 Hello and welcome. This is the Education Committee in the Vermont House of Representatives on Thursday, January 6. And we are starting our discussion on the chapter 11 in Title 16 that has to do with school governance. We're looking at some updates to this, I think Act 46. And I wanted to hear first from Legg Council, Elizabeth St. James, who will help us with a little background on why we're here and why we're discussing this. So thank you, Beth, for your help here. Good morning, Beth St. James from legislative council. I am going to kick things off today with actually just a primer on some terms that will hopefully be familiar to all of you but are integral and foundational to understanding why we're here and talking about amendments to chapter 11. And then I believe the agency of education is going to get a little bit more in depth on the how we got here and the why. So with that, I'm going to attempt to share my screen for the first time on Zoom ever. So please, your patience, I appreciate it. I came from the executive branch and so I am a whiz of teams and just getting up to speed on Zoom. So let me find my pretty picture for you. We're education we're all about learning. Okay. And you see my screen should see a PDF that says Union School Districts. Okay. So chapter 11 talks about the formation and government governance of Union School Districts. It is leave. The title of current chapter 11 is Union Schools and School Districts in joint schools. So having an understanding of what a Union School District is foundational to the work that we are potentially and most likely going to be doing this session. So just a brief primer. And hopefully you can refer to this when we are in the trenches, actually doing the work on chapter 11. So a school district is includes it's kind of an all encompassing term town school districts union school districts interstate school districts city school districts unified union school districts and incorporated school districts. So the term school district tends to be thrown around and could mean many different things. School districts, all of them are independent municipalities so they are separate and distinct municipalities from the towns that they serve. That means that they can levy taxes. A school district could be one town, it could be many towns, it could be portions of a couple different towns. It's governed by one publicly elected board. And it manages and proposes the budget which is voted on and voted up or down by the voters. So, under school district or included in the term school district is a union school district, which means two or more school districts located in two or more towns that merged into one district. And that is responsible for the education of students in all grades for which it is organized, regardless of the town student resides in. That's kind of a broad term, and then within union school district, there are a couple different types of union school districts. And when we get to, if we get to it today, I plan to share a kind of a table of contents or an outline of what the proposal for the rewrite of chapter 11 may look like. You will see that there is a big distinction in the work that is proposed to be done on chapter 11 between a union elementary and a union high school district, and I'll talk about this little picture here, and a unified union school district. Both of these union elementary or union high school district and a unified union school district are school districts and union school districts. So there's multiple layers of terms here, and the work in chapter 11 gets down to the bare bones of each of these terms as far as what it takes to form them. Explore the formation of them form them and then how do they run once they are formed. So, understanding kind of the makeup of each of these different terms is important. So the first type of union school district that we'll talk about is a union elementary and a union high school district. So this means a union school district so that's a school district, multiple school districts that have merged into one. It's organized to provide for the education of students residing in two or more towns in fewer than all grades. So a union elementary would provide school district would provide education for the elementary grades and union high school district would provide education for the high school district. But if there's a distinction that if it's a union elementary or a union high school district. The name implies that it's not applied and not organized to provide for education for all grades right it's just elementary or just high school. This visual is meant to just give you an idea of what that might look like so town school district a it's a school district that operates grades pre K through six in town a. And then town school district see operates grades pre K through six in town see they would merge they would be the member districts and send all of their high school students to a new school district. That operates grades seven through 12 it just so happens this union high school district is operated in a building located in town see so there's towns involved as far as the location of schools and the people who live in them. But a union high school district is made up of member school districts who funnel their students to that union district for the grades it is organized to provide for any questions on that. If we think of examples I think this might be something like Janice district Richmond, I think is considered a unified union school district. Unified union is next. Okay, excuse me. Nope, that's okay. Yeah. And I, I can provide some kind of basic examples of it. But I did not come prepared with a bunch of Vermont examples and I'm happy to do that when we get into the nitty gritty of walking through. I think having that. I think having a couple of examples is actually helpful. Okay. Yep. So, I will work on providing that. Donna may in her presentation she might give some live examples of why we need this rewrite that might involve the explanation or specific examples of specific school districts. But if she does not go into that amount of detail then I am happy to, in the next presentation on this topic, replace these arbitrary A, B and C with actual Vermont towns. And then we have a unified union school district. So it's a union school district so it's multiple school districts that have merged into one that provide for the education for all of their for all grades. So, instead of having sending districts. Those districts all collapse into one unified union school district. So, town A, town B and town C send all of their students to the unified union school district and the schools that are operated in that district. So it operates for all grades. And it can do that by maintaining schools by tuitioning or by a hybrid maintaining or operating some schools and tuitioning for some grades, but they provide for the education of all grades within that town. These are school districts so they have the same characteristics as the general term school district they are independent municipalities. They are governed by a board and they propose the budget which is voted up or down. And you'll see as we get into chapter 11, the makeup of those boards and who's doing that voting may vary depending on whether it's a union elementary and union high school or a unified union school district. I'll stop sharing my screen now. Does anyone have any questions. Sorry, any, any