctrine that they're basing this authority on is that towns and school districts are creatures of the state and the way that's being understood is that the state body given the authority to do something that's Matthew was saying it's in the law so the rulemaking process I'm not aware of the I don't think they have the authority to do the rulemaking process they are going to be sold I asked you about the state body standards it's just why you're good at mistakes some of it goes from state law and their interpretation I cited statutes that say because of this it's not limited to do that but again whether you accept that interpretation I just would like to how many voting members are here do you have a voting number as you look at it you feel good to work trying not to distract article 3 deals with attendance restructuring great configurations and the larger part of this is that things should change in two years this is an article that can be amended only by the voters in each number town and cannot be amended by the school and I guess I do have a question about in this question there are some places where they say that an article can be amended only by the voters in each number town but there's no provision in this document no I think there are other people if you have time to go to the last hour of the state board meeting last Wednesday I got a lot out of watching Don Russo Savage and kind of like what Michael was talking about there's analysis here there's suggestions to the state board and some of these things would like each member or all members she's done for the state board and I know it's not just Sheriff because I know there are no other attorneys in the state and sometimes and she said that sometimes we will recommend each member town you know the statue doesn't say it needs to be that tiny so they're trying to think about taking it into account especially something around school closure school reconfiguration of rate changes I actually remember talking about this article saying you know we're thinking you should make it more stringent that's our suggestions here on the that's the difference we should chow and suggest as you asked earlier Matthew there are recommendations from the agency personnel to the state board to think about making some things harder to do okay I'm going to try to run through these as quick as we can because I do want to talk about death and death submission just everyone so article 4 school buildings again the article specifies that no buildings can be closed for two years only in Salvation no school can be closed without an affirmative vote of the electorate of the new article 5 deals with finances and a large part of it deals with rust and deadness and capital debts article 6 is we own a personal property that deals with transfer of property to the new union district saying future sale of property to the town which is located so personalizes no later than June 30th the former district shall convey to the new district its assets of property and so on including the building contents for subsequent sale if the buildings are closed for sale ever or schools are closed at any point because they're kind of brighter for sure than usual so the asset has to be made available to the town to purchase I believe for $1 we've researched fees my name is John Ray I'm a Calis select board we've researched the deeds the Calis elementary school the town of Calis owns our elementary school district is owned by the town and so for the district to convey to the new union district where they're calling us the town would first have to convey it to the union district and right now our select board has been pretty clear we are not conveying any town property particularly for a dollar to anybody let alone be forced into doing such a an act by the state so that's why I that's at least one battle that's going to happen okay there's also a provision as we do in the school district so the building setting and for example in this case the article 7 is transportation employees and contracts this one cannot be amended by school board of voters there's just some provisions in here the contracts have to be in place or not in place how they should be and then to be negotiated according to statute article 8 deals with the organization meeting of the union district which we were referring to earlier the first meeting would take place after state-wide transit issue here's the list of business to be transacted and the last phrase of that first paragraph bill is where it says all those who conduct it I agree it's when you go to get to the new board I'm talking about the organizational meeting of the union district that is contemplated in article 8 which involves the electorate that's a public meeting in which the electorate is warned and invited to attend and then there's four votes basically in every one of these issues that's listed here okay so we're going to call the WCS new board to order and I think it's 5-11 we'll give our meeting a promise swearing in the transitional board electing officers adopting progress or other rules of order determine the date of the first meeting in the union district determine whether votes on the budget and all public questions should be by us running a ballot determine whether the life score of the business running a ballot determine what kind of it's a long list of things some of them are more consequential than others some of them are fairly straightforward things to do every year article 9 gives a transitional board we already covered that pretty well that one can't be amended by the school board voters do union district board school directors we discussed and had a question I guess bill for everyone about the voters of the district vote on all 10 school board members yeah they say it's across all 5 towns they vote on as many people who want to run they must select 2 from each town so we get a 20 candidates it's a vote for not more than 10 and make sure that you vote for 2 from each town so the example would be in Worcester there might be 5 people running even select 2 from Worcester and there might only be 1 running from Berlin and you still have to select 2 from Worcester and 2 from Berlin and we won't see a vacant forever right there is a weird part of this I don't understand it's in section C part 3 paragraph 3 countable ballots it's not clear anyhow I may need to just read this more carefully but it's not clear to me I guess it must be on the ballot that indicates article 11 of the presentation which we've already discussed the voters can later amend that they want to have 13 board members and they want to be from different places they can make that change later on I assume from all the discussion that you are assuming that all the towns are going to vote to become one school district that does not happen the vote at least according to the law a vote of the towns to join the new district is not required the law gives the state board of education the authority to force that merger on us article 12 commencing operations that's the date which is July 1st 2019 article 13 dissolution forming districts which basically says the forming districts or the existing districts would cease to operate on July 1st except for the purposes of article 14 deals with who can amend what article article 5 which deals with debt indebtedness which has obviously been a key issue for our situation and it implies that it cannot be amended voters in the board cannot amend that article in section A indebtedness leads that the new union district should assume all indebtedness that may exist on June 30th 2019 including both principal and interest of the forming districts and so the draft is adopted so we have the executive committee of the WCSE that has done a little bit of examination of this question Scott Thompson who's been leading our thought process on debt for