 I put a bill in one of my first sessions in the Senate that had a gradual change in what people would pay based on income. And so it went up to when people got to social security age, they went to a fixed payment system. And when they were younger with theoretically less money, a half fixed system. And then in the middle, when people are earning the most money, increase. So it was an income sensitive, but it was more of a short form bill. And we never, I was trying to remember, I think Susan Bartlett, nope, she was in appropriations but I forgot, I presented it at finance and we had a good time talking about it. That's an interesting concept. One of the things I would like to get my head around at some point is, you know, I know we all probably around campaign season, et cetera, you know, hear about these kinds of issues and how do we compare with neighboring states and that's something I would like to join fiscal to take on. They probably have the information. I mean, I border New York and Massachusetts, what are, you know, property taxes, et cetera. Equalized pupil spending, et cetera, like in those states. Well, yeah, New York state is interesting because they don't second homes are very much taxed very high in New York state for education. Oh, that's interesting. I didn't know that. Yeah. I mean, so our state doesn't give a lot of forgiveness either, but at least it's within the commercial industrial, the non homestead home site, non property tax area, non home site, homestead. Senator Taranzini's comments brought back a lot of the memories of doing act 60 and gold tones. And maybe Jim will tell us more about that today or someone. Yeah, that's a perfect introduction to Jim Demeray. Jim, thanks for being with us, our ledge council. You know, this history I find is brought up regularly, whether it's Brigham, act 60, act 68, act 46, and we also know of a recent court case having to do again with religious schools and dual enrollment. So we thought we would have Jim come in and talk to us a little bit about each of these. And so, Jim, with that, thanks for being with us. We all, we know everybody wants to get to and watch likely inaugural kinds of things. So no pressure. You take the time you need and but we won't keep people too late, that's for sure. OK, well, terrific. I've got my IT assistant here, otherwise, it's my daughter next to me. Wonderful. OK, so trouble getting this presentation up, but I think we should be OK. So we're going to screen share and find. That's this one here and we also and then go up here. So I get the screens. OK, so thank you. Can everybody hear me? Yes, perfectly. Thank you. Yeah, great. OK. And can you see the slides? Yes, thank you. OK, great. OK. So for the record, Jim Daimler, let's console. So this presentation, Joe Campion asked me to discuss the rights case that came out last week on dual enrollment, but we can't talk about that case without talking more broadly about what the parameters are for using public funds to pay tuition to religious schools. So we need to start there to frame it and we'll get at the end toward the rights case or discuss that. So I'm going to start with the US Constitution and where it says about religion. So the two clauses says Congress shall make no law respecting and establishment of religion, so called the establishment clause. So pausing there for a minute. What that gets to is we're not going to have like England and Agrocon Church that is a part of the government. We're not going to establish a religion. I also go to the question, though, as we come on to about how much support can the government provide to religious organizations without running a fall of this prohibition on making a law respecting and establishment of religion. So it goes not just to establish a church, but also how much government support is permissible. The second clause is Congress should make no law prohibiting the free exercise thereof. So that one, of course, goes to we can't interfere as a government with the exercise of religion by individuals. So those are the two clauses we're going to talk about today. So these clauses apply to the states, not just the federal government through the process of the 14th Amendment. So Vermont is bound by these clauses and there's a tension between these clauses. So the Supreme Court has recognized a plan play in the joints between what the establishment clause permits in terms of support for religious organizations and what the free exercise clause compels. We'll get into that. So it's a command on the one hand, not to establish religion. And on the other hand, a command not to inhibit its practice. So, for example, a law requiring the hiring by the military a priest to minister to the troops may be viewed as a law respecting the establishment of religion because the government is hiring priests. But not making priests available may interfere with the troops free exercise of religion because they're out in the field and they may not have any other means in which to practice their religion. So that's an example of the tension we're talking about here between these two clauses. So first question is what does the establishment clause permit by way of government support for religion? In the leading case here is Zellman versus Simmons Harris doesn't choose Supreme Court. So Ohio established a voucher program that allowed taxpayers or taxpayer money to be used to pay tuition for both secular and religious schools. So the parents would we decide how to spend that money. A two percent of the participating schools were religious schools and 96 percent of students using the vouchers attended with the schools. The Supreme Court appell the program against the challenge based on the establishment clause on the basis that if a government aid program is neutral with respect to religion, and this was neutral because it was for both secular and religious schools, provides assistance directly to a broad class of citizens who in turn drug government aid to schools wholly as a result of their own genuine independent private choice. Then the program is not really subject to challenge under the establishment clause and the court imposed no restrictions on the use of public tuition funds by the schools so they could be used to fund religious instruction. So