questions from anybody. I know we've got a wonderful map I was just looking for it that that broke down that the districts and we'll see if we can locate that map I find that really helpful is in this conversation to help ground us a little bit. I think I've gotten my hands on an updated map, but I will I can work with the agency on making sure that we have the most updated map as we go forward for visuals. Great it had and it had, it had the map actually had pre K mapped on it it had the CTE centers on it, and it had the school districts and, you know, as us and unified districts all organized it was a really great map and maybe a we can help us find that map. I think Emily you you have found it for me a few times. Okay. Okay. And then I just briefly before we turn I turn it over to the agency. I just want to not included in chapter 11, governed by chapter seven and title 16 I just want to briefly mentioned supervisor unions. Because that's another term that can get confusing when we're talking about school districts. So a supervisor union is actually created by the State Board of Education. And it's an administrative planning and educational service unit. So it in statute is responsible for a number of administrative responsibilities. It does not have its own. It does adopt a budget but it is sent through to each school district that it supervises and provides administrative services for. And I think that the tricky thing here is that supervisory unions usually are created and encompass and provide planning services for several different districts. The supervisory union can also be a supervisory entity the administrative planning unit for one district, if it's large enough that that makes sense that they have enough capacity and the district is large enough to warrant a supervisory union for that one district. So for example, Burlington school district is one school district with one supervisory union or the supervisory union only supervises or is only responsible for the Burlington school district. And we call that a supervisory district. So if it's one supervisory union or the supervisory union is providing services and administrative and planning services so they do things like establishing and maintaining standards for curriculum. So they are involved in special education planning maintenance of buildings in the supervisory and again this is an entity that's created by the State Board of Education and can be modified by the State Board of Education. But if it's big enough if the district a district is large enough to have one supervisory union, we would then call that a supervisory district. At play here and terms you will see over and over and over again when we get into actual actually looking at the rewrite of Chapter 11 which today stands at about 120 pages is school district union school district and then under you know within that union school district is union elementary school district union high school district and then unified union school district. And then in the back of your mind, there's also, you know, when we're looking at live examples, how does a supervisory union fit into that. That's a very basic foundational piece that I'm sure most of you are already familiar with I'm sure I'm the one this is all newest to. So, at this point I think chair web it's really up to you on how you want the flow of the meaning to go. I can present the proposed table of contents but I think it might make more sense to hear from the agency and why, why that table of contents exists. Right. I think what what you're helping us understand is, and I think that supervisory unions were created, what in like 19 oh something, and how complex emotional and exciting anything to do with schools can be, and over over the years since we created public education representative Conlon. Thanks just a quick definition and chapter question it when you use the term supervisory district does that also tend to not reside in chapter 11 and is a unified union district also a supervisory district. Great question so supervisory unions are governed by chapter seven in title 16. So the chapter 11 currently in current law does not define supervisory union that definition is in chapter seven. And the rewrite there is a section that addresses supervisory unions and adjusting them for new school districts but no definition of that in in chapter 11 specifically. Let's talk about the term supervisory district. Yep, and so supervisory district also. I believe is defined in chapter seven, I can pull that supervisory district defined in title 16 and section 261. Okay, so in how we use those terms, if we're sort of referring to a unified union district that that's a little bit more accurate than calling it a supervisory district. It depends. And please, anyone from the agency correct me if I get this wrong. But a unified union school district could be large enough to warrant being part of one supervisory union and so you've got one school district under a supervisory union it would then become a supervisory district. The unified union school district could be small enough to be a part of a supervisory union made up of multiple school districts of which it is one. Okay, I can actually think of one off the top of my head. Thank you. That's, that's very helpful. Great. Thank you and we have all of these models I'm sure for for reasons that go back through history. So Emily Simmons, general counsel at the Agency of Education. I'm also really thinking that right now we're heading this is chapter 11 and it sounds like that's not the correct title for what we're doing. At some point we'll have a bill and we'll have a number there but we might want to think about what we're calling this versus chapter 11. But please welcome Emily Simmons nice to see you again. Thank you so much for inviting us here today. I really my only role is to point out the folks who are here as resources to you for this conversation so primarily Donna Rosa Savage staff attorney from the Agency of Education and our governance expert. Donna has about a page of written testimony to go over with you and you all know that Donna is the absolute expert at the agency and is the person who's responsible for all the actual years of work at this point to bring this project of some technical and technical rewrites of chapter 11 to you so that you can consider it in bill form. And also I'm really pleased that state board member Kim Gleason is able to be with you today. The agency and the state board are working really collaboratively on this project so I wanted to make sure that you had a voice from the state board to speak to these issues as well. I'm just going to just point Madam Chair if it's okay with you. I'll turn our presentation over to Donna Rousseau Savage. Thank you and welcome Donna Rousseau Savage. I'm sorry I was having a hard time on muting myself. I was going to stall for you Donna. And I'm going to start my video but I might turn it off because our internet is not always dependable so if it starts to get freeze at all I might turn it off. This is a text submitted written testimony it's only a little over a page it's quite straightforward and rather than walking you through it. I thought that perhaps I would just highlight a couple of elements of it, and then provided some additional information and examples for you. Personally I think that calling this Act Chapter 11 is good because although most of these questions arose and issues