 Welcome everybody. Donna Russo Savage, I'd like to start by introducing. Donna was for a long time our legislative assistant on this committee, and was a fantastic resource for us for a long time, and is now working at AOE. And before Donna starts, I just want to clarify what we are doing today and what we're not doing today. I understand that a lot of people have come to hear the testimony today. I think that's ultimately good. I want to make it clear that this is not a hearing on the individual actuated proposals of Act 46 with testimony on both sides about whether the map should look this way or that way. What we're doing here today is what we've done with the special ed law and what we'll also do with the statewide bargaining which is we're talking with the agencies that are in charge of implementing those about what's gone on and what progress there's been. And then in other moments, we're going to be taking testimony from the people who are affected by that. In this case, the plaintiffs in the three ongoing lawsuits have lawyers who are making their arguments publicly available. And so my sense is that the proper venue right now for people who have a grievance with either AOE or the state board is at law through their hired attorneys. So today is not a hearing where we're hearing both sides about Act 46. It's simply a progress update about where we stand from the agency's point of view and the state board's point of view. So with that said, Donna, if you could just introduce yourself. And if you would just let people know when you left the legislative council what job you stepped into and what your responsibilities were and then going two weeks. Certainly. So I was with legislative council for 16 years. And the last nine of those, as Senator Booth said, was with the education committees. And as you know, from your own legislative council, our role here is strictly nonpartisan when I worked for legislative council. When I moved to the agency of education, that was my understanding of my role there as well. I was there in a role of helping implement a lot that the legislature had acted. I went over specifically to help with the implementation of Act 46 and its related laws because there was a lot of confusion. It was a new law that was complex. And my role was not to say this is a good idea or a bad idea, but this is what the legislature has passed and this is our best understanding of how to proceed with it. So in my role during the last three years, I have talked with superintendent, school board members, people who are in favor of merger, people who are not in favor of merger and have just tried to provide whatever information I have without providing legal counsel to those people, whatever information I have to help them understand what our best understanding of the law in its current iteration says. And that's what I'm here today too, is just I think I spoke with Senator Ruth a little bit earlier. I think that I'm just gonna tell you a little bit about what has happened. I've got several different handouts that hopefully will just kind of weed you through to where we are now. That's okay. So the first one, and if you could just pass those down and Jeannie, I've got the other. Again, these handouts will show up on our website probably by the end of the day, so you can. And most, yeah, most of these things are things that people have seen before. I just tried to put them all together so that we could go through it. This is the map of districts as they existed in July one of 2015. And as you can see, it's very much a patchwork that the, in the, down here in the key, each of the different kinds of whether a district operated or tuition certain grades is indicated. So each of these different kinds of hash marks, colored hash marks, indicate what grades that particular district paid tuition for. That's the way this is indicated. So if you see a number of, let's go up here to, to, I'm sorry, I don't have my glasses on. Well, up here, the blue, a little more oil. It's all blue, that, if it's all a single color within a green barrier, that means that they have a union high school. But each of those individual towns had, at that time, had its own individual school board, school district, that in this particular case, because there are no hash marks, you know that the elementary school district operated all grades. So this just kind of gives you a feeling of, you know, what it looked like at the time as far as operating and tuitioning and how many different school districts there were in the state. And I'll give you some statistics about that. This is, it's down at the very bottom. I think it was 11, 2015, as I think when it was actually printed. The next document is, well actually, let me just back up so, because you're not all as familiar with the process as I am. In 2010, the legislature enacted Act 153, which did a number of things, including it established a program to encourage districts to form unified union school districts. Unified union school districts are pre-K through 12. It doesn't mean they have to operate pre-K through 12, but it means that they have to be responsible for pre-K through 12. And in order to encourage the creation of pre-K through 12 districts, in 2010, the legislature enacted Act 153, which created the initial program, which people referred to as the red program, regional education district program. There was some interest in that. There were a couple of votes, the votes were not favorable. There was one that was created under that program initially called the Mountain Town Reds that was later pulled into another larger district later. But in, hello. But in general, there was a lot of testimony to the legislature that it really wasn't being effective because it didn't take into account various realities on the ground. And so. I just want to clarify for Chris that well done. Thank you, thank you. I was hoping that Donna could do a whole spiel of answer questions and then we'll move to you, but sitting there is great. Yes, no problem. Thank you. So in 2012, the legislature came back to this and enacted three additional programs encouraging districts to merge that were variations on that original red program and all four of those programs continued to exist. It wasn't until 2015 when Act 46 was created that they all got pulled together with additional laws that the legislature enacted in Act 46. So Act 46 created a continuum and pulled in those old laws, those old programs, but it also created new programs. So it ended up that there were three programs that were encouraging districts to merge on their own to go to their voters and get approval to merge on their own. The first one was a first time wise one was one that at the agency we generally referred to as phase one, the accelerated program. That was created in Act 46 and that required very rapid action. The second, what we considered phase of the voter approved mergers occurred by pulling in all those older laws. So there was the red program, there was what you've probably heard of referred to as the MUDS program that were side by side. There were different kinds of programs that were attempting to address that there are different kinds of. For people who are new to the discussion, can you explain red quickly? Sure, a red was in order to be eligible for the tax rate reductions and other transitional assistance, a red required either that four existing districts merged into a single district that was responsible for pre-K through 12 or it could be a smaller number as long as the average daily membership was and all these numbers changed so much. I think it was 1200, but I'm not sure. It might have been 900 at that time. Yeah, somewhere between 1200 and 900, I can't recall it right now, which it was. So that was the one that was in 2010 and was pulled into Act 46. Another one that was pulled into Act 46, there were three that were in the, in 2012, one of them was what we called the MUDs and that allowed, it's very difficult to explain. I actually have a nice little diagram that I can bring in if you wanna talk about it at some point or I can give it to Jim. But it's a situation where there are a number of union elementary school districts, all of which operate elementary schools, all of them are members of a union high school. And what happens when all of them, except perhaps one of the local elementary school districts does not want to join, a MUD allowed all of them to join as to the high school grades and just the districts that wanted to join, joined as the elementary school grades. So you have a situation where it's a single district that is pre-K through 12 for all of the districts that voted yes, but it's something less than that, it's seven through 12 or five through 12 or whatever for the district that voted no. The district that voted no then retained its own town, school district for whatever those elementary grades were. So that was one of the other, that was one of the options that was a variation on the red. Another variation on the red was that there were gonna be certain times when there weren't going to be four districts that had the same operating tuitioning structure all together so it was impossible to create a red. And in one of these additional options that the legislature provided in 2012, they created a side-by-side program which would allow at least two districts that were the same next to at least another two districts that were the same, both of them forming their own single union elementary school district, excuse me, unified union school district. So you ended up with instead of, for example, four districts, you ended up with two newly merged districts right next to each other. That was another version. And both of those, both the muds and the side-by-sides and the reds all were part of what came into Act 46 and you'll see here were something that were taken advantage of. Another one that was not taken advantage of was the opportunity to form a union elementary school district and no one took advantage of that opportunity. So there was three phases of these voter-approved merger programs that were created or incorporated by Act 46. There was this accelerated one, which was phase one. Phase two was pulling in these others that had been enacted in the past. And the third phase was essentially like the first phase, but it didn't have to be quite as fast. So all of this had to be, I'm not gonna go into the third phase because there were none created in that the timing was a little odd. But what all of these required was that districts that were created would be operational no later than July 1, 2019. Many of them were operational earlier than that. There are still some that are not yet operational. So I'm gonna pass out, this is a list. This is very similar to a handout that was attached to the the secretary's proposal. Can you do this for Jeannie, please? Thank you. But it's updated a little bit. So this is a list of all of the voter-approved unified union school districts. So these were approved under those phases I was just talking about, either an accelerated phase or a mud or a side-by-side or a red. And what it does is it lists the name of each new unified union school district. It identifies what their K-12 operating and tuitioning patterns are. It says what the original SU was. And in those cases where not every district within the SU merged, it identifies those and then parenthetically italicized. And then the final column is the date on which they became fully operational. There were a few that became fully operational in 2016. Most of them were actually 2018, July 1, 2018. And there are a handful, both in 2017 and this year. So that's what this is. And you can, you know, it's just data. It's, you can peruse it at your wherever. And is there, I don't see a legend here for the T's and O's. T and O is, I'm sorry. The T is they pay tuition and the O is they operate. So if it says K-12-O, it means that district operates K-12 for all of its students. If it says in Caledonia Cooperative School District, which is one, two, three, four down, they operate several schools that offer K-8 and they tuition 9-12. So, but they are a single district with multiple towns and all of those students are the same. Another thing I should say is that we've, in all of the data that I'm gonna give you, we talk about K-8, even though these are actually pre-K, whatever districts, and the reason we don't talk about pre-K is because even if a district operates a pre-K, it's required to pay tuition. So it just becomes, it becomes very difficult to know how to deal with categorizing. So just for simplicity, we talk about K-12, but we can get you information about pre-K if that's something that you like information about. The next thing I'll give you, and this we won't spend any time on because it's basically the same. This is just a map of the current, of the document that you have there. Could you pass that to me? Thank you. So this is just, so that you can see as a map that list of districts that I gave you before. Did I give you the right one? Yes, I did, okay. So all of the orangey ones are the new Unified Union School Districts that were created by voter approval under one of the programs that the legislature enacted. The others that are various colors, yellow and pink and blue, these are all of the districts that did not voluntarily pursue that path. And it gives, again, it gives, even