what we learn there is that on that first clause, the establishment clause, you can use is permissible to use state money to pay tuition to religious schools as long as the program is neutral and provides assistance to a broad class of citizens who direct the payments. OK. So we know it's permissible. The question next is what does the free exercise clause compel and what this gets into is the question of discrimination against religious religious programs or schools. The main case here is Trinity Lutheran versus Comer, which was a 2017 Supreme Court case written by Roberts. It's a playground case. So Missouri created this program to grant program to resurface playgrounds as for safety of kids and a church which operated a religious daycare program sought to get this grant funding and was denied because it was a church to brought a free exercise challenge and the denial of that grant for that that church or that church was based on the Missouri Constitution which provides that no money shall ever be taken from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church. It's a so-called no aid provision that's in many constitutions state constitutions. The Supreme Court held that this denial by the church's free exercise rights. So what it says is that the free exercise clause protects religious observers against unequal treatment and suggests the strictest scrutiny laws that target religion for special disabilities based on the religious status. So applying that principle, the court this court has repeatedly confirmed that denying a jointly available benefit solely on account of religious identity imposes penalty on the free exercise of religion and can be justified only by a state interest of the highest order. And the court find the Missouri's policy preference skating as far as possible from religious establishment concerns can qualify as compelling. So let me pause there. So we talked initially about the establishment clause does permit tuition, public tuition be used for private schools for a mutually designed program. What this is saying is that the state is compelled to provide funding to religious organizations. They can't discriminate against those religious organizations solely on account of the fact that they're religious. So if you're giving it those funds to a secular school for for playgrounds to do their playground, then you can't deny it can't be prejudiced and deny it to his school just because they are a religious organization. Very importantly, we'll come to this when we get particularly to Vermont's Constitution, the court distinguishes the lock case. In this case, this is a program by the state of Washington to provide scholarship funding to assist students with the cost of post-secondary education. It could be used to both secular and religious schools, but cannot be used to pursue a devotional theology degree. So it could be used of both types of schools. It can't be used to pursue a religious degree. The court, in that case, denied a free exercise challenge by an individual seeking a devotional theology degree, holding that the individual stand was daily, was not denied a scholarship because of who he was. He was denied a scholarship because of what he proposed to do. The funding and issue in Trinity was denied based on the church's status as a religious institution. So this gets into distinction between use versus status. So what this is saying is that you can't discriminate against a religious school solely based on a status as being a religious school, but you can pose restrictions on how that money is used by the religious school. So use versus status distinction is being drawn now under the free exercise clause. And very interesting concurring opinion by Gorsuch, I just wanted to read this with you. It said, the court at least opened the possibility a useful distinction might be drawn between laws that discriminate on the basis of religious status and religious use. Respectfully, our Harvard doubts about the ability of such a line. Does a religious man say grace before dinner? Or does a man begin to be able to enable his mirror? The distinction blurs in much the same way the line between acts and omissions blur can blur when it's still at too long. Leaving us to ask, for example, whether the man who draws by weighing the incoming tie does so by act coming upon the sea or omission allowing the sea to come upon him. Often enough, often enough, the same facts can be described both ways. OK, so we're still talking about the free exercise clause. This is the second case we talked about Trinity. We start with playgrounds, resurfacing playgrounds. Now we're going to talk about exactly tuition. You serve public tuition. So espionage of the Montana was decided in 2020. The opinion was written by Roberts. This is a case where Montana provided tax benefits to individuals who donate money for private school scholarships, scholarships for prohibitive families from using the scar of religious schools. This provision was based on the Montana Constitution, which bars government aid to any school controlled by a church. Another so-called no aid provision. Building on its Trinity decision, the court held that Montana's no aid provision violates the free exercise clause because it bars religious schools from public benefits solely because of the religious character of its schools, i.e. the status as opposed to religious use. Roberts wrote that some members of the court have questioned whether there is a meaningful distinction between discrimination based on use or conduct and that based on status. He said, of course, which is a good growing opinion. And he said, we know it's just the point, but need not examine it here. It is enough in this case to conclude that strict scrutiny applies because Montana's no aid provision discriminates based upon religious status. And then the court said that the Montana Constitution is no aid provision, which is added to its constitution in the second half of the 19th century. Many states add similar provisions, so-called many plain provisions, which spawn a bigotry against Catholics and that these provisions hardly invent events, a tradition that should inform our understanding of the free exercise clause. The court concluded that a state needs not subsidize private