quite some time wrote a two-page options paper we have our attorney weigh in on the whole question of indebtedness and the consolidation of debt and do we have any means or cause for disputing the state's authority to do this and so I'm going to ask Scott to give an overview of what you did and what you read in the Paul's letter and what your current opinion is Thanks as Matthew said I've been chasing my tail on this issue for three years now and what we had hoped was that the legislature and its 2017 tax to us sort of miscellaneous tax changes just act 73 of 2017 but they kind of floated us an emergency parachute that would have allowed us to essentially move assets and liabilities or assets or liabilities from the school districts to the towns and in that way be able to come up with sort of mechanisms for taking care of the disparities in debt that we enter into a merger with those disparities are pretty substantial and certain towns are sort of loser towns and one town is a big winner town but the idea is that for equity just for being able to go into a cooperative situation without people feeling that they've been shafted or feeling bad because they're profiting from having left off their debt obligations on somebody else none of that is good for upfront cooperation so back to this emergency parachute thing Matthew mentioned that the two-page paper in which I had options for dealing with the debt was sent to farmed out to our attorneys and the response was very thoughtful in my opinion understandable to me as a lay person which I was very grateful for and rather discouraging at the same time because his answer was sure basically you have half a marriage here you don't have the whole thing you have the authorization for school districts to take an action but you don't have the complimentary authorization for towns to pick up their part so it's kind of the sound of one hand clapping problem so as a result of three years of chasing my tail I essentially come to the conclusion that there really is no solution short of a pretty significant rewriting of the law that would allow our debt problem to be solved in a merger scenario so that's basically where I am after all of this there are comments on that and I know that there's a way on the school board a lot of deliberations respect our time and all of the different items that we might want to cover but if you have time to just talk about this in a little more depth I read everything but I can't say that I feel like I really understand all of it as well as I'd like to so your short and sweet assessment of where we are is really helpful probably the most helpful take away but if there is time to hear more from you about to just go through some of this there's a little bit more detail that would be great and if there's not time that's okay I think we have about seven to ten minutes before I think we should pull this to a close we can call the board meeting to word by 30 if you're willing to nobody's ever asked me to talk more about debt before usually it's just the opposite um Chinese if there's anything special that you're interested in or any of anybody here just so that I don't learn about things that are interesting but nobody else from Paul Scott I think there's a step back okay that's really important and Michael kind of asked the question earlier and I'm going to use a technical legal term which is called Dylan's Rule and that's a really important thing for whatever we want to talk about here with articles in Act 46 and Vermont is a Dylan rule state I won't quote you the number because I don't think I have it right but I know it's over 40 in the nation are where lovelies don't get expressed they can't assume they have power to do things they need to be expressly given to the mother state legislation as something was set down back in the 18th or early 19th century I don't know when Michael maybe you know when Dylan's Rule came about but it really is the key not just the debt but everything else so maybe you can talk more about that I don't know probably to a good job they're explaining it to people like us school board members yeah the basic problem is that any authority as I understand it I submit to the court no matter any authority that we have as a school board whether the town has municipality it has to be granted by the legislature and only specific powers can be exercised so the problem with the solution that the legislature tried to give us in 2017 is that it was only half of the solution it was only the school district half without providing the the flip side of that the town half of the powers that would have been necessary in order to make the solution work there's another thing in Paul's letter about whether he was just sort of speculating wondering if if East Montpelier were to be which is sort of the the big debtor town among elementary schools if East Montpelier were to be left out of a merger in a four town merger instead what would that do and it would help slightly instead of three million burden on western Calis in this manner going for the burden roughly on western Calis from Berlin and Little Sex so breaking out of East Montpelier as a standalone doesn't really address the fundamental problem in fact I don't think getting back to my bottom line I don't think anything addresses the fundamental problem and it's just my I'm very slow on the uptake but the debt problem follows instantaneously from our additional conditions and the definition of merger in Vermont law which is part of it that's one district budget a single level of education spending would be equal education tax it's just essentially what this boils down to I mean a very plain English the intent of this law was to bring more equity when in fact what it's doing is it's actually taking at the expense of the poor towns in the district is reallocating the resources to the wealthiest and to even put salt in the wound Calis which capital funds so that we don't take debt we say that money now goes to the merge union so that doesn't sit well with me there's one thing with this act but this has been shoved down our throats and I think I don't think the battle is over yet if it's forced on it's applied by the state I'm going to ask because we specifically told folks that if you weren't going to opine or I hear you in respect of your saying you can't wait to hear more of it in the next meetings but for this one it's just trying to keep it clear I mean that's what this is it's a reallocation of resources in a bad way for at least 17 years this does not go away if there's this carriage force are there any other reasons? there's someone over there just following as we all go forward here and that equally so our supreme court has said for decades that state agencies like the agency of education state board of education agency of transportation lifetime have no inherent authority the state board only has the authority that the legislature gives it so when you look at the draft articles that it says it cannot be amended the red flag goes out of my head and it's like in no respect according to who is it not cannot be amended so I think we need to always be asking that question oh what's the state? there's a big difference between the legislature and state agencies including the agency of education and the board of education if they have no inherent authority it doesn't say it looking at these articles again it's very important I think to be sure where's this directive coming from what's the legal authority for it these just don't assume it's the state board of education they must have inherent authority if they can do what they can do that is beyond correct thank you okay thank you are there any other questions? we're going to break that's when they need it okay if you click use the word recess because I want to continue you have 24 hours that's recess it's hard