in voluntarily merged districts, newly created districts, it, again, gives the identification of what grades are tuitioned, if any, are tuitioned in that district. One thing I will point out is you'll find on this map there are five districts that are polka dots and you'll see one way over on the western side is stayed about halfway down. And the polka dots indicate the, what I was talking about with the muds before they are a member of the union school district only for the high school grades and they retained their own district for the elementary school grades. So it was just a different way of identifying them. Is this map the same as that one? No, it's not. Different map. That's a different map and I'll get that one in a minute. So this gives you only the results of what happened after districts took advantage of the various voluntary programs that the legislature created. It says here, voter-approved merger activities is kind of how you can tell. But it says as of July 1st, 2019. It says of July 1, 2019. The reason is because if you see on there you'll see that some of them don't become operational until then, they've already been created and that felt like it was more helpful to know what it's gonna look like rather than what it looks like this year which is a transitional here. So, to some degree concurrently, but more at the very end of these voluntary phases. The next thing that Act 46 did was said any district that has not created one of these districts that is eligible for the tax rate reductions and a few other districts. And I'll talk about that a little bit more in a minute. But except for a certain group of districts, any district that hasn't gone forward with the merger is required to do three things before and it turned, the timing got changed and it ended up being before December 26th of last year. And those three things were, those districts that hadn't voluntarily merged needed to talk with the other districts in their region. They had to self-evaluate how they were doing on their own currently. And they also had to present a proposal to the state board going forward, either that they would, how they would change whatever they're currently doing so that it could be better able to meet the goals that the legislature had set in a more sustainable way. And that could be done by keeping the same governance structure but changing some of the things they did. Recognizing that there were certain issues that were problematic and how are they addressing those. It could be entering into agreements with other districts to work together in certain ways. It could be merging with them in the future. You know, it was up to them to make that proposal. When that proposal was then made, there were two more steps and I can talk about this in more detail if you'd like. But the next step was that the secretary of education was required to review these proposals and review what was going on in the state and have conversations with the school boards about whatever their proposal was and then to come up with a plan to, and the language is, I mean it's kind of almost indelible at this point, is to merge districts where necessary to create sustainable structures capable of meeting the goals of the act. So I mean, that is a little bit paraphrased but that was it. The secretary was directed to come up with this plan that merged the districts where it was necessary to do it to further the goals of the act. There were certain things that, oh, I'm sorry, and we will go on to this in a minute, but then the third phase of it was is that the state board would review the secretary's proposal, had the option of talking to any districts it chose to and then it was required to come out with a plan that was considered an order and the way that it was written is, as it said, shall issue its order merging districts where again, where necessary. So there were these three phases of the places that hadn't merged, most of the places that had merged that was the self-evaluation, talk with your neighbors, come up with a proposal. The second part of it was the secretary reviews the proposals, reviews other information and comes up with a plan. And then the third phase was is that the state board would review the plan and had the ability to take testimony if it chose to and then it had to issue its order. And the way that the language was written in the law was that the state board could accept the secretary's proposal or could make changes or could come up with its own version as opposed to take that into account but then go forward from there. So I started to say that there were some districts that did not need to go through this. And essentially there are three, four, five types of districts that were not required to go through this last phase. And this is the types. The first type were interstate school districts for Act 46 explicitly exempted interstate school districts from going through this process of figuring out how they could change their governance or work with other districts better to move forward. And there are two interstate school districts. It also, the second category it exempted from this last phase were the regional career technical center districts. I don't know where all of you come from but some of you might be in places where there are actual districts as opposed to being part of a high school district. And then those three are listed there. The third category that was in Act 46 were those new union districts that were created. If they were eligible for tax rate reductions and other transitional assistance, they'd already gone through that process of self-evaluation and talking to other districts and coming up with a plan and coming to the state board. And so that was already taken care of by the process that they had gone through. So here it says please see the document that I just handed out for those. So that was where it stood in 2015. In 2017, the legislature enacted Act 49 which then exempted some other districts from having to go through this final process. One of them was it added a new exemption that a supervisory district, so that's a supervisory union that has only one district that has at least 900 students did not have to go through this process. And so then this was in 2017 that this was enacted and that's the list there of the districts that were exempt under that category. The final way that a district did not have to go through this process was through a three by one or two by two by one process that was also created in Act 49 of 2017. And I realized after the fact I said receiving exemption as a three by one, there's actually one here that's a two by two by one but it's the same general idea. And it is that there was a new program created in Act 49 of 2017 that said, if you're three districts and you can't quite make the requirements of otherwise to be able to be eligible for the tax rate reductions and you have another district near you that has a different structure, the four of you can come in together and the three districts will be eligible for the tax rate reductions. The fourth one that's different will get early approval from the state board that the state board is not going to require to change when the state board does a program, does a plan in the future. And so the districts that were received those early exemptions from being considered by the state board were Alberg. It came in with the three districts that formed the Champlain Islands Unified District. By doing this, the three Champlain Island districts were able to get tax rate reductions. And also by doing this, the Alberg school district was able to get early assurance that the state board was not going to change its structure or not going to require it to merge because the state board does not have the authority to change structure. Another one was the Iris School District and then if you skip down the Rutland Town School district, there were two new districts near them that also created that are now part of the greater Rutland SU. Ira and Rutland Town came together with those two and said, we'd like early assurance that you're not going to merge us and the state board provided that. Peacham came in with what is now the Caledonia Cooperative Unified Union School District and by doing so, Peacham got that assurance it was not going to be merged and those other three districts that formed Caledonia Cooperative were able to receive the tax rate reductions and other assistance. And then finally, Marlboro School District is a similar situation. It came in with merging districts in its area and was able to get that assurance that the state board would not merge it with another district and have it be a part of the larger governance structure. So those are the districts that were off the table when the state board was looking at all of this. The next document, these are all of, this is what happens to all of the districts that were subject to the final report and order that was issued by the officers. So first there were, and there will be more information about this in my final document, this tells you about all of the districts. The first page is the state board merged 25 different districts and these were in this first group, these merged districts are the ones that are in Vitalix to create these 11 new, excuse me, 25 to create one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, that's right. Yeah, excuse me, seven new Unified Union School Districts. So these are pre-K through 12 districts that the state board created by merging those districts that are parenthetically listed after each of them. Another group of districts that the state board dealt with was there were four new Union Elementary School Districts that it created and again these were by merging the parenthetical Italicized Districts following it. They merged two districts into an existing Union School District. So Montgomery and Sheldon are listed here. They were merged into the Northern Mountain Valley, USD and then final group of merged districts, it conditionally merged those five districts that were the elementary school districts involved in a mud and the reason it was conditionally is because the mud itself was eligible to receive tax rate reductions and other transitional assistance, it could not be required to do anything by the state board so it has to be voluntarily willing to accept these districts. The next two pages list by Supervisor Union, alphabetically by Supervisor Union, those districts that the state board considered and said, no, you're right, it isn't best to require you to merge and so these are the districts on the pages two and three that retained their current governance structure and will not merge to form a larger Union District and in all of these situations, we've indicated whether they're K-8 operating, K-12 operating, whatever they're operating in tuition and structure again using that same method of O and T and then the math that you have up there right now is the one that shows the, what is the result of the state board mergers? The mud that have to approve those mergers, are those votes of the towns or the districts in the mud or just like the board? No, it's the voters of the entire mud including because for example, for example, Orwell, Orwell is a mud, or was part of a mud for the high school grades so it required a vote of everybody in the mud including Orwell even though Orwell was the subject of it so it's the voters in the entire district voted for it so this is basically the same as the previous one except that instead of having the operating in tuitioning identified, in gray are all of the districts where the state board of education required that there be mergers, white are all of the places where it did not require it, orange is the same as on your earlier map that those were all of the places where the voters followed one of the programs and actually I should have said there were two asterisks in, you don't need to go back to it, I'll just point them out, in the second document I gave you which was the voter approved, there were two asterisks, one is that those places that became eligible for the tax rate reductions and other transitional assistance because it was the three or the two and a three by one or two by two by one and the other is there were three districts that during the same period chose to voluntarily merge even though they were not eligible for tax rate reductions or other transitional assistance and so those are identified by different asterisks. So finally, and then, I'm sorry. So I just, on my handout of the first page of the school or the state board of education created the districts, are any of these districts satisfied with what the state government did? Some of the districts are but it isn't necessarily that all of them aren't within the districts. So for example, there might be a place where a new district was created and two of the emerging districts are unsatisfied and are part of the lawsuit and the other two are not or when it can go in many directions it can go so all of them are or all of them are not or it's a mixed bag. So the final document is just bringing you up to date with all of the different numbers and the changes from the governance. So in fiscal year 13, so this was prior to, not prior to the enactment but prior to anything happening actually with acts 153, 156 or 46. There were 276 districts prior to act 46 because there had been a couple