arose as we tried to help districts implement what you had enacted as Act 46. And actually as you as you had enacted even earlier than that is Act 153 in 2010. These issues are actually all part of Chapter 11 because the actual process that you had the districts that were considering merger rely upon is the process that set forward in Chapter 11. And the details about how unified or union high school district would operate those are also in Chapter 11 so all of all of those issues rose to the surface during the implementation of Act 153 and Act 156. They are all issues with Chapter 11 and the proposal that we've been working with Ledge Council on is a total restructuring of Chapter 11 so that it is responsive to the issues that we've identified. So now just to back up a little bit to highlight some of the things that are in the, the written testimony, Chapter 11, which governs both the formation and the operation of union school districts was enacted in the 1960s. And it was drafted primarily with union high school districts in mind and I'm going to say union high school districts and just in your head think or union elementary school districts but primarily union high school districts. In 2010, there were only, only 20% of all of the school districts in the state were union school districts, and the vast majority of those were union high school districts. So for 40 years, we, our experience as a state was in overwhelmingly in creating and operating union high school districts, and most of those union high school districts have been created in the 1970s so that that experience wasn't even very fresh in many of our memories. So why is now the time to revise Chapter 11. As I said, as we were helping districts to implement these, these more recent laws. We started noticing that there were a lot of issues in, in Chapter 11 as it's currently drafted. Remember that it governs both the creation but also the operation of union school districts and while in 2010, there were only two union school districts that operated pre K through 12. There are now 47 unified union school districts, meaning that approximately 44% of all districts in the state are searching for answers on a day to day basis for how to operate and they're looking in a statute that's continually drafted has major gaps, and is structured in a way that it makes it very difficult to find the guidance that's needed, especially if you're a unified union school district. So when we, we identify these issues and we kept running lists and people who were involved in the field we're keeping running lists of many of the issues. In 2019, we sat down with a number of other organizations and individuals we talked with the Secretary of State's office with with the school boards Association, the superintendent's association. Quite a few attorneys who had been very involved either in helping districts during the, during the act 46 process or who were advising districts now. And then we created an outline of how we thought chapter 11 should be structured if it was going to be as accessible as possible to the people who would be using it the most. And as as Beth will explain to you in a little while, the major structure is that there are four or four main sub chapters the first one has some very general statutes, for example definitions. So it's all about formation of a union school district so it applies both to unified union school districts and to union high school districts. And it's, you know, the study process the voting the form the initial formation details. The third sub chapter is all about how to operate and what kinds of questions arise if you're operating a unified union school district. The fourth sub chapter which in many ways is very very similar if not identical to the third sub chapter, but it's broken out. So that if you are a union high school district and you're looking for those quest the answers to those questions, the fourth sub chapters where you go for those operational details. Once that outline was created with the four major categories and lots of categories in between. And all existing the substance of all existing laws into the various places where they belong in the outline and then we drafted language to fill in where it was missing. As I mentioned in the written testimony we worked very, very hard to ensure that the draft we made was a technical corrections to the extent possible. And whenever a new language or a new concept had to be addressed we based it on common sense on current practice on what was expected from other entities and having the Secretary of State's office involved was just incredibly helpful. Not only are they just delightful to work with but they, they, they know how town government runs. And they knew the kinds of issues that town clerks in particular might be concerned about and so it was it was wonderfully helpful having them be part of the process. We have given ledge council a separate list it's three or four pages I think of policy questions, which we did not attempt to address in any way in the, in the draft, some of them, you may decide you don't want to address. And others you might decide that you need to consider in more detail. Most of them are not going to be very controversial, probably. But they got into policy questions. And as I said we were trying very hard to create a document that was instructive and practical, and wasn't wasn't going on in a limb to be trying to presume that we could possibly be in your shoes and be making policy decisions. I did want to give you an example and there are there are lots of examples to give. I think that the best place to start is that most of the issues regarding the operation of Union school districts under Chapter 11 arrives in connection with the election of board members and in connection with voting in general. For example, proportional representation on a Union school board can be met by three made in three major categories of membership. And one of those categories appears only in the written decision of a judge in a federal court case. It's nowhere in statute but it is a legitimate model of board representation. Those two categories are addressed in Chapter 11, but different aspects of those categories of board representation appear in multiple different non connected statutes. And there are frequent frequent references to member districts. And as as led council was talking to you before, while a Union high school has a member district at the local level that can perform certain functions for it. A unified Union school district does not have a member school district at the local level. So, having constant references to member school districts in the statutes can be very confusing to a unified Union school district and also can sometimes be in, even if you try to imagine what that might mean it can be very inaccurate at times. The statutes also do make some references again in different statutes to voting on the floor and voting by Australian ballot. And the statutes do also include some fairly recent brief reference to the authority of local town officials to conduct some of the administrative functions that are necessary to conduct an election, so that the town clerk can do certain things. So you can try to imagine if you can try to imagine a grid where all of these different pieces I was just talking about, and you think of all the different possible combinations you could come up with if you're looking for an answer. You