education, but once a state decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious. Gorsuch wrote a recurring opinion in line with the recurring opinion in Trinity, challenging the status versus use distinction. OK, now we're going to talk about the Vermont Constitution. I just lost my place. Here we go. Chapter one, Article Three, which says, no person can be compelled to support any place of worship contrary to the dictates of conscience. OK, so note the difference from the no aid constitution provisions like Missouri's and Montana's. Vermont's provision is based on youth supports worship instead of religious status. So this is where this youth versus status distinction really comes into play, because Vermont's constitution is different than the ones we discussed before. I note that Vermont's provision was part of its original constitution and not add later as was the case with the anti-Catholic blame amendments. The leading case we have in Vermont is Chittenden versus Department of Education. Decided by the Vermont Spring Court in 1999. Vermont Spring Court held that a school district violates the compelled support clause where it pays public tuition to religious school in the absence of adequate safeguards against the use of such funds for the just worship or instruction. So this was a case where Chittenden near Rutland is a tuition town and it was paying or wanting to pay tuition. I think it was the St. Joseph's in Rutland. And the court said, no, you can't do that. Not because of the religious status of the school, but because there weren't safeguards to ensure against the use of the funds for religious worship or instruction. So the question then is, will Chittenden survive the espionage of decision? Vermont's compelled support clause, as interpreted by Chittenden, bars the use of public funds for religious worship or instruction in contrast to the constitution to bar aid to churches based on status. But does this distinction matter? Robert's is hedging on that and Gorsuch is just challenging that. Vermont's compelled support clause was done part of the main plan amendments at the other six constitutions that were based on bigotry has its own unique history. Okay. So I'm leaving there, I must move on to dual enrollment. It's an open question right now as to what the Supreme Court would do if there's a direct challenge to Chittenden with the Supreme Court. We say that's okay because it's a use provision and that's okay under espionage or if it would say that decision doesn't matter anymore. So it's not not permissible. So it's so it you have to that and that's the case that you have to use state tuition for religious schools. Is that clear whether how they're going to go on that question at this stage? So it's not clear what the answer to this question is. So what about dual enrollment? First, what is it? So dual enrollment is taking a class for both high school and college credit at the same time. It's available to public school students to approved independent school students who are on public tuition and homeschool students. It is not available to approved independent school students on private tuition, whether attending a secular or religious school. Following the Chittenden decision, all children attending religious schools pay price. So I'll just note there, that's a fact, but under Chittenden it doesn't have to be a fact. If there was a system whereby the schools could ensure that funds weren't being used for religious worship, then under Chittenden they could use public tuition. So the Rice case, a group of Rice Memorial high school students, stood the agency of education, claiming free exercise class and equal protection class violations. I start thinking that denial of dual enrollment to Rice students is due to the religious status of the school. Last week in January 15, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the students, holding that the denial was due to the school's religious status. The court noted that in the more than 20 years since Chittenden where it's decided Vermont has not identified adequate safeguards to ensure public funds are not used for religious instruction. And moreover, the court noted that since at least 2010, the agency of education has frequently stated that public funds could not be used for students attending religious schools, a statement based on the school's status rather than its use. So I'll pause here and say that the record before the court in this case was not great for an argument that the decision was based upon use, not staffs, because of the fact that we haven't developed parameters to determine when safeguards are in place to ensure funds aren't used for religious instruction A and B, both AOE and the district involved here basically said we're denying you based upon your status. So the court concluded that the record on this appeal plainly evidences religious discrimination, sorry. The court also said that because our decision turns expressly on religious status and not religious use, we stress no view in this opinion as to whether Chittin' this requirement of adequate safeguards could, if applied, constitute a use-based restriction that survives first amendment scrutiny. So this case was decided by the federal court of appeals and if it's not appealed, then it would stand as law. If it is appealed to the Supreme Court and the court opposed it, it would be the law for dual enrollment or it could overturn it. So it's not quite clear, it's not done yet. I'm not sure it's going to happen on appeal or if it will be appealed. But currently the court has ruled that these students are entitled to dual enrollment. And that is the end of this presentation. So I guess I will stop my screen share for a minute and come back to you and see if you have questions. I'll just kick it off. So let me just run one scenario by you. A religious institution, a religious high school says, you know, we are not going to offer, we are not going to offer a senior history class or senior math class. In lieu of that, we want you to use your dual enrollment dollars. So in part they would be eliminating a position, a teaching position and saving dollars because students would be taking their dual enrollment dollars to CCV or somewhere else. Therefore freeing up funds that