of mergers, there were 267. If you take all of the voter approved mergers under acts 153, 156 and 46, there are 154 districts compared to 276. If you include the state board mergers, there are, it goes down to 120 districts and if all of those potential mergers with the muds occur, there would be 116 districts as opposed to 276 districts. And it gives information about the net reduction and also about changes in SUs. I'm not gonna go through every bit of this because you can read it for yourselves but I would, I just wanna point out a couple of things about this. One is that voter approved mergers since the enactment of act 46, it was 151 districts located in 141 towns merged to form 38 new school districts. There were seven merger proposals that the voters didn't approve and even in those places where the voters didn't approve it, voters in eight districts approved merger, voters in 18 districts did not. And also just to point out that there were, there were several instances where newly merged districts were created. There were eight merger proposals that were actually approved but one of the districts chose not to merge and so it is not merged. On the second side, this is to give you some information about those proposals that I said would come from any of the districts that are not exempt from the state board's plan. It was all, it was, what they had to do was talked about in section nine of act 46 so we always talked about them in section nine proposals. So there were 46, either districts or groups of districts that submitted an oral or written section nine proposal. If you separated all of those districts and groups of districts out, there were 96 districts and of those 96 districts, 11 of them were union high school districts. That represented 90 towns of those 46 proposals. So it's either be a district or group of districts and again, and this goes back to your question, there were situations where one district would ask for one thing and another district in the same area would ask for something else and only one of those could come true. So of those 46 proposals, nine proposed that the state board require merger, 30 proposed to retain the same governance structure, three requested the opportunity to be able to go forward with either a proposed merger to their voters or to create an interstate school district and four either made no real proposal or proposed something that the state board didn't have the authority to do, doesn't have legal authority to do. Then if you go to the last category here, the state board's final report and order. So it addressed all of these 96 districts by requiring 45 districts located in 39 towns to either form 11 new districts or enlarge existing districts. It conditionally required an additional four town and elementary districts to merge with the muds. And the reason it's only four rather than five here is because Slate Valley, which is the district that of which Orwell is a partial member had its vote before the state board issued the order and said, if the state board orders us to do this, do we accept or orders Orwell to join us? Do we accept it? So that got included within the merger. And then finally, it did not change the governance structure of 47 districts. So it's 45 that were merged, four that were conditionally merged and 47 that were not merged. And I wanna give one other piece of information that I didn't include. And that is that in fiscal year 18, so 27, 2018 academic year, there were approximately 78,700 kindergarten through grade 12 students in the state. That was 78,700. If you add in the numbers that have been in each of these phases, 36,752 of them, which is about 46.7, live or will soon live in that first category that I told you about, the voluntary mergers. If you add in the students that already live in supervisory districts, those were those eight or nine districts that the legislature decided in 2017 were large enough not to have to go through this process. If you add that, there's another almost 16,500 additional students there. So if you add those two together, you come up with 53,247 is what I have. So it's a total of about 67.6% of the students. If you add in the additional students that are impacted by the state board's order, that's almost, it's 10,000 and then almost 700, 10,694 additional students are impacted by the state board's order. That brings the total of students who either live or will soon live in a unified union or union elementary school or union, yeah, union elementary school district to 63,941 students, which is 81% of the student population using K through 12 fiscal year 18 numbers. So I know that that's a lot and I'm really happy to answer questions now or come back in a later time to answer questions. Let's take questions for Donna before we hear from Chris. So to the extent that you have any. Don, can you let's look at Senator Perzler first? Senator Pan. You thought the section nine proposals so you list the 46 proposals of 30, you list that they proposed to retain the same governance structure. Was that the requirement? I mean, what do you mean? So I guess I'm wondering why that's the bullet point, the governance structure. Was the question in section nine saying, propose a new governance structure so those that didn't get a bullet point and was that that they make no other suggested changes that they just. No, the reason that's the bullet point is just because that's what the state board's order does or doesn't do. It either changes the governance structure or it doesn't change the governance structure. So this was just a way to be able to compare the two. That was all. But they proposed other changes so it's different than saying don't do anything. In most situations, yeah. What point will we see results from some of these districts that emerge, especially the ones that took place in 2017? Are we saving money? How are we getting better outcomes? We're starting to get information mostly anecdotally at this point and one of the things that we need to turn to right now is determining what sorts of data needs to be collected and can be collected. Some of the things that we have seen and there are a few examples that were given in our report to the legislature from last January so you might want to take a peek at that were for the first time all of the districts had a single facilities manager and even though there was an additional cost of having that facilities manager what they saved in other instances allowed them to have librarians and are in elementary schools that had previously had it. So there's some, again anecdotal evidence of those kinds of changes being made but I don't have any hard evidence of anything Part of what's difficult and this is part of what we've been struggling with is when you said hard data about how much is being saved it's difficult to know when money is being repurposed because many of these districts that did go forward with this told in their self-analysis before they came to the state board with their merger proposals said we've had to cut these particular programs. And so if money is freed up it might be that it's put back into expanding those programs or putting those programs back in rather than actually saving anything for the voters. So that was a very long answer for we don't have anything we're struggling with how to figure out what to include our report to the legislature for this year will include additional information we can get from some of the districts that have been up and running for a while. I will say that last year budgets came in well under the situation, based by Brad James it's his consideration that had a good deal to do with Act 46, if that's the case we should see a similar effect this year. So I didn't put much stock in one year's result but it was the right result if the trend is gonna be the way we thought it would be. And Brad is definitely the person we'll be able to talk to you about those financial issues. Another question I guess that if we haven't figured out the variables to measure how does the agency define success with Act 46? Does it, is it with just less school districts? Is it with, I was here as my freshman year I was in the house and it's very clear this was a cost savings measure and that public sentiment is very, the march out of the agency has been changed in the last few years. How do we address how do you, the word folks that gotta go home and talk to our constituents, how do we say this was a successful law, it wasn't a successful law, how do we define that? Well, the Act 46 identified several different goals and actually the first ones that I identified were educational opportunities and then it was transparency and then it was financial savings. So I think all of those things are important to look at and I think that we're going to have to look at all of those things and I don't know because a lot of it is comparing what a particular district or group of districts was able to do before to what it was doing afterwards and so some of it is going to need to be anecdotal in that way that there are more opportunities now in this particular region. And I don't really have a good answer for you at this point, I'm sorry. And I believe Chris and they have more information at least from the state board perspective what opportunities have been and again this wouldn't be systematic data but in terms of contact with voluntary mergers that's had enough experience from the federal county. So that's one more question. And just to kind of point to one transparency seems to me that how are we going to measure that one? One thing, one way that it can be and I know that people have very different opinions about whether there is more transparency or less transparency but one area where there is more transparency is that when you have a supervisory union that's responsible for a number of member districts the supervisory union has become increasingly more responsible and is currently responsible for a very large percentage of what goes on of the cost of what goes on in among all of the districts for example it is responsible for providing for special education services and that's probably where it comes is the biggest. When a supervisory union puts together a budget that puts together the budget of what it needs it then is allocated to each of the districts and if the voters vote their budget down they don't have the ability in a district they don't have the ability to change what that supervisory union allocation is. So there were very large chunks of money in supervisory unions that are going out to the voters and the voters have no ability to change them. So one of the ways that this does create more transparency is that's just one line item. If you have a single large district that is its own supervisory union there isn't a separate supervisory union budget it is the district's budget. So in those places that have merged one of the ways that there is more transparency is that what is being spent on special ed is one of the items that can be changed if the voters vote the budget down. There are other ways that people and I'm sure that when people come in and talk to you they will tell you why they do not believe that there is as much transparency. I know that people have expressed concern that they no longer will have the meeting occurring in their own school, in their own town that they can go to on a regular basis and talk to those people who are their neighbors. Those neighbors will be now part of a larger district and so I know that there's some concern among some people that there is less transparency and I'm sure that you'll be hearing from that as well. Other questions for, and by the way we won't be taking questions from the audience when I say questions, I mean from Sam. Of the section nine proposals, I know you have this note here, this is the part that I'm trying to learn on more about the stuff that I don't kind of follow how that all happened. So were any of the section nine proposals approved or accepted? That isn't the way the legislation was written. The legislature, the legislation was written is that they would make these proposals, the secretary would review them and come up with a proposal herself and then that proposal would be reviewed by the state board and it would come up with them and it had the option but it didn't need to talk to the locals. So it wasn't unlike a merger proposal, there wasn't a yes the state board approves it or no the state board doesn't approve it, there was never that part worked into the process, it was part of the information that was given along the proposal, along the path. So the answer is no because they didn't approve or disapprove any. In reality of the, you know of those places that weren't changed, they, you know, to some degree accepted their proposal, they had at the very least accepted their proposal that they didn't want to become part of a larger district. And so that, you know, that was what the state board was charged with was where do we need to change district governance in order to meet these? Yes, that was what they were given. They were given the opportunity in section nine to make a case not to be merged and 47 of them were successful in their case, not to be merged. But Don is right, there is a semantic distinction about whether their proposal was approved or not approved, it was in effect approved because they were allowed to remain as they were