have two different governance structures, one of which has member school districts that it can rely upon one of which has a very brief reference to being able to rely upon the town officials to conduct some of those. Activities. Second, you have two types of voting you have voting from the floor. And also it would mean nominating from the floor or voting by Australian ballot. And then you also have three basic categories of board membership. And just will point out that there are some boards in the state that are using more than one of those types of board membership. Some of their, some of their board members are elected pursuant to one type of board membership and some of their board members are elected pursuant to one of the other types of board membership. So all of these categories if you again if you think of this grid, all of these different possibilities arise not only when you're just going to elect a school board member but they can arise in all sorts of situations when when that's that that is related to to elections and to to whom is a petition, nominating a board member submitted, who writes the warning, who publishes the warning, who pays for the warning. You know, there are lots of details that the answer depends depending upon where you fall in that grid that I was just talking about. And that this is just one type of question that tends to arise there are many other examples of trying to find an answer in the statutes both for the formation and for the operation of a union school district, where it's just the detail isn't there. It's confusing when it is given and and and the answer is located in many different locations. So this was the level of practical detail that we attempted to address when we created what is a very long rewrite of chapter 11. And we're very grateful that you are considering taking it up this session, because we believe that it will be helpful to as I said, 44% of the school districts in the state. Thanks. Thank you. It's helpful. Questions looking mainly to our board members. Representative Harrison. Yeah, I got a rather specific question. If a community has a school district happens to be where I live, but is also a member of a supervisor union, which we are. The district vote the supervisory unions budget separately, because right now it's rolled into the district's budget. That's asking me quite a few times. If that is it okay if I answer or would you prefer. Please go. No, you can't. They can't. That's one of the problems with supervisory union is that it pulls those budget Terry decisions away from the electorate because it can only be. It can only be a portion to each of the districts within the supervisor union. Part of the reason that it can't be it isn't just because you all have said no it can't be. The reason that it can't be is that a supervisor union isn't an isn't a legal entity. It's not a municipality the way the school district, or a town is. It's just this administrative, you know, grouping of districts that work together. Over the years the legislature has given supervisor unions more and more responsibility, most recently most significantly in the, the provision of special education, which has meant that more and more of a district's budget is actually being decided at the supervisor union level and then a portion where it can't be. It is only by voting. Well it's only by voting. That the locals have only the ability to vote the budget up or down, but then if they vote it down the only thing they can adjust is those portions of the budget over which they have control. They can't adjust the supervisor unions portion of the budget. You hit on a very good point that the supervisor union budgets are starting to take a larger and larger chunk of the municipal or not the municipal school districts budget. That's creating quite a philosophy well. I just might say that that's part of the reason that I believe that some of the unified unions one of one of the benefits that some of the newly created unified union school districts saw the larger ones because they are their own supervisory union. There is no distinction between. So, in a in a larger unified union school district that acts as its own supervisory union. They are voting the citizens are voting directly on the items that a supervisory union would normally be responsible for. Thank you for that answer because that allows me to one of the questions asked to me I can give a definitive answer. I don't know if you have any follow up questions I'm happy to help representative James. Sorry, I was having a new problem. This is a simple one it probably should have been for Beth, I'm just wondering what is a mud. Okay. Okay, so 2010 was when the first act act 153 was enacted that was trying to incur the legislature was trying to encourage districts to consider forming unified union school districts. There were districts that went through the process at the time, but discovered that because every single district that wants to join has to vote yes in favor of the of the merger into a unified union school district. There were some communities that were finding that there would be a single district that voted no and sometimes it could have been a very very small district. So even though the vast majority as a whole wanted to create a unified union school district a very small group was saying no. So one of the legislators from one of these, one of these communities suggested something that's called a modified unified union school district. And what it which is referred to as a mud, which allowed and it is a very odd situation. It allowed, think about there being a union high school district with with five union elementary school, excuse me, a union high school district with five town elementary school districts that all feed into it. One of one of those town elementary school districts votes, no, but everybody else votes yes. What is what is then created and it was only allowed for a short amount of time, what was created was a modified unified union school district that was pre K through 12 for all of these. It was only the high school for the one that voted no. And the one that voted no state its own little union elementary school district. Excuse me, I keep saying Union, its own little town elementary school district, and I do have a little diagram that kind of explains it I don't have it I didn't think to bring it to put it up but I can provide it to you just just give you a little pictorial of what it does. There were five of them created. And then as the process moved forward in the last couple of years, three of them became full unified union school districts, and there are just two modified unified union school districts that still exist. Thanks. Sure. Representative Austin. Yes, thank you, chair web. I'm just wondering if this assumption is correct that the rationale for the formation of these different configurations is to enhance local control. I'm trying to understand why it's why we have these many different configurations and I'm wondering if my assumption is correct. I think that's something that the agency can answer that's something that you all need to discuss. And yeah, this is, this is very technical about how to operate and and how to go forward with it with the options that you have provided. Okay, thank you. Sure. Other questions. When the term mud came out it was actually really helpful it actually described our experience. As we turn sort through