could be used for religious instruction, paying off a lawsuit, all sorts of different kinds of things, you know, paying the minister's salary. So is that what Chittenden was hoping? Is that what the kind of parameters Chittenden wanted? In other words, to say, Brian Campion, you're at Rice, Rice has to stick to its curriculum. You can use your dual enrollment dollars. That's fine. But what Rice is not allowed to do under these guidelines is in any way alter its curriculum to save money and therefore by allowing these freed up dollars to pay the minister's salary, pay off a lawsuit, whatever. Yeah, so that question conflates to two things. Actually, it conflates the establishment clause with the free exercise clause. And I know where you're coming from in this because in the old days under the establishment clause, remember, the question is, is it permissible for public funds to be used for religious schools? Okay. Not are you compelled to use them, but is it permissible to use them for that purpose? And we talked about that case. We said that as long as you have a mutually designed program and parents are making the choice, you are able to use public funds for religious schools. Before that, though, before that case, exactly what you're talking about was law, which was used to be a diversion argument, which is say, if you give money to a religious school, they can then divert funds because they have more funds. So even though it can basically free up other resources for religious worship. So under the establishment clause, it used to be that you couldn't do that because of the diversion argument that you're making. But as of 1990 or so, under the newer interpretation under Zelman, that argument is no longer in effect. So now diversion is gone as an argument. And now if long as your program is neutral and parents decide where the money goes, it does not violate the establishment clause. Okay. Chitenden is under the free exercise clause. So when do you have to pay money to religious school? When you compelled to do that. And what the court saying in Chitenden is under the mock constitution, you can use the money to go to a religious school. If the school has parameters to ensure that that money is not going to with this instruction. So if they could show a system that shows the money coming in from public tuition is going to pay for the gym class or the history class or some classes not religious instruction, it sounds like that might be acceptable. But no schools have done that. No. And no state hasn't developed that either. So there's been no guidance as to how that would work. Is that answer your question? I think so. I might come back. Give me something to think about center lines. So I haven't heard all of this before. So it's it's a lot. So but I guess my question is if you think about has has there ever been an argument in thinking about the dual enrollment program as the opportunity for the student and the child that the money goes to the child to go to college and that without it at whoever this kid is without it, then it's unequal treatment under the law. So could you consider the fact that the dual enrollment program isn't about the religious institution or the private institution or the public institution? It is about the child, the kid going to college and increasing our college entry for Vermont students and without that opportunity that that child receives unequal treatment. Yes, I think that though is one of a policy argument. So certainly from a policy standpoint, you can make the argument and there are lots of ways you could do dual enrollment from a policy standpoint. You could mean test it, for example, you can make it available to all there are different ways of doing it. The way Vermont's done it is to basically allow it for students on public tuition, basically. That's how we've done, but there are different ways of doing it. Interesting. I see other other hands. I'm sorry, Senator Chen. I'll go to your points as a chair, Campion, the way I am reconciling what we've just heard is if it's for the benefit of the school, if the school for their benefit asks or has the student take the course, that seems inappropriate. But if it's for the student's benefit, for their convenience, if they opt, if the power of choice is with the student and they're not being asked to for the benefit by the school, similar to how workers compensation works with work from home, if the employee is benefiting and the employee chooses to work from home, workers compensation doesn't cover them. But if the employer says, we need you to live from home, work from home, because we're not giving you a workspace, workers compensation extends to their workplace. So similarly here, I think it sounds appropriate if the student is choosing to go to to go to do a university, a public institution for this dual enrollment program, but it is not appropriate if the religious school is opting to benefit their curriculum by requiring or demanding the students use it. I don't know. Well, the way the program works is that the money goes from the state to the college. Right. So it goes to UVM or to VSC or even private colleges. So the money goes to the college and the students who are entitled to get that entitlement are ones on public tuition. That's how it actually works today. I can't I can't go into the analogy you made because I'm not familiar with it, but that's just how it works now. Senator Hooker, thank you. So if a student at Mount St. Joseph opts to take a course at Castleton, currently they can't or well, perhaps after the right decision now they will be able to to take that course. I don't I'm not familiar enough with the dual enrollment program to know what the parameters are. So and you've said that the money goes directly from the state to the college. So it seems to me that it really doesn't benefit the school unless we get into the complicated issues that Senator Campion brought up about diversion. But you've indicated that that's kind of been taken care of. So is there really anything that should preclude those religious school kids from benefiting from taking a course at a secular college as long as it isn't a religious institution as opposed to the kids who are on public tuition? I know that the way the program is written