with the plan for changing other things besides the governance approach. Um, just follow up on that. So was there another part of the process that we could put in here of the, of when the secretary says that the proposals were really made to the secretary? Right. And then the secretary made a proposal to the board. Yeah, and because that, because those were, because that was just a proposal, I didn't include it, but I could give you that information. And there, I'm sorry, I don't have it with me, but there were a certain number that the state board did not agree with with the secretary's proposals, either that the state board said yes, the secretary said yes, you should merge them and the state board said no. There were some that the state board said we don't think you should merge them and the state board said yes, we do. And there were a number that the secretary said no and the state board agreed. There were some that the secretary said merge and the state board agreed. For the most part, I think it agreed with most of the yes mergers and no mergers, but there was a fairly significant group that they did not accompany with one way or the other. Yeah, and I have those numbers, but it's something that you need to track for you. Can you clarify what you just said about the 45-down thing? Didn't really get approved, but got approved, I don't understand what you're saying. In other words, it wasn't that the state board had a process for approving. That was information that would theoretically convince the state board not to merge them or change their governance structure. So those, at the end there, the 47 districts whose governance structures were not changed were successful in their plea not to be merged. It wasn't that the board said we, correct me if I'm wrong, Kristen, we have approved this. It was more like they added to the discussion on the board in a successful way by getting their desired outcome, it's not true. And some of those 47 were like the four that didn't even propose. They just said we don't know what to do. Kind of like that. No, there were some that didn't propose because their current board could not reach consensus on what to propose. I can think of at least one of those where the state board did require them to merge. Another place where they asked for something that couldn't be done, they were not merged. So I think it, again, it's just- So I can think of it in my district, Twinfield district, like they didn't try to vote, they didn't vote, so then they just didn't do anything. So I thought they were one of the four that didn't do anything. No, they said that they would like to, I believe that they were not considered one of the ones that was a four. They actually said that they could foresee that merger would be beneficial to them. And that was really information that was presented. Does that goes to your nine proposed that SB require a merger? I would have to look at the numbers, but I believe so. But that's the kind of thing that you heard from some, like we're open to you figuring it out because we couldn't get come to a conclusion whether or not- Right, and there were some situations, like there was one that I can think of where I believe two of the districts weren't able to, no, two of the districts said, yes, please merge, just one of the districts said, no, definitely don't merge us. And the fourth district wasn't able to reach consensus. I believe that was the way it sugared off. It might have been that two didn't reach consensus and it was one and one. And the state board came up with a plan that it couldn't make everybody happy, so it came up with a plan that did something. Wonderful, thank you very much. You're very welcome. If you wanna switch seats, or if you have to leave. No, I'm not anywhere till three, three. Okay, so welcome, Krista. Thank you. So, Krista Hewling is a chair of the state board and has been in that role for two years. Two years now. And I also wanna acknowledge to your belt in this room. And can you see? Yeah, Mr. Hewling, do you wanna sit? No. Are you sure you're okay? Well, this is not pretty out here, so. So. Do you wanna sit here? Well, what do you mean? I'll just stand over to the side, it's fine. Okay, come on in. Donna, lunch, come on in. Okay. So, Donna moved from West Council to AOE. Peter moved from the house to the state board and it's part of this institutional memory of how things got where they are. So welcome to you both. Feel free to present however you like. Yeah, I mean, first I'd just like to introduce myself and thank you for having me. For some of you it was me for the first time and some of you have been here for a while. And so, I'm Krista Hewling, I live in Cambridge. I also am a teacher in South Burlington, so that's why I was teaching this morning and came up here right after classes and trying to find parking. It was a little difficult, so thank you. For, thank you, Donna, for coming in and being first to go. And so, I just wanna welcome and looking forward to years of coming and working together. And then, Peter, you really say. You want my brief bio? I've been on the school board's elementary, junior high school, tech center. It's on the Port of Trustees, the state colleges, and now I'm on, I was eight years in the house head and now I'm on the state board event. Yeah. So, thank you for having us in. And we can just really get sort of with the process and how we went forward. And so, Donna went over so much information there. This right here is a memo that the state board put out in July. And this memo, so in this memo, it just goes over, it was issued in July. Yes, we can give it over the end too. So, just when we looked at our charge, just like everybody else on June 1st, we got to see the state plan. And so, we weren't given any sort of preview to that plan. And so, just as it went up at six o'clock at night, that's when all the board members went on were looking for the plan itself. We then had a special meeting just to go over the overview of what was in that plan. And that was in early June. And later that month in June, we had our annual retreat. And at the annual retreat, we're able to sit back at this point we had gone through and looked at the plan and figure out how did we wanna move forward. And so, the first thing that we did is we looked at what was required of us in section 10. So, you heard a lot about section nine and section 10 is really where the state board comes in. And we were charged with review and analyze the secretary's proposal. We're also given the charge of approving the proposal either in its original form or its amended form that hears provisions of the subsections. Or, and the last one is to publish on the agency's website it's our order emerging and realigning districts when necessary. And so, this, we were issued in July and we had the deadline of November 30th. So, we're looking at oh, how do we do this in a way that would be a successful way of trying to analyze and go through the secretary's plan. The first thing, when we look at section 10, it authorizes does not require the state board to take testimony or ask for additional information from districts and to provide us reunions. So, that was not included. So, this is what, this is very much in the contrast of what's required of the secretary. And when the secretary is required for the opportunity to be heard from each study committee. But we decided that we, even though it said we didn't need to take additional information from districts and supervisory unions, we decided that this was something that we have to do. And that we gave ourselves that task of making sure that we gave everybody an opportunity to come to the state board and to have their say. And so, this was a challenge looking at a board that meets once a month. So, we were not given any additional resources to complete this task. And we had from June until November to get it done. And so, we looked and took a step back and so, it was the best way to do this. We decided to have three meetings. So, July, August and September that we traveled around the state. Again, an effort to try to get closer not that we got into every geographic region but we decided to be North, South and Central in an attempt just to get to these different areas. So, we moved our board meetings into those areas. And at that time, we decided not to do anything other than look at this plan. So, we pushed off every other piece of business really and we're still just getting caught up right now on all the things that we had to delay in order to do that. And we had meetings that were between eight and nine hours long going and taking testimony. So, to do that, we invited, we divided the state into different regions and invited everybody to come. And yes, it was 20 minutes. I know that wasn't a satisfactory number for a lot of people but it's a way that we could have everybody come in and still have it be manageable. And 20 minutes when we asked the different areas to come in and talk, 10 minutes really about, we'd already had the secretary's plan. We had a section nine proposals. We asked for additional information from every day before we got there about why it was not practical or possible, which we said many times. And why the secretary's plan and react into that. So, we got that information and we gave them the 10 minutes and then allowed 10 minutes for questions. And to prepare for those meetings, we not only had the secretary's report, we did go through the section nine proposals and use that as a background for people as we're going and asking questions. And so, we would spend a day listening and taking testimony. We would also leave time for public comment, which many people in the room here today were there for public comment. And so, we invited everybody in to make sure they had their say. We always went over public comment and we still maintain, we still allow people come in. And in addition, we also took a lot of public comment in writing through email from a lot of people from the outside. So, the state board then took these meetings and we spent really three months listening and reviewing the plan and going through. And starting in October, we knew that we need to have some extra meetings just to try to go through more. So, we had three meetings in the month of October. So, we had the July, August, September meetings. In October, we decided we needed more times. We spent one meeting just going over all the information that we had heard and trying to think about where we're gonna make principles and how we're gonna make these decisions as a board. And we did this all again in open meeting. This is all in public figuring out what is our process going to be. And so, we did that and at first we tried to come up with this idea of do we have guiding principles and then we kept going back to a little guiding principle is the law. And what does the law say and what does the law direct us to do? And so, we spent more time just looking at the law and really trying to take what the will of the legislation was and put that into our decision making. And then we decided to, once we took out one meeting, again, an eight hour meeting, going through and looking at the law and the principles and where we're gonna go and move forward, the next two following meetings, we decided to take sort of a vote on whether or not to agree with the secretary or not. And we then pushed out if we agreed to a state plan and if we didn't agree with the secretary then we would have to come back with our own decision. So, we went one by one through all the decision points and deciding whether or not that they should be included or not. And again, when we reached a point where there's one that we disagreed with the secretary, most often it got pushed to the next meeting and then we had some sort of proposal and sometimes we had a proposal of that meeting itself. So, that differed. And then at the very end, we came together and took a final vote on all the votes that we had taken in and that makes up the encompasses the state plan that we submitted to you as a legislature. And so, that was our process moving forward and we, again, put everything else to the side and just focused on this. And right now, we have not taken up anything post-4-6 about this. We've tried to move on into these other areas that we've been working on and get prepared for it. I just had a couple of things about it. When we were doing the regional meetings, you assigned the board members to sort of focus on districts so that we were all coming in as a team, really focused on particular districts and their situations. The other thing, we spent quite a bit of time during this process on small school metrics and that was sort of a bump in the road that that. Well, it was interesting because we were writing a report that we're gonna be discussing tomorrow at our meeting and that we owe the legislature a report about what we did last year and it was really reacting to directives from the legislature. So we were directed to create small school metrics and that was due by June 30th. So that's what we completed at our junior retreat and we've been working on the months up to that getting there. It was a little bit difficult because it directs us to use EQS and there is no data collected by the agency just on EQS. So that's where it was not as easy as it may be intended. So that took a process, so that went up to June and then we started