the through the different definitions and mud ended up being one of the favorites. I think without further questions on this at this point I'd like to turn to Kim Gleason who's here representing the State Board of Education. Kim, nice to see you. Good morning. Thank you chair web and good morning to all of you. I simply want to support this work going forward. I have the good fortune of probably having worn a couple of hats very deeply impacted by this technical correction. I formally led the Essex Westford School District and prior to that Essex Town School District. And as we moved through unification. We are probably one of those real world cases that tapped on Donna Rousa savages door, many times and going through our unification and going from what was an SU and a town school district and multiple town school districts underneath the district to a unified union school district operating pre K through 12 and a large one at that. But nonetheless, multiple towns, separate warnings, appointments and trying to find where we lived in the law with clarity was challenging and so these technical corrections are really important to the field. And in the hat I currently wear on the State Board of Ed, we're collaborating really closely because we find ourselves in a challenging position as people are considering their requests for dissolution and I think that there can be a more intentional process as there was to unification that we could seek some legislative remedy on the options available to towns and to the State Board. I was chair also and asked if I would represent the State Board in these matters and work closely with Donna and Beth and whoever else is appropriate to provide perspective and whatever hats I wear but I'm certainly looking to remedy all of it. And not to leave the major technical corrections behind if, if the more controversial matters take a different time or need to be addressed separately I think. Hopefully it will all get done and I'm confident and grateful to all of you for taking it on. So thank you. Yes, Ben talk about actually creating two separate bills, one that is more policy oriented, and one that is more technical, and we sentence. I think it's thank you I think it's important to point out here that the draft bill that Donna is presenting about today actually does not address the issue that chemists alluding to there are two sections of chapter 11 section 721 and 1924 that both address the dissolution and withdrawal issues depending on the type of union school district. And those two sections in the draft bill that the agency is worked with Ledge Council on are just represented by placeholders that in this vehicle. We haven't proposed any language or any amendment, because those are such significant policy decisions that we knew to do anything that the General Assembly would have to take significant deliberation. And we do know that anything that brings up act 46 can certainly be a lightning rod. So, but we're understanding that that the districts are really asking for some of these technical changes to be addressed just to make their lives easier. While we're also looking at how we deal with the dissolution of districts that are looking to dissolve their mergers which is also, I know the state board is looking for some guidance because you don't have any at this moment in time. Right. So, that will be just something that we do at least at this point we now have act 46 that has been in place for a couple of years, whereas it was not something we wanted to bring up a few years ago because everything was so raw. So, we will, we will be having a conversation on how we want to move forward with that. So, do we have the bill to this would be a committee bill. Do we have the bill to review today or is that for another day. I just got the full bill back from editing yesterday. So I can send that to you today chair web. It sits at about 120 pages. I do have Donna was kind enough when we started working when she shared the draft with us and we started working. Jim and I taking an initial look at it, a table of contents, if you will, that kind of an outline. I do have that and draft form if you'd like me to share that. That'd be great. I also have Donna's graph that she was referring to on muds. If anyone wants her, I'd be happy to share my screen if you want to visual, but if we want to move on that's fine too I just wanted to put that out there. Okay, and I will also just ask an agency I was just looking to see if I could find that fantastic map of our school districts that had the Ctes placed on them that had the pre case placed on them that had the high schools placed on them that that was it was just a really post act 46 map that at one point I think we even had posted in our room I don't know if you found that one Amanda but it was a really great map. If you could send that to Amanda that would be really wonderful. Donna. Yeah. I couldn't find my raise hand button. We do, we can send that map to you we've had some problems with the, I don't know if it's the software or the machinery or something to create the maps. So none of our maps are precisely up to date. But we do have the older maps that are quite up to date and we can send any of those to you that you're interested in. Right. So that would take us to 2020 or so I think doesn't it. Maybe a little before then. Yeah, it was, it happened right about the time that we moved from Barry to Montpelier which was in I think October of 2019. But the districts had been defined by the state board at that point. Correct, although there have been a few changes since then so that's, that's why they're not precisely up to date but they're very close. Okay, but that's good enough. We'll take it. Okay. Thank you so much. Hello, Beth. Yes, just last call on mud representation. If anyone wants to see a visual senior taker. I would like to see that please. Donna, are you okay with me sharing that it's the, I believe it's fine. Okay, I'll see my screen. Yes. I can jump in if I muddle this. But this is the, when Donna was referring to over here. This is that little town district that voted no that sends its children, only to nine through 12 and maintains its own town district. Well, everyone else sends their children to essentially the unified union school district that operates PK through 12. Does that help. That would be, I think, Wyndham only that I think they're pre K five, perhaps, somewhere. Right. And Lamoyle North is also the other modified union school district that where this becomes complicated is that there is only one school district for the entire modified unified union school district pre K through 12. They're both making decisions pre K through 12, but town district D only is a member for nine through 12. So, you know, both budgeting and policy decisions have the potential to be a little confusing. And this town district D could also be one that doesn't operate high school so they, they're on a voucher. Okay, they, they would definitely not operate a high school because they are a member of the modified unified union school district for nine through 12. Okay, okay, got it. Okay. Thank you. And I guess we can go to the next to your outline great. Sure. So this is, and I'm not sure what you all are seeing are you seeing the entire screen is this outline or can you see my background as well. I'm seeing, I'm seeing draft and I can see lines one through 14. So, this is a, it's nine pages so out of 120 pages