now, it says they have to be on public tuition. But is that the only as far as dual enrollment? That's all it is. It's taking a college course, correct? Correct. It's taking, I think, up to two college courses while you're in high school and getting credit for both high school and for college at the same time. That's what dual enrollment is. So so it may be cutting down on the costs at the it may be cutting down on the school's costs. If enough kids take these courses and they can, I don't know, cut down on a number of classes they have. Like, I don't I don't know how that would play out. It could be a benefit to the high school, for sure. And that benefit could be for secular or religious schools because there's no diverse argument anymore. So that argument's gone. So and for me, you know, I'm just learning about this as well with all of you. I'm wondering, so for example, it's in a way, let's take the law school suits before the Catholic Church, OK? If if you are saying if a school is saying we are for directing their students to take because it's dual enrollment, you get both high school and college credit if a school is eliminating a program and therefore freeing up funds because their students are going somewhere else, I see they're not getting the dollars directly, but the line item in their budget was now freed up to go toward other things to pay off a lawsuit, pay a minister's salary, do those kinds of things. I'm not saying I have an opinion on I'm just trying to pull this separation, you know, here apart and, you know, and just kind of understand it a little bit better. Does that does that make sense, Senator Hooker? Yeah, I mean that and I guess my question would be how extensive or expansive would the dual enrollment from a school have to be to affect such as change, you know? Yeah, that's that's a great question. I think that might be, you know, somebody would have to take action. In other words, if all of a sudden the school you referenced has, you know, 30 students in their graduating class and they're all going to Castleton for that one class and they've eliminated a position, you know, you can see where that might spark attention or perhaps concern, but I think that would take additional action from students or parents to actually bring it to the court's attention. Attention, what I was wondering in part in my question, is there a role for the legislature in any way at this point or should we be doing anything to protect, to put parameters, to put boundaries around how these dollars may or may not be used? And I don't know the answer to that question. And I think Jim referred to that when you talked about the Chittenden case and the fact that there were no parameters and that's why the court ruled the way it did. Yeah, there are a couple of things to mention. So on dual enrollment, you could take action to amend the statute and you have the court case, as I mentioned, it might be peeled so it's not final, final yet. You might want to wait and see what happens or you could take up that statute and think about how you want to frame it in terms of do you want to make it available to all students? Do you want to make it available to all students? But means tested. You know, so there are various ways to start thinking about dual enrollment itself, that statute on the question about the broad question about Chittenden and the whole question about use of funds by religious schools, you could come up with a statute that, for example, that that directs the state board of education to adopt a rule which defines basically the controls necessary to show that public tuition is not being used for religious worship. So you could actually have some definition behind that, as Chittenden suggested 20 years ago. So a couple of things you could do here if you wanted to take action. Helpful. Thank you, Senator Hooker. And could I just ask Jim to send Jeannie this presentation as well, because I saw on our website that there are only the two presentations on 60 and 46. She's got them all. I think so. They're all up. Are they OK? Thank you. Sorry. Thank you. That was helpful. Any other questions or comments before Jim moves on? OK. OK. I'm going to go back and screen share again. And grab the we're doing act 46 next, I believe. And OK. Can people see that? Can you see the slide? Yes, I can see. People hear me? We can. OK. Good. OK. So this is actually six. So let's go pre act 46. So there's an article written by Bill Mathis that was published in Vermont Digger. He made these points, which is that there was a so-called vicious act of 18 at 1892, which required towns, town school districts to consolidate the 2,500 boards into two hundred and thirty nine town and corporate boards. So by by a sweep of a pen, basically, that was done back in 1892. And to note their policy for a minute, we are so called Dylan's rule state, which means that the state has complete control over its municipalities and school districts are, of course, municipalities. So we can create them. We can merge them. We can we can eliminate them. And that's what happened here in 1906. Supervisory unions were formed. Push forward to we had the school districts being created. And then in 2010 as well, we had two acts, acts 153 and 156, which provide tax other incentives for school districts to merge. Then in 2015, Act 46 expanded on acts 153 and 156, providing tax and other incentives for school districts to merge and directing the state board of education to realign unmerged districts into more sustainable municipalities to the extent necessary to achieve the act's goals. So this was before it was as incentives only Act 46 was a carrot and stick approach. The goals of Act 46 were five on equity and educational opportunities to increase student achievement to maximize operational efficiencies to promote transparency and accountability and deliver cost at value. The structure of Act 46 was that first that that school districts cannot be forced to give up tuition or operating models. It said that its intent was not to close schools and encouraged a preferred government structure. And that structure was a merger of districts within a supervisory union or with a neighboring supervisory district where the combined combined group now merged was responsible for K