with this and that's been really encompassed. Our whole year has been answering directives that have been given to us by the legislature. Without additional resources. Without additional resources, yes. And so we were able to get some legal counsel with some reclaimed funds but we had no independent legal counsel. So we didn't have access into independent legal counsel until October. Okay, thank you. Questions for either Crystal or Peter? How much did the testimony, I was the one in the Northeast Kingdom this summer, how much did you guys take that into account and how much weight did you put behind local community votes? I think especially with the local, first of all with the testimony, I found it extremely helpful because I think all of us reacted. We all went through our own different phases of reacting to the report, to the secretary's report and it really gave us different ways of looking at the report in different perspectives and I know all of us kind of, we would feel one way and then go another and I think we were really swayed by the public testimony and as it comes to local votes, we also struggled with that because the way the law is written, you saw with Donna, I think she did a really great job of showing you what was excluded by the legislature and that's not include any local votes and no votes. So we did struggle with that and in the end, we went back to the law and followed what we believe the law told us to do and again, that was difficult and I think a lot of board members had to, we all went through our own sort of journey with this piece of legislation and we did spend so much time with this and again, not only just the board meetings but preparing for all the board meetings and reading the report over and over and going back to the law and I think that was the most interesting process was you would be reading the secretary's plan and you get some public comment, you go back to the law and you're like, well, what does the law really say and you go back, so I just found over and over we're returning to the actual legislation and not just in 46 but in 49 and looking for what was written down and given to us as directives. And if I could just add a little color commentary, so I've been in this room for the last eight plus years and every year we've been working on one of these things, Act 153, Act 156 or Act 46. I will say no piece of that had more intentional thought and discussion than the end game of Act 46. So the fact that it moved from the legislature to the governor's signature, to the agency, to the state board, we settled on that after months of considering other ways to do it and should this be the final piece, should it come back to the legislature, should this happen? So love it or hate it, it was not an accident the way it's written, it was very deliberate. So for one, I'm glad to hear that the board was returning to the actual legislation as much as it did. Do you wanna say something? I just wanna say that I think this for the board members was transformative event. I mean, this, we really coalesced, there was no politics or there's nothing and this was serious stuff, this was tough stuff and we really spent a lot of time in deliberation and I think in terms of the group, we really, I'm not sure I've ever been on board to see some people come together and be so forthright and inclusive and thoughtful and researched. I mean, it was, I don't know if you wanna say, but as all of us, whatever your political affiliation, we really did work together as a unit and we didn't invite this, you know what I'm saying? That's right. But, you know. Senator Ringo. Yes, remind us again of the composition of the State Board, how many people, what would you graph your region from, what would be the background? Sure, so it's interesting right now, there are two females on the board, myself and Stacey Warmburger who's from Burlington. So Peter, and I'm from Cambridge, I've been in the Moyle County. So Peter. I'm from Woodbury, maybe called the Gateway to the Northeast Kingdom, if I'm close. Close. We have a student member, Callie Henback, who is in St. John'sbury. So Bill Mathis and Bill Mathis is down in Goshen. We have Mark Perrin who's from Middlebury. We have Oliver Olson who, what is it? Is it the Manchester area? London Dairy. London Dairy, okay, London Dairy. And then John O'Keefe who's London Dairy, John Carroll who is Norwich. John O'Keefe is Manchester, isn't he? Oh, Manchester, sorry, yeah, sorry. Because they are in a similar area. And John Carroll is from Norwich. And we also have Kyle Coutois who's from the Georgia North area. So we have two board members that will be leaving and that is Stacey and Mark. And so their last board meeting is February so we'll have two more. But that was the composition going in to the end. And we have two student members. The junior goes in as non-voting and the second year's voting. These are very, they're active. They really contribute a lot to this, to the board. And actually, so our student member that was voting, Callie Henback, she was great about helping me keep my study skills up over the summer and making sure during the research. So it was really, everybody, as you said, we took assignments in going through and making sure every section I proposal was read in depth by at least three board members. And using that as our foundation that we would have different people study different plans. And within those plans that people would go and look at board minutes for what had happened at the local board. So not only, because we were taking what people were coming and telling us but then what were we not hearing? And so we're doing our own research in that respect and looking at board minutes from those local areas. So using all those resources for resources. I'll get back to your decision-making process. Can you talk us through the examples where the secretary, or just an example, how you made your decision where in the case where the secretary didn't recommend a merger for you chose to merge those districts? That seems to be harder for you as a board to do than to look at a merger situation and say, no, we don't agree that it should be a merger. But to take something where the secretary said, nah, I think they have a good plan but you guys chose to merge it. Can you just take us through that thought process? Yeah, and so I- I'm glad you did that conclusion. Yeah, and so I can't go into any specifics because as you know we're in the legal parties but as it comes to our decision process, I think it was as we're going through we're looking for consistency too within the plan itself. And how is this, how are we coming to decisions? If we got to an area and we're just, we didn't, we would first take a vote whether we agreed with the secretary or not. And so that was sort of the initial, okay, if we're reading this, does this fit into the rest of the plans that makes sense with the local information? If we disagreed, then we went to another path. So we took the vote and then we would look for a defense solution. And so with that, I think there are numerous factors and it really does depend on the local, what was going on, but it wasn't just a one-size-fit all. We really tried to look at various different factors. Is sure your final report out yet? Yeah, oh yeah, so November 30th, it was online. So that was part of our requirements published on the agency's website and that is online. And was it a unanimous vote for the final plan? It wasn't. And I think that speaks to the strength of the plan is that we, as Peter alluded to, we all, you know, every single decision point, people felt very differently and some agreed and some didn't agree and it wasn't unanimous. And most decisions were not. And it was not just one or two people that always were on the outside, it was always a mix. And so it's me that spoke to that, that everybody was really trying to look at the case itself. And as Peter alluded to right now, currently with the makeup of the board, we have conservative to liberal to very moderate in between and we have people that were, it was not a political decision, it was really trying to get me through the facts. Is there a question? This is a basic question. So the secretary had a plan, is yours also called a plan or yours is a report of the secretary's plan or what's this determination? Is it the final order? It's a final order, but it came up. It's also a final report and order, report and order. Yeah, if you look behind you on the laminated map. Yeah, it's a final order. But it's in a report, which is four points. And if a town that had a section nine proposal wished to read that final order report, would they get an answer or like an explanation of why their proposal was or wasn't because it wasn't accepted or changed or like in Senator Perrin's, you know, that's not going to happen. That's a good question. In the final order, we really reacted to the secretary's plan because that's what we were directed to do under legislation. So we were directed. So if you're going back to the lettering that we needed to review and analyze the secretary's plan and either approve it, it's original form or amend it. So we really tried to work from the secretary's or plan and react to that. As a report includes the analysis. Yes, yeah, and so, and really. The analysis, in other words, rather than deliver it to each group that submitted a section nine plan, it's all available there, but it's speaking deliberately to their situations. And the secretary's report in general, just a lot of analysis of the section nine plans too. So in some places we react to some of that analysis. So that's where I can't say yes, we reacted to every single one. But again, since we were reacting to the secretary's plan and there was a lot of section nine proposals analyzed within that plan, there are some reactions, direct reactions to this. So do you think if a town had a proposal and they read either just your plan or a report in order in the secretary's plan, they would feel like their proposal was responded to, that they would understand why it either was changed or not changed or what part of their plans kind of went somewhere and what first didn't? I would never want to say that, like tell somebody how they should feel. Like, I think, but I think that's a bit. Do you feel like that's in there, that kind of information? I feel like a lot of it isn't because within the secretary's plan itself, the secretary spent time going through and there was a section nine including some analysis of that and also doing a highlights where Donnie can speak to that, just the appendix section and going through and highlighting what was in that section nine proposal. I don't think every area would agree that the secretary maybe captured that and so that's why I would never try to say how people felt. I can tell you that the appendix, there were two particular appendices to the secretary's proposal because all of the section nine proposals that came forward were responding to the goals that the legislature had laid out and were giving the kinds of information that the state board had come up with with metrics or rules for what kinds of things might show some of their abilities to meet the goals or not. But every single report section, excuse me, every single section nine proposal that came to the secretary was different in the way that it was formatted and what it focused on and there were some that were two pages, there were some that were literally four binders but it didn't necessarily mean that because it was large, it was more thorough in its analysis. So what we did was we had two appendices at the back of the secretary's proposal, one of which took each of those goals and copied and pasted from their proposals how they planned or how they said that they were meeting it or what they were planning to do to change it so that it would be possible to look at a four page document rather than a 700 page document that was set up in the same way for each district and try to say okay, how did they respond to this? The second thing we did was Brad James, our finance person came up with certain data points that were identical, they were pulled off from the identical sources for each proposal because one of the other things we found is that some people would talk about ADM, some people would talk about enrollment, some people would talk about pre-K, some people wouldn't. So we wanted to be able to have numbers that were apples to apples and it could be compared. So both of those things are resources at the back of the secretary's proposal. One question's time, just to follow up on Senator Hardy's question, could you let us know for the record what the vote was? Oh wait, two to safety. And how many two? What? There was eight, so six, four, and two against. And as a chair, I don't vote, I only vote if there is a tie in any direction. So there are nine voting members on the board. Well thank you both very much and Donna as well as you can tell from the attendance today, it remains an issue that is going through that long process, it's now moved to a different venue. But speaking for myself, you guys took an amazingly difficult task and I think you approached it with exactly the right seriousness and you I think actuated the law that we wrote, whether or not the courts agree that it's legal with him, that's a somewhat separate issue, but I think you've got faith with what