is relatively high level, but you'll see it does get into. So this is as far down as subdivisions in some of these sections. So, there's far more detail in the actual bill itself, this is meant to just provide kind of a preview a lens through which to look at the work that we may take up, and perhaps a discussion point on how to tackle it. Should you so choose. Just a real quick walkthrough of this. The first few sections in this draft are pretty simple policy definitions and application of other laws and articles of agreement. The meat of it starts in sub chapter two, where it's broken down into exploring formation and organizing a union school district and remember union school district is that broad term that encapsulates union high school districts union elementary school districts as well as unified union school districts. And you'll see how that's broken down as we continue on. So, the first section is a proposal to form a study committee budget and membership, and it goes into detail about how committees are established budgeting and membership. So what that looks like for existing school districts union school districts, and then even further, what that looks like for existing union elementary or high school districts who are proposing to form a unified union school district, existing union school districts proposing to form a unified union school district and existing unified union school districts. I'm sorry existing union elementary union high school districts proposing to form union elementary and high school districts. So it's the annual see in detail as we continue on this draft bill really is trying to contemplate every scenario in one place, organized so that if you are only interested in in your situation you're only looking in one place you're not trying to piece that together over an entire chapter in in title 16. And it then goes on approval so you've decided to proposal to form the study committee. What is the approval of the budget look like appointment of the study committee and participation. And that's broken down into all of the components. Depending on budgeting costs subsequent appointments for me for more participation in the study committee additional formal participants and informal participation by other school districts again, meaning to capture every possible scenario. So that the agency has encountered this far. It goes into the study committee itself and talks about necessary and advisable districts. Again, when we do if we take this up and or if you take this up and we do a walkthrough. We'll get into far greater detail then. But this is meant to address. Depending on that study committee what is the process look like, and it breaks down whether the school district involved is a necessary school district to forming it, or whether the study committee feels as though it's not a necessary school district but perhaps an advisable school district and what does that mean for your participation on this study committee. So, study committee has made a proposal who reviews that what does that look like. That's section 709. And then the vote to form a union school district in 710. We'll get into what Donna was mentioning that we can spend as much time as possible with more visuals on because I do think it is complicated. Talking about initial members of the district board. So, election, what does election look like, and representation. And then the proposed unified school district board what Donna was talking about as far as the representation models that exist. So there's proportional to town population, modified at large, and at large representation and you can see this is broken by proposed unified union school district and then proposed union elementary or high school district again, so that if you are only interested in proposing a unified union school district, you only have to look at subsection D. And then getting into the contents of the warnings and certification of votes. And it's my understanding that the Secretary of State's office was a very active and involved member of the group that reviewed and worked on this draft. So I think that's, that's great that there's a draft coming to you that already has input from the Secretary of State's office as far as the election process goes. And then again initial members of union school district board tallying the votes, both of office and assumption of duties. And again this is for initial board members in that transitional phase before the. Act. And then you've, you've formed a study committee you've proposed it it's been voted on. There is a new district being created. What is how do we organize it what is the organizational meeting look like notice in the business to be transacted. And then we get into transition. The solution of the districts so don't be. Don't be we. The as, as Emily mentioned, this draft and we'll get to it does not take into account. Members of a union school district who want to withdraw. So you'll see the highlighted place folder when we get there this dissolution is meant to just talk about the forming districts. So once you're, you're at your own little standalone district or you're a union district and you're making forming with other districts to make a bigger union district. What does that look like do you have to dissolve. What does that transition look like. So, the section devoted to transition to full operations. Dates rules and authority assets liabilities on paid expenses. The section 717 addresses the dissolution reorganization and discontinuation of forming districts and again, it's broken up by the two types of union school districts so you only have to look at that in that one place and you know it's good for you. So that's for a real property. And then this addresses. What does that mean for your supervisor the section 719 addresses what does that mean for your supervisory union or your supervisory district. Remember, supervisory unions and supervisory districts are created by the State Board of Education, and this section talks about adjusting those boundaries. Now you've created a new entity and new union district. How do you govern it. Article three gets into changes in union district membership and other amendments to articles of agreement. And again it's, it's broken down into specific categories. So, here, we're talking about joining an existing union school district. Amendments to articles of agreement. Again, I think these sections without the actual text of the section. This is meant to just provide you the level of detail that this draft bill gets into what these subsections actually do. We'll tackle in depth when we get there. But you can see that a lot of time and energy has been taken to address every possible question that could come up process that could come up so that those questions are already answered right in state law. And then decision to vote by Australian ballot again. We can get into that in more detail when we do our walk through. These are the withdrawal these are placeholder proposal sections for addressing the withdrawal or dissolution of a union elementary or high school district. And then from a unified union school district. Those are right now the conversations around addressing that particular topic in a separate bill. And then sub chapter three and sub chapter I'm going to skip down a little bit so sub chapter three is unified union school districts and the governance of them. And then I'm going to jump down to sub