through 12. Had 900 or more students and operates K through 12 directly or operates K through six or K through eight intuitions of the grades. So that was the preferred structure. And that was where you got the most incentives if you did that structure. Act 46 also recognized, though, that alternative government structures may be acceptable. Alternative government structures anything other than the preferred structure. And required districts seeking alternative government structure to do three things, one, to evaluate its current ability to meet or exceed the state goals. To meet the districts in the area to discuss ways to promote improvement in the goals throughout the region and three submit and alternative government structure proposals to the state board individually or with other districts. Act 46 required the secretary to develop a proposal to realign a merge districts into more sustainable models of governance. This proposal was presented to the state board by June 1 of 2018. And then the Act 46 required the state board to issue a final statewide plan by November 30, 2018 to merge and realign school districts and to advise your unions who are deemed necessary to meet state goals. And Act 46 prohibited the state board from forcing school districts to give up their tuition or operating models. So the results on the state board's merger order. Merge, and this comes from Daphne from Donald Saavage. She presented this to education a couple of years ago or last year. And she said that the state board went to order merge 45 districts into 39 towns to form 11 new union school districts and large two existing union school districts and conditionally require an additional four town elementary school districts to merge. That was conditioned in power approved by the other merging districts. The state board merger order did not change the government structure of 47 districts and resulted in a net reduction of 34 districts. So in fiscal year 16, prior to Act 46, there were 267 school districts and in fiscal year 20, after the approved mergers, there were 154. After the state board mergers, there were 120. And I mentioned that there were four additional additional mergers. I believe they did merge. I think we're down to 116 districts now. So there have been a number of attempts and some successes at Act 46 divorces. I'm getting this from news stories because there's no source of this information at AOE or Secretary of State. No dad there until later in the process. So this is based upon reporting by Vermont Digger and others. But first Halifax and Weasboro have voted to merge. So it was a voluntary merger and they decided to unmerge. And that was approved by the state board of education. So that's been done. Newbury was forced to merge with Bradford. And Newbury voted against divorce when it came up. So it looks like they're staying together for now. Westminster was forced to merge with Athens and Grafton. And Westminster voted to divorce. But Athens and Grafton, we need to approve that. And I don't believe the source of happened yet. Ripton voted to leave Addison Central. That was a voluntary merger. So now Shoreham, Cornwall, Millbury, Bridgeport, Southsbury and Waybridge will now each vote on whether to allow Ripton to leave. Tumbridge and Chelsea voted to merge, voluntary merger. And Tumbridge had a vote recently against divorce. So it looks like they're staying together for now. And then Bradborough, Dumberston, Gofford and Putney were forced to merge into Wyndham Southeast and have Bell items to approve divorce. So here's the law on divorce. We've got two laws and they both predate Act 46. And they're a bit not in conflict. They're different standards. So 721A is the statute of about withdrawal from a union school district. And it says a union school district that is a member of a union school district may vote to withdraw from the union school district if one year has elapsed since the union school district was formed. OK. And then 724 is withdrawal for a unified union school district. A unified union school district is one that came together as a merger of districts, either voluntarily or not, or ordered by the State Board. And it says a town or city corresponding to a preexisting school district that voted to form a unified union school district may vote to withdraw from the district of when one year has elapsed. So the difference here, the next page, is you have the standards being different. So for a union school district. It appears that a district can withdraw whether voluntarily merged or forced to merge. But for a unified school district, it appears that a district can withdraw only if it was voluntarily merged. And that's because, going back here, for a union school district, there's no condition about it having been formed by a vote. So whether it was formed by State Board order or by voluntarily by vote, it can withdraw it's been one year since it was formed. But this one says for a unified school district only can withdraw if it had voted to form the district. So that means that forced mergers can't use this section or that's how it could be interpreted. So we got a situation where the preexisting law, DAF 46, has different standards. And then an either case for either a union school district or a unified school district, on either case, all districts or towns in the union unified school district need to approve the members withdrawal. So what happens is, first there's a vote of the member that wants to withdraw. If that gets approved, then all the other districts on the same day vote to approve that or not. If they don't approve it, they can't withdraw. If they do approve it, it can move forward. And so if it moves forward, if they all approve it, then if the State Board finds the students in their withdrawing town or say, well, attend a school that is compliance with its rules for educational programs, the State Board shall declare the membership of this drawing town or city to be at an end. So the State Board's got very little discretion here. As long as the students are attending another school that meets its rules, it has to allow the withdrawing town or city to withdraw. And the State Board is not under law in making this decision required to take into account the goals of DAF 46. So a couple of