you're asking me. Thank you. Thank you. So folks, we have Nicole Mason, Jeff Fenn, I mean three, I'll suggest we take a 15 minute break and allow the people who are here for a little bit of a six to go elsewhere if they like and then we'll reconvene for a couple of minutes. Okay, so for new members on the committee, we have a phrase that we say in here which is the usual suspects, it's the NEA, the VSBA, Principles Association of Superintendents. So Nicole Mason, I believe you're the first one to use the suspects that you have. But it's Madam Mayor now. Actually, until January 28th. Okay, congratulations. Thank you. You're a big lead of the day, great for you. Thank you. Then I'm going to carry my gavel. But in other words, every people that have legislation moment in time. We have these four groups of opinion and they usually help us revise, write, what are we planning? Well, thank you for inviting me to be one of the first usual suspects before your committee. Because it's the first time I'm here, I thought I'd spend a little time, especially for newer members, orienting to the organization and who we are, who we serve and how we take positions that we will then share with you at different points of time throughout the session. So the VSBA has been, is a 501c3. We've been in existence since the early 1960s. The vision and mission of the organization have evolved over time and you can see it all there. I'm not going to read this to you, but in a nutshell, the VSBA is a membership organization. Much of our revenue comes from dues that are paid by member school districts. Our mission is to support school board members in the performance of their role. It's a difficult job that requires a lot of technical knowledge, but also a lot of more sort of counseling and support over the phone about how do you balance a lot of the competing interests that come before you as a school board member when you've got big decisions to make that impact your community's children and taxpayers. So we spend a lot of time doing that work. But we also serve as their collective voice in the public policy environment. And I always need to remind folks that not all school board members see every issue the same way. So while we endeavor to represent the perspectives of school board members and school boards, and we have clear processes within the organization for taking positions, it's not out of the ordinary for you to hear from a school board member in your district that has a different point of view and perspective. And that's, I think, largely because of the context for school districts around the state vary significantly, both in the economic makeup and the size and the geography to the traditions and community values that are reflected within this school system. So we do our best to reach out to members and ensure that our positions are informed by those diverse perspectives and always welcome our members to share their own views with policymakers as you're grappling with a difficult issue. The organization itself is a board of 24 school board members. There's a president and an immediate past president and then 22 regional representatives. So we're organized in 11 regions and two representatives from each region are elected from that region to serve the board. The board meets once a month and the current president is Clarence Haynes from Middletown Springs, which is in the Rutland region. We're governed by bylaws, resolutions and policies. So resolutions are positions that are taken by the association on issues of importance to school board members and school boards. They include recommendations for action within the policy environment but also for our own organization to, you know, we have a resolution to look at our regions now that we have Act 46 has created a bunch of new districts. Some of our regions don't make sense. So it both gives us work to do internally but also guides our work externally. And these resolutions are approved with the annual business meeting every October. In the absence of a resolution, I go to the board. So it's not unusual for something to pop up out of nowhere and we don't happen to have a resolution on it. The board gives guidance to me and the rest of the staff. We have four full-time staff who deliver our services to our members. So that's background on our organization. With respect to statewide bargaining, in 2017, the reason I wanted to talk with you a bit about our resolutions process, our members approved a resolution and there's some where as is in background and sort of why they support this. But in the end of the day, they called for the General Assembly to adopt a process for the negotiation of healthcare benefits at the state level by a council of school board members to apply to contracts that expired in 2019. So that was the resolution bringing us into last legislative session where we worked with the Vermont NEA and this committee primarily to draft language that was ultimately incorporated into Act 11. I have a couple of newsletters. This is from the fall of 2018 and has a pretty detailed overview of the process for statewide bargaining. So it's important that our members understand but thought it might also be a good education resource for members of the committee to review. It is a complex piece of legislation and clearly groundbreaking for the state of Vermont and for school boards. Certainly puts the BSBA in a role that it has not historically played. So we have not historically represented school districts at the bargaining table in collective bargaining with representatives of employees. So this is brand new territory for us as an association. We've provided trainings and workshops, et cetera, but we've never been responsible for being at the table. So because Act 11 creates this official role for our organization in support of statewide bargaining, it was important to us and to the board to put our processes before the membership for their approval before we embarked on this in terms of appointing our representatives and developing a ratification process. So we spent time over the summer developing some additional criteria that we might wanna include in terms of appointing representatives to the bargaining commission. And we also developed ratification process, which the law requires us to do. And in October, the members approved both of those processes. So we were really unable to appoint our members to the bargaining commission until November when the board met. We had an open application process and at their November board meeting, the BSBA board appointed their members. So that's what the second newsletter's for. Oh. Oh, thank you. I believe it's on page 10, your Act 11 bargaining commission members. And you can see a little bit about where they're from and what their background is. Ages 10 and 11. That article includes the statutory requirements and then the additional criteria that our members felt were important, really making sure we had regional representation among the five members that we have people who have had experience negotiating and have demonstrated a willingness to participate in professional development regarding negotiations. So in addition to the statutory requirements, these five individuals satisfy all of the above. So the ratification process that was approved by the members is pretty, sometimes I worry that's almost too basic, but our organizational structure has our members at the supervisory union or supervisory district level. And so every supervisory union or supervisory district has a vote as part of the ratification process. And each SU or SD is required to submit their delegate information to us by April one, which is when bargaining is supposed to commence. If the commission is able to enter into an agreement, then we have to host sort of an informational webinar for voting delegates to explain what's in the agreement and why, so that they have information they need in order to cast their vote. And we've given ourselves some flexibility on timelines in the event that we both wanna provide people notice, but also not find ourselves. And we've now triggered arbitration because we didn't meet a deadline. So we have some flexibility in terms of being able to have that vote happen on a relatively timely basis. Our members are, we pioneered electronic voting at our annual meeting this fall. So we're building familiarity with that process among our members so it won't be a foreign experience. So logistically, we feel like we've put the pieces in place. And I'll just conclude with some of the specific steps just to reiterate what's transpired since June. Over the fall, we solicited input from our members regarding bargaining goals. So we have regional meetings with our membership every fall. Secretary French joined us and spoke for a little while and then we had sort of focused groups with our members around three key areas where we needed input, teacher student, or teacher staff student ratio task force, statewide bargaining and I believe 173. Although there's more information in the newsletter if you care to read that. But anyway, in that process, we got information from our members around what they are looking for in terms of an agreement in this context. We approved the resolutions that I told you about. The board pointed their bargaining members, they've met twice now. They've been oriented to the law and to the process and the timelines. They're now in the process of starting to develop proposals. I've dissociated myself at this point from that process. They are represented by legal counsel. So it's really there often running and I'm, in fact, when I told them I was asked to testify, they wondered why I was doing that and why not their chair. I said, I'm just here to speak to what the BSBA has done in response to the law. If you wanna hear from commission members directly, then I'll refer you to the chair. And he was as it came close to April, we would like, for instance, I asked Jeff, thinking that it was really the organization for you from now on. Right, right. So the team's elected chair and spokesperson, legal counsel, as I said, and I think the most exciting piece about all this, that Vermont and the, I think we've been getting together a few times a week. Yeah. Jeff and I were in this building at some point in June and talking to each other about the importance of working together to the extent we can, particularly around the collection of data around what exists currently in terms of benefits. And so we started meeting in August, I believe we had a meeting with business managers around what data do you have that we could use? What does the agency have? What does VHI have? And identified a data set that we think is important to inform this negotiation. We sort of went big in terms of the ask because we didn't wanna find ourselves a couple months into it and be like, oh, if only we had information about this. So it's a pretty substantial request that we shared with business managers in December. We went to a Vasbo meeting and it wasn't the warmest reception because those folks are also in the process of putting the other budgets. There's a lot going on with the statewide longitudinal data system that I'm sure you won't hear about over the next couple of months, but there's been real challenges and strains based on the business office. So we agreed to sort of delay our request so that it wasn't coming at a time when it would just be impossible to respond to. So a deadline for getting the data, the completed spreadsheets was last week and we have, I think about 70% have submitted their data, which even all the other stuff happening right now is pretty amazing. So the upshot is both parties are gonna have a shared data set. So we are spending our time negotiating around what to do about what the numbers say rather than our numbers say this, your numbers say that. So I think it's a really good, it bodes well in terms of at least putting in place some of the fundamental pieces here to ensure the process is proceeding lawfully and productively. So Act 11 created a really clear timeline for the parties to negotiate this first statewide contract. We think that was very important in order to ensure that this process concludes so that local bargaining can proceed and not be sort of held up by what's happening at the state level. Under the law, bargaining has to commence by April one. We expect the parties are going to meet before then. We know representatives of the party decided meeting later this week to talk about meeting locations, dates, ground rules, those sorts of things. So given the preparations for bargaining that we've undertaken to date, I know Jeff and I have talked about, should we be recommending changes to the process? We're asking for no changes to the process. I think they might have a couple of suggestions, but given where we are and the fact that we're in active proposal development mode, if we start to make tweaks, even if it looks like a tweak, it can have a really profound ripple effect. So our request is, let's see how it goes this first time around. Understood. Can I ask you, does that apply to the date change and the NEA had? When the plans take effect. Yes. I do not view that as a process change. I view that as a technical, I mean that we would either have to negotiate that because the plans don't actually, the plan year is January 1 to December 31st. So I think we could handle that