chapter four union elementary school districts and high school districts. These are essentially the same types of information but just specific to the type of union school district contemplated in each sub chapter. So unified union school districts. Board members nomination and election and then broken down and very specific information about what that election looks like and representation models for those boards. The addresses they can see budget and annual report and then keeps going into governance topics such as officers, warning for meetings, voting information. So how are we counting the votes bond issues and debt limit, and then the same information for union elementary school districts and union high school districts how are they governed. It's almost exactly the same with small differences here and there to account for the difference in between a unified union school district in a union elementary or union high school district. And then districts for the laws is the last sub chapter. And it's a very small section of the bill. So that is a very, very high level fast, not a lot of detail overview of what chapter what this proposed rewrite was to do and the level of detail it gets into to address all of the issues, the agency, and the boards are facing in dealing with the governance of these different structures and the lack of clarity and current law. Is it fair to say that in some cases you're simply moving language from one section to another. Definitely. There are definitely some sections like that, but I think some of this is perhaps the concepts aren't new but it being as and Donna please Donna or Emily please correct me if you think I'm wrong. Most of this the technical nature of it in the detail of it would be new. It might not be new but how detailed and specific it gets. You're not going to find that in current state law, which is, I believe why this proposal is is coming forward. So, there will be a lot of new language to look at. I'm sorry I may just add that, even though the substance is identical in many places. The specific words used might not be the same. And that was because we tried to be extremely careful about word choice and to be really really precise and consistent with word choice. So, so, even if the substance is identical, it won't necessarily look the same as what's in current law. Can you give us an example or two of some of the changes that we're likely to see that I think that everything is basically is going to look different. The one thing I can tell you that does not look very different is the policy section at which is the very first section of the draft and the very first section of this part of the chapter, because I don't think that it was our, our prerogative to be be changing what you said about policy. It is changed a little bit it was something that legislative council both Jim and Beth discussed and chose to change a little bit but it's, but that will be almost identical. I think when we first tried to do this we tried our typical strike through underline, and it was just such a mess that it was impossible to follow, because we changed the words and structure so much so there might be sentences that are almost identical to current policies but they're moved to different locations and they're, they're reordered, and, you know, defining terms might be changed so I could come up with some examples if you'd like but I think that it's, it's so different that it's hard to make a comparison. I can provide however, some information to Beth that says, for example, you know in new section 705. This was, this was taken from the concepts that were in current section 701 705 728 so that that you can that you could go back and and find where it's talked about in current section 705 if you chose to in any particular new section. That will, when we get to a point if we move this out and get it to the floor that will be very important to have that that clarified and how we, how we will address this will be a point of discussion. Let's see representative who was first representative Conlon and then Harrison. First of all, this reorganization of everything is going to make this so much more user friendly, and it's really going to be super helpful so thank you for diving in on this. The area where we just have you know basically placeholder for the big discussion about withdrawals and disillusions. Will we be getting any proposals from either the State Board or the AOE, both on the stuff that's pretty tricky and controversial but also I'm thinking about, you know union high school districts that were formed in the 50s to 70s. I assume a lot of the language that is currently guiding withdrawal and disillusion is probably still okay. But anyway, I just was curious to know if we're going to if we're going to receive some suggestions for what to put in there. I'd be happy to take the first swing at that one. So, yes, it is the agency in the state boards intention to have a joint proposal specific for 721 and 724. We're fine tuning our idea that that we would put forward. Earlier earlier today we're fine tuning that idea. And it's a proposal that I think will be strongly recommending that we actually think is better than the approaching current law but I can't forecast any more than that today. With regard to the more than purely technical issues in the full chapter 11 rewrite will certainly either the state board or the agency or jointly be in a position to give you our opinion of what would work best. At this stage it was really important to us to just come to you with the most technical bill as a starting place because the bill is so long because there are so many issues and it's so complex. And so I think we should really study the waters at all between what is what is purely technical and what starts getting into policy decisions before you had a chance to warm up the conversation. Great. Thank you. I'll echo all that sentiment on behalf of the state. Thank you. And in between that extreme policy decisions in 724 and the very technical aspects of the draft that we are providing are decisions that are in between and that is what I mentioned in the list of policy decisions are things that you might not want to decide. So far for example, under current law, if a study committee proposes a budget of more than $25,000, it needs to get pre approval from all of the districts that are going to be participating in the study committee is $25,000 still an appropriate cutoff point. We didn't feel as though that was something we should be deciding. So we put it in this current law, because it is current law, and then we made a little notation on a separate document of this is something you might want to consider. And there are there are many things like that that just aren't our, it's not our call to make, but they are things that you might want to consider. I know that that there will be notations because you will need to be sort of told. Hey, these are the areas you guys should probably decide not us. I'm probably going to be looking at a couple of you to really take this on to be really, really learn it and be the ones prepared to present it and to ask the questions and to keep us informed. Thank you. My question is, obviously, the problems existed for a long time. And I'm just curious as to how long you folks have been working on this. It'll help my comfort level to know that this has been in the works for a long time. And the 120 page bill is going to be