issues here. One is we have two different standards for withdrawal. Don't really make sense, as I mentioned, because it will allow, for example, a union school district that was formed by State Board order to withdraw, but a unified school district formed by State Board not to withdraw. So that's an issue. And then secondly, the process for withdrawal involves the State Board, but having gone through all this to meet the goals of DAF 46, there's nothing here in the law that requires the Board to take into account whether those goals are met when that member district withdraws. I just want to pause there for a moment, Senator Perksley. Yeah, thank you. Jim, can you remind me the difference between union and unified? Yeah. So a union school district is like a union high school or union elementary school where various towns come together and form a union school district. So, you know, all kids going to grades 90, 12, go to Wissauke High School, for example, from those towns. That's a union district. A unified district is a district that was formed by merger and is responsible for K through 12 education. So when we go back, we talked about the preferred model. We had a merger with districts that were part of the SU with 900 students, et cetera. That would be a unified school district because it was formed by merger and is responsible for K through 12. Those are the differences. We're in a perfect game of follow up. No, I'm just still unclear, but I think I understand it's sufficient. Do you want me to go through that one more time for you? Would you? Yeah, sure. So because like if there are aren't there union schools that do K through 12? Yeah, there are. Well, part of the problem is with terminology here because a unified school district that's called the union unified school district. So the terms are confusing. But when I'm saying union here, I mean, in my example, towns might be responsible for K through 6, for example. OK, not responsible for K through 12. They are responsible for K through 6. They operate school for K through 6. But they decide to get together with other towns to form a union school district, high school district to educate 7 through 12. OK, so that is a union school district. It's not covering all grades. It's covering, again, 7 through 12, my example, formed by the surrounding towns to educate those students. A unified school district by definition came together by merging pre-assisting districts, first of all, which is in the case of the union school district that merged pre-assisting school districts to form one and that one school district now is educating K through 12. It might be educating K through 12 and more than one school. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I'm going to stop screen sharing now so I can see you. OK. Great. Other questions. OK, thank you, Jim, that we just wanted to get an overview. I know some of these things will all have to get, you know, return to at some point, but that was that was helpful. OK, should we go to the next presentation? I have one more question on Act 46. And that is, is that map, Act 46 map still up in the Education Committee room? I haven't been there in ages. Nobody's been there to find out. It was such a part of the committee room for so long. If you want to see that map, though, it's on the AOE website. Right. So I hope to get up there maybe next week and work a day from the state house. I'll check in for you, Senator. Or maybe you can meet me over there. OK, so I'll go back to screen sharing. And put this. Let's see. I had to see. OK. OK, so we're not talking about about bring them. But there is a line to follow here. And the line to follow is what was how to work for a barrier? What was being challenging, which was the foundation plan? What to bring and say? What does Act 62? I'm not going to go into detail there. Just one page. And then we're going to come on to waiting. It's because bring them. The fact pattern and bring them is not that somewhere there was happening in case, in the case of the waiting report. So there's a line to be drawn here through all this. So starting with the what was happening before bring them before bring them, there was the foundation plan. These slides here are borrowed from a presentation that Peter Griffin gave when he was a tax attorney here. So give credit for him for these first few slides. And and what happened is the state set a foundation amount. And this example is five thousand per pupil. And it's a base rate. And this example, it's one percent. And in this example, we have a town with a very small grand list, it's just an example of four hundred thousand dollars. OK. So what happened before bring them is that the town will raise at one percent, based on his grand list, four thousand per student, OK, which is below the foundation amount of five thousand. So the state then would give a foundation grant of one thousand to bring that school district up to five thousand. So that that's how it worked. When you add in two towns, you begin to see the equity issue. So you have one town with a lot of property wealth and one town with low property wealth. Let's assume that both towns want to spend ten thousand per pupil. Again, the site before the foundation plan amount is five thousand per pupil and the base rate is one percent. OK, so what happens here is that the property rich town, which has a million dollars grand list, can raise ten thousand per pupil at one percent. So there you go. No problem. Probably poor town can raise four thousand at one percent. It's getting a grant for the other one thousand. So how does it get up to ten is a question. So what happens is the town has to raise in green the excess amount to get up to ten. So it has to raise the amount in green here, which is five thousand per student. That results. In the property poor town, having a tax rate of two point two five percent. While the property rich town has a tax rate of one percent to raise the same amount per student. And that was the equity problem that was facing the brain court. Any questions on that before I move on? I don't see any. OK. All right. So the wrong Constitution has an education clause and a common benefits clause. The education clause basically is a right to education. So it says a competent number of