through negotiations, but that type of a fix to clarify, I think what we heard from EI was, make sure you're paying attention to that. You can't start people in new plans till I won. And just for the committee, for people who weren't here, one of the hallmarks of this language was that it was unanimously approved by everybody in the room. We worked on it for about a month intensively. It came from a plan that NEA put out, VSBA put out, and AFSCME, and we melded them together. We spent a long time making sure everybody was on board. And at the end of the day, we had that agreement. That was key to having it through the house without changes from the Senate. It was key to bringing AFSCME on board because they originally were a little... Who's next? AFSCME is the union that represents some of the... American Federation, state, county, municipal employees. Yeah. And represents some of the employees in schools who are not teachers. So with that said, I want to be very careful if and when we make any tweaks to this because I want them to the extent possible to be unanimously approved by both sides because I prefer not to develop any feeling that anyone's been disadvantaged. Right. And I think once the process gets underway, it becomes problematic if either side thinks that they have a route to the General Assembly to sort of get a course correction. I think if there's an issue that both sides mutually agree, wow, we didn't see this coming, that's one thing. Or that's a different thing altogether. So, totally other topic. As I was leaving through your newsletter. Uh-oh. I saw the quote, we strongly oppose any diversion of education fund dollars to programs not within the jurisdiction of almost the district. Supervisory union. Yes. So that's... With the number one letter, the e-commerce revenue be proposed to put into early ed. Yeah, the folks haven't been paying attention. There's been an idea floated by the governor and by different secretaries that we might take sales tax on e-commerce, which we're always supposed to go to the ed fund, but we couldn't get that one because Amazon wouldn't give us that money. Now we have an arrangement that allows us to collect six or $7 million a year. And the governor has proposed that we split that revenue stream higher ed and early ed. But the obvious rub of that is that's money that is otherwise supposed to go to the ed fund to keep people's tax bills low. So to the extent we divert or create problems elsewhere. So just a heads up to the committee that probably in the end game, this will be something that we deal with in the war. That is the last one. Just you heard me. Happy to come back and talk with some of them. Any topic in the newsletter or other? Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate it. So Jeff, second of the usual subject, Jeff represents NEA, teachers in the state. You wanna give us a little? Sure. Meet and greet about your report. First off, thank you for having me. Welcome. I can't know what everybody here, but I'm Jeff Vanden, the executive director for Mon in the A. And as Nicole pointed out, we're here with fair frequency because this Education Committee work is important and near and dear to our heart. So the pharmacy me or Colin Robinson, our legislative director or Don Tinney, our new president, Martha Allen was turned limited out. Our former president, now we have Don Tinney, former teacher at BFAC in Albans. I think somebody here knows. They're already classed, but who's the teacher? What was that? Yeah, a long time teacher at BFAC in Albans. So anyway, thank you. It was dust in the night. I'm gonna remind him of that. Oh! Oh! Oh! That works. So like I say, we thank for having me here. I've got some written comments that I'll give you later because I made some notes on them based on what Nicole said and responses to your questions. And I'll try to answer those or any others that you have going forward. The Act 11 Health Care Bargain Commission was something we actually came to willingly given some circumstances and some background that I'll go through, I think briefly here, that I think are important for the committee to understand a little bit. To start, the background that we got to passage, the passage of Act 11, it's very necessary. For two decades, Vermaunier Labor and Management, VISBIT, which is the Vermont School Board's Insurance Trust operated well and operated VHI, which is the Vermont Education and Health Initiative that offered health insurance to all school employees. So that was operated for about two decades equally, a shared labor management trust. And that went along well and we purchased our health insurance from Blue Cross. Actually, we purchased health administrative services from Blue Cross. VHI is self-insured. And then through some things that happened at the federal level, most notably the Affordable Care Act, the marketplace in which VHI found itself regulated, the small group market went away. And so DFR, the Department of Financial Regulation, said, hey, we need to regulate VHI. And they said, we're gonna regulate you under the Inter-Minicipality Association. And that regulation under DFR said you had to have a majority of school board members on the school board, so on VHI. So we went from an equal number to three two and soon thereafter in the fall of 2016, that was in 2014, in 2015, there was an effort to terminate the plans that we had then, come up with new plans that had higher deductibles and were compatible with HRAs, health reimbursement arrangements and HSAs, health savings accounts for all the school employees. So that was in 2015. And then in 2016, the folks on the board reduced Vermonnie's seat on the board to one. I was the one in 2017, went forward, there was four to one. And so we, my members in the fall of 16, started to say, hey, we don't like what's happening here. And so, and they, about 2,000 folks signed a petition saying we need to change VHI to return it to, it's balanced, you know, two decades of operation or find a different way to make decisions, most notably consensus decision making or frankly start over and try to figure this out. That led us to where we were in 2018, which led us to think that there's a better way to do this. The school board said, propose something the year before and eventually we figured out that there was a way to do this in a way that we thought was equally shared. And as Nicole aptly pointed out, we started, Nicole and I met and discussed things for the first time in June while you were here. I think she's right. How do we start working together collaboratively, getting data that we all need and not arguing about it. And so we've been doing that and meeting regularly ever since over data. It's pretty amazing. Like Nicole, I am not on the bargaining commission. We have all teachers or support staff on the bargaining commission. And I'll read through the names. You may know some of them. John Harris from Chittin East. Nor Scollick from Randolph. Will Adams from up in Hazen area. Mike Campbell, another BFAC in all of us person. I think he's our chair. Barb Griffin from Versier. Lorian Darrell from Springfield, support staff person. Bill Douglas from Caledonia County, support staff person. And Larry O'Connor from Middlebury, a teacher there. That's our bargaining team. Plus there's an ask me seat at this table. Now the commission is 5-5, the Act 11 said 5-5. That's a lot more people than five. We're not ganging up on the other side. We realized early on when we started talking with folks who might, we solicited volunteers and somebody volunteered that said she was interested in participating. And then almost the very next month, she said, I can't, she had a family commitment or something like that. We realized that we wanted to have more people at the ready than able to step in. So we have four voting folks, plus the ask me person. And then some non-voting people who will participate. So in case one of the voting people has to step aside for whatever reason, life happens. Somebody can slide right in and is ready to go and it doesn't affect the bargaining. So everybody, because as Nicole pointed out, dates are gonna be hard to start coming by, getting 10 people together. Plus we have Suzanne Durmire, our former elementary school teacher who advises our group. They've got Joe McNeil, I'm turning in Burlington, getting 12 or 13, whatever that is, people scheduled together is gonna be tough. Jeff, can I just ask, you said you have these other people participating. To what extent do you envision them participating at? They won't be making decisions, they won't be voting, they'll be, we'll be keeping them up to speed in some way or fashion. The answer is I don't entirely know, but the goal is to make sure that if somebody has to step aside, which happened in our thinking, you know. I'm thinking of alternate jurors, so they're not in the jury box. So if I am getting it right, you're gonna have five and five at the table and these people may be attending or but they wouldn't be. I know how I might think of my play out, but as Nicole pointed out, they're meeting this week for the very first time. It's actually just Mike Campbell and Barb Griffin and Suzanne Durmire meeting with Joe McNeil, just to set the table, to establish the rules. So I don't wanna suggest for them how they should operate. Our thought is we need to make sure that we have people able to step in, so they need to be at least well versed in what's going on. I'm just thinking of a pragmatic basis. If one side comes in with twice as many individuals who are empowered to speak, it starts to be more like, you know. Not our design to dominate the conversation by any stretch, and usually what happens is there's a one spokesperson and I think that, and then you caucus and you can hear your differences or whatever, figure out what you wanna say and the next go around. And obviously it's up to the two sides to figure out the logistics of how the bargaining actually works, but when you said they'd be participating in this. Right. One of the things that we found with the new health plans that are in place now is, and I think is important for us, everybody here is to appreciate is the third party administrator situation. You may have read about it in the news or otherwise. The new health plans that we're operating now have a third party administrator administering the HSA or the HRA portion of the health plan. That did not go well, starting in January one, almost immediately. One of the plans, one of the providers is a Vermont based provider, their future planning and almost immediately after about two months of starting January one when the new plans came online, by the first week of March, they decided they were pulling out of the business all together. So that left a lot of people in a lurch and they transitioned to a new group called Datapath, which is picking up, but future planning had 80% of the school business in the state and that's who they, it was a large chunk of the business and almost within two months, they were deciding not to do this anymore at all. They got out entirely. So that's, this entire year has been a significant challenge for my members. Ultimately it led to we filed a lawsuit the Burlington Education Association and some 30 other local associations around the state have filed a lawsuit trying to seek damages for all of the problems future planning's weaknesses and administering the HSAs and HRAs led to. So that's a process that goes on. I don't think it's affected by you folks here, but you should be aware that that's out there and it's a lawsuit that's rolling along. In fact, I think I saw an answer today to the lawsuit that was filed in December. So that continues on and we may be seeking some help in that area, but it's unrelated to Act 11. As I said, there's an ask me person on the board on the bargaining commission and as Nicole pointed out, they've got to start bargaining by honor before April one. I'm not trying to be redundant here a little bit, but we're going to try to meet before then and get this ball rolling. See Nicole suggested in new centers, the timeline that and what we're seeking and we think is important that came from V high is the start date for the new health plans would be January 1, 2021. And the reason we think that's and I think everybody thinks it's important. I think it's largely an agreement is because the IRS, the way they treat HRAs and HSAs, it's a taxable thing. So you want to start that January one and just as we transition into these plans and this new round of bargaining, we think we got to start on January one. So I think we're all in agreement on that in large measure and I agree with Nicole, it's a technical change that doesn't affect bargaining whatsoever. Here's where we vary perhaps. We think there are two other technical changes that are important. One is under Act 11. If we can't reach agreement and that's a big if at the end of the process, there's an arbitrator that both sides have agreed to use to issue a final binding decision on the parties. We, the arbitrator as the law is currently written can choose only one side or the other's position under CELRA, the State Employees Labor Relations Act. The, they're the decision makers, same scenario, gets to pick one side of the others or if it's going to lead to an unreasonable result or unreasonably alter the bargaining relationship between the parties, he or she