really hard to read through. So I moved from ledge council to the agency of education in October of 2015 to try to be the non partisan person at the agency to help implement this law. So, and that was really when people were really starting to gear up to to consider unification. I kept notes, all of the attorneys I worked with in the private practice kept notes as secretary of states kept notes. So we knew a lot of the problems going into this. And then it was beginning in probably late 2018 early 2019 that we started discussions about okay what would we do if we if we could rule the world what would we do how would we change this and that's when we came up with that that outline of this would be the way to to approach it in the most accessible manner. And then I did personally did a lot of the drafting just because I was used to drafting and I had and I was being assigned to work on this whereas everybody else had a lot of other jobs that they had to do. But we met many times that the group of people who was who were involved in this. They reviewed various drafts we met and discussed them we hammered out issues that we thought, you know how to deal with issues what was this too much of a policy decision or was this something we could decide. It was this was this, you know, a natural a natural thing to put in here not really a policy decision. So there was a lot of work, most of it occurred in 2019. And then there's been fine tuning since then but most of it was in 2019. Thank you. We look forward to your guidance. And we talked about this in 2019 is something that was basically something we would be getting to but that was the year that that State Board had just finalized the mergers and it was pretty exciting. There was there was a lot of controversy and upset and then we hit the pandemic. It just wasn't the time, but it seems like right now perhaps we're ready to start to sort this out. And I'll be working I'll be checking with the clerk and just looking at as well at how we might move forward on this. Any questions can glisten. Yes, thank you. It's just going to add again in the privilege of having served on the unified district that went through the process. There are some bandits that have been put into place that have sunsets that with the promise of this of this rewrite again speaking from the hat of the unified districts out there looking to find answers. And it sounds as though many of you may be experiencing them in your own communities. And so some of the ways to get around some of these questions have been through bandits that come and need to be updated every time there's a sunset and so I know the field will welcome this big body of technical correction to be able to find themselves in the law will be really helpful for these districts. So, again, thank you for taking this on and, and I think that to rep, representative Aaron's questions. That is how some of this has been along the way needed to have been handled and I'm grateful for Donna's capturing all of these challenges and working together with others to bring forward the bigger piece of work. Thank you. We really appreciate you being here to help us through this process. Thank you so much for the question that you have an interest in diving into I recognize this is 120 odd pages, some of it will be pretty easy to follow some might have a few more questions. Some of it will be changing punctuation. Some of them will be changing sentences or borrowing from another section. So it's, but if you want to know more about governance. This will be a good place to do that work. Anything else. Okay, so I think we're okay it's staying at I know that you probably have some things drafted and I just want to have this conversation. So committee you're ready to go with with this. Anybody that says I don't even want to do don't want to even take this up everybody's ready to bring forward a committee bill to address these, these changes. Yeah, okay, good. I don't want them to start drafting. If we aren't going to be serious about taking it up because that's that's a lot of pages. I heard it was 150 pages so I'm feeling better. I really appreciate that work and and Ledge Council if you can, I guess get get this started. Happy to work with you in any way that is easiest if we take things sections by sections or just ask you to do what works best and is the least amount of busy work for you. So, questions, thoughts representative Austin, just want to clarify we're just focusing on the technical changes in this bill and not the policy changes and not the discussion about disillusion when district wants to leave their district. Is that clear. I would, I would assume that we're going to take up those questions as well. It's just a matter of where we want it to fit. I'm thinking at the floor, do I want to have a technical bill that is just technical and people are trying to bring policy in on a technical bill and they're not going to be allowed to because it's a technical bill. Or do we put the policy policy separate. It's complex in terms of how we manage it on the floor. And that's what I'm thinking because I want to make sure that we get this part through. And I know that we have a real need to address address some of the needs that were brought to us by the districts that are coming forward trying to dissolve a merger. So it will be, I will say that yes this will be part of the conversation where we put it is as I don't know yet. The equity issue is really concerning for me so I just hope we can have a conversation about that in terms of the policy issue of disillusion. Thank you. Anything else. Please let me know if you, I'm afraid I'm looking at those who are our school board members. To help us in this as well. Kim Gleason. I was just going to say that it certainly is our hope I don't I don't want to confuse the matter by my old hat. Certainly in my responsibilities to represent the state board. We really do hope, and I trust and appreciate the decisions you'll need to make around timing and what goes when to ensure that it all happens but we find ourselves without tools to really understand the problems that come before us that seem to encounter to the intent of act 46 and we need some clarity in that process that offers some analysis similar to that which went into these unifications when we are facing the challenges and the tools available to us as a state board. Our answers and where we come into the process is challenging for certain in that the process brings us in at the end. And that is challenging so I don't, I don't want to get ahead of more detailed thought on those issues. I know that we are thinking about them and those are among the things that we're collaborating with the area and then let us know when and where that feels like the right fit for your process. I will tell you that we will be looking at this. And it is my hope that we will be able to come forward with with legislation that will address that need. I'm just trying to figure out where we put it. It's not it's not if it's just where. So, that's all we have for today. So far, I think we're hoping that maybe we can get a presentation on the Act 59 task force and we're still working on that, Amanda, and I working on that. I do so want to thank Kim Gleason, the agency of education, our alleged council as well for getting started on this important topic. I know that our school districts would really appreciate it. And I think now is the time to do it.