schools ought to be maintained in each town, unless the John Assembly permits other provisions to the convenient instruction of youth. Two comments on that. First, it's unusual for states to have an education clause in its Constitution, but that's quite unique. Jim, can you enlarge in your your screen? You know, you're just you you you just have. We're seeing all the slides at once. It'd be great just to see the one. Oh, or have some on the side. It would just be great to see that. I'm not sure I do that. Sorry. Whatever you were doing before. I'm not sure what I was doing before. That's fine if you can't. No big deal. Go up to where it says slide show way up above on the up up above. Right. No, down, down and go across to your up. I keep going to your right. Keep going to your right. Yeah, right there. Yeah, I just click on that. Yeah, just click on it so you get your. And then you go to from current slide over on your right on the. Go up to your left. I'm sorry. I got my left and right picked up. Click on that one. Here we go. Thank you very much. Great. Oh, OK, thank you very much. OK. All right. So two things about this education clause. First, it's unusual to have one in the state constitution. There's no education clause in the U.S. Constitution. And second, the slowness about I found this on the web. Oh, sorry. My phone is going off. Second is, is that it talks about you have to have a school in each town unless the John assembly permits otherwise. So that's how we get to tuitioning. So the John assembly has a lot of tuitioning. So that's how we get to operating and tuition schools. Common benefits clause is a right, essentially, to equal opportunity. So says government is ought to be instituted for the common benefit, protection and security of the people, nation or community, and not for the particular moment or advantage of any single person, family or set of persons or a part only of that community. We put this together under the decision. There is there is a right to substantial equality of educational opportunity in Vermont constitutional right. OK. Brayham, which was decided back in 1997, held that the then current education financing system with its substantial dependence on local property taxes in result of wide disparities in revenues available to local school districts deprived children of an equal educational opportunity in violation of the Vermont Constitution. There are two levels of inequity in Brayham. One taxpayer inequity that town had to pay 2.25 percent versus 1 percent was led to an equal educational opportunities for students. The Supreme Court said that the distribution of resources precious educational opportunity may not have as its determining force the mere fertility of a child's residence. And the parties conceded conceded that the foundation plan resulted in unequal opportunities for students. But the state argued that this was justified by the state's interest in promoting local control. The Brayham Court rejected this argument, holding that the constitutional constitutional right to substantial equality of educational opportunity is essentially a state mandate that cannot be overwritten by local control. Therefore, the court held that to fulfill its constitutional obligation, the state must ensure substantial equality of educational opportunities throughout Vermont. Vermont's education funding system was substantially changed by Act 60 and 68. And the Vermont Supreme Court has not, in any meaningful way, analyzed the common benefits clause in connection with education since it should bring them. So we have no further precedent than Brayham to rely on. Act 60 and 68 retained local control over spending decisions but created a system of tax rate equity. So under Act 60, two towns with the same per pupil spending have the same spending adjusted tax rate. And two homes, one in each town, would pay the same property taxes if they had the same fair market value. And this leads into the weighing factors because there are many parallels to what's happening in this space with what happened in Brayham. So Chloe talked to you today about this, and I won't go into much detail, but just to highlight for you. We know that the property tax rate and the income sensitized rate are based on a school district's per pupil spending. And per pupil spending is determined by dividing education spending from the school budget, let's say 20 million, by the number of equalized peoples. Let's say 1500 per pupil spending of 13,333. If there were less people, so 1,200 equalized peoples, per pupil spending would be higher, 16,666. And there were more equalized people per pupil spending would be lower, 11,111. Actually, I've got one, two, many ones there. So therefore, higher equalized peoples equals lower tax rates, and lower equalized peoples equal higher tax rates. So the number of equalized peoples really matters in terms of your tax rate, and equalized peoples is determined by the weighing factors. So in order to determine equalized peoples, a number of weighing factors are applied to a school district's student count. The policy behind weighing factors is to provide more resources for school districts that have a relatively higher number of students that need those extra resources. So pre-K students are weighted at 0.46, about half of one person. Elementary and kindergarten students are weighted at one. Secondary students at 1.13, and students who are from low-income homes or English language learners receive additional weighting. Weighing is a zero-sum game. So, for example, a higher weighting for one school district with more students who are from low-income homes receives a higher weighting, so lower taxes. But that results in another school district with fewer of the separate students receiving a lower weighting. So it's all a shift between school districts. This weighing factor, if you have more students, which is less of certain characteristics, you're shifting tax rates among school districts. Note that the weighing system does not directly provide further resources for school districts that have a relatively higher number of students that need those extra resources, as will be the case with grant funding. So Chloe talked about that. Another way of pushing this is to give grants, which will provide