could select the fact finder report, which just happens a couple months before. So that doesn't even, that whole fact finding process doesn't begin until September. The arbitrator's process doesn't begin until November. So as I understood Nicole's concerns yesterday when we chatted, the concern was changing the law particularly once the parties were in the middle so that they wouldn't be thrown a curve that would alter their bargaining. This is at the very end of the process. They haven't even started bargaining yet and it only affects the arbitrator's decision once out of the other or selecting the fact finders and that's, we think it's better. And because we're, I mean the genuine worry here is we want the system to work. We came here willingly, wanted to work and if one side or the other has an extreme position that carries the day for whatever reason unlike the state system or any other system we then go back to the local bargaining table and have to work out the details. If something is so extreme in the healthcare agreement if you will, or the arbitrator's decision they're gonna have to pound it out locally and we just think that that's gonna kick the can down to that group when it shouldn't be. We should try to allow the arbitrator to come up with a remedy that either works on both sides or one or the other that's not so extreme. That's our concern, frankly, we want the system to work. The other isn't currently, other issue that we think needs technical correction is under Act 11 currently is drafted. The first contract but only the first contract allows for there to be a different health benefit for teachers and a different benefit for support staff. If the parties so desire that sort of difference of health benefit for teachers versus support staff we think they ought to be allowed to do that going forward as it's currently written, we don't think they can. So if they can bargain, the idea is if they want to bargain for something they ought to be allowed to do it and not have their bargaining hands tied in that regard. So we think that's, again, that doesn't affect bargaining this year at all, it's in the out years and we think it's more of a technical fix. And just to reiterate, so while you were speaking I can see Nicole is not in agreement. So I, I didn't see that, I'm all for unanimity in terms of changes. So I heard Nicole say that even though she agrees with the January one start date, she might, her organization or bargainers might prefer to bargain that together rather than have the state make that change. If the sides agree, we can easily make that change. In fact, we could probably do it in budget adjustment if it was something you agreed on right now. But again, I want to be protective of the unanimous agreement that we had about what was there. Now, in terms of, for those who might not have done a lot of work with labor relations or bargaining, there is a logic, there is a reason why if you have a situation where one of the offers is gonna be selected and you know it's either yours or theirs, the arbitrator's gonna be looking at what makes sense given comparable situations, et cetera. And so the arbitrator's looking to determine which is the sanest of the two, which makes the most sense. And so you're, it's forcing people to put out offers that aren't extreme, that are, that make more sense to the arbitrator. So not to say you couldn't adopt what Jeff is talking about and have three options, but they each have a logic to them and the logic is usually people will argue that it will produce more productive results, less extreme results. So that's something without mutual agreement, I would be very hesitant to change at this point because the agreement was that we were adopting that logic of everybody's gotta try their best to get to the reasonable place and then the arbitrator theoretically has two reasonable offers and they're just trying to determine which is more reasonable. Right, I don't disagree in concept or academically speaking but the worry is once a rubber meets the road and folks are actually bargaining that if there is, it's not to suggest that people are going to extremes, is that if there is something that's perceived by one side or the other as extreme, they have a valve that they can release over here which is the local bargaining and I don't think anybody here thinks that we ought to exacerbate or pressurize that any more than it already is and so that was our thought was we want this system of health bargaining to work and allowing the arbitrator to find a middle road if under limited circumstances, as I said in her cell it says, if the, allows the final decision maker to elect one side's offer if it would cause an unreasonable and likely produce an undesirable result or it would likely result in a longstanding negative impact upon the party's collective bargaining relationship so it's under very narrow circumstances that we're suggesting you go there but the reason is it's, we're not trying to alter or pressurize the other bargaining that takes place we're trying to come up with a remedy here just in health care as it is unique that actually doesn't exacerbate any other problems you know? I am so optimistic that an arbitrator will not be in a necessary situation we are too yeah, I mean, I, really, I think ironically going to a consensus based model wouldn't expect that that would be something, I mean, for VHI, a consensus based model and then the same for the bargaining table putting aside arbitration I am hoping we will find that that agreement we didn't get consensus based decision making in VHI well, we got equal we did get equality back on board I was the one seeking to get consensus decision making it didn't happen, unfortunately yeah, I was just talking about the even balance as opposed to one side having the power to so I hear all of those three asks and they'll remain, you know, theoretically on the table as you go through the bargaining if it turns out that both sides can agree on them we can work on them but at least for the moment I'm thinking we would hang back as a legislature and let that language work as it will watch it through the process fair enough but one other thing I think that I should add is not to my friends that asked me we still have yet to develop on our side Nicole's done on her side, we have not yet done it's gotta be locally ratified whatever agreement we come up with I guess it would support your notion that we don't go to an arbitrator because the arbitrator's decision is final binding there's no ratification but if we do come to an agreement we've gotta get ratified by our side and we're still developing a local system that gets more and more people involved so that's still work for us to do but and that was very important to ask me absolutely, no we're not sure from there are there representatives on our group and we want to do it we just haven't done it yet as far as I know as I say I'm not there and they're meeting so Any questions for Jeff? Questions about the NEA? Yeah so I mean something back from the NEA represents about 14,000 teachers and support staff in the state and we also represent teachers and I think support staff at two of the four historical academies being Burton Burton and Thetford Academy we have members there in both those schools but not at L.I., Linden Institute or St. Johnsbury Academy and we are probably the largest provider of professional development in the state we mentor colleagues and work with schools to do that provide a lot of professional development to teachers and support staff along the way and bargain a lot of contracts every contract is open this year for bargaining so there's a lot of bargaining going on around the state and Burlington I agree Burlington ratified this week I think was last week Last week which was good because it was a strike last year so they committed to doing more intensive work relation building communication building etc and they were serious and it seems to have worked at least in a one-year contract Right I mean I think they like my name was a two-year but I may be wrong I thought it was a one-year Man you may be right anyway the it is a testament to both sides there you know coming out of a strike a lot of times you hear stories of people being really upset in the wound and I don't discount that in the least but here they made a really concerted effort to put that behind them work on the relationship and they did that and they came up with an agreement that I think both sides are happy about maybe not thrilled by but happy about that they got it done and behind them and that was early in the process Do the rank and final members of the NEA support support this change I mean have you have any pushback or any fires you've had to put out or does it look like people are satisfied I think generally yes but with reservations in as much as we've not done this before right and there's a lot of curiosity and a lot of questions and we are trying to be very proactive in getting information out and I think they'll be more coming out in February as we get closer to actually bargaining I mean a lot of the time we spent in the fall trying to figure out who we had on our team you know with their roles what we were thinking data collection with Nicole I mean we spent a lot of a lot of the hard work that we were trying to get done we did get done in the fall largely and data is still a collection work in progress but it is happening so I think members are hopeful curious interested healthcare is a big issue for for folks they've given up over the years a lot of wages to maintain their health benefits and and that's because they value it it's not just for them the teacher 80% of them are women but their families a lot of them are kids and so healthcare is very important to my members and they watch this stuff intently so we haven't had a lot of a lot of questions but we have had a lot of questions is there a person near chronological recap of things I didn't hear anything about to hear the governor had proposed it's not to get to political about it but well I'm understanding it correctly right that was 2017 was a tough political year so I found and then it came after so that was in 17 and that was 2017 the next year you guys came forward said oh let's figure this out in a different way right right we had our annual meeting in the spring of 2018 and had a healthy vigorous conversation about healthcare and largely decided that the membership voted they wanted to try a different route and one that we can get everything we wanted it was the center for a set of so something that we all acknowledged that that this was an advancing the cause and we want to see this work and just a pick up on Andrew's point again for members of the committee might not have been following along really carefully the last two years the education committee was sort of ground zero asks that the governor made in the very last weeks of the session backed by a veto threat of the budget and the tax bill and so the last two sessions I was here all of literally all of June and we passed a third budget to the governor with you know 14 hours left to go before the governor would shut down and he agreed to let it become law so there's been a lot of brinksmanship without putting a partisan spin on it I think it's fair to say that it's just a because of the way we pay for education through the property tax it's a it's a perennially infected issue and so what I tried to do last year was have a plan for this committee to go through the end game so this legislation was our plan it was something that we knew the administration would be interested in it was there for something we could offer the governor in in the event of the inevitable threat and yet we wanted it to be something that the parties could agree on so we produced the legislation we stuck it in a folder and left it there for most of June and then it went into the final offer and the governor could accept it all the way of saying jump ahead to this year in May probably there will be some frame that we can't yet anticipate that will dictate our lives so I'm going to be trying to do my best again to anticipate what that might be how we might solve it what this committee can do before because what happened the last two years is we gaveled out and then there was a sort of ad hoc bargaining team of me Jane Kitchell and Tim Ash um I don't think that's democratic and I think it cuts this committee out of the policymaking so what I tried to do last year was do the policymaking in advance of that and I'll try my best to do that again this year so that you all have directly put into what we would ultimately say to the governor about this out of the end of the fair I hope you're not suggesting we're here till June again this year and it's education that's that's front and center on the end but I even if we're not here in June I think it may we're probably going to be in some form of a dispute with the executive branch and to the extent that we can work out something it would be amenable to them before you have them yeah after that nice yeah well I I will say that the you know the the veto threat itself was not repeated in this state and state speech in the way that has been the last two there was no I will veto including property tax it was more like for mothers are taxed enough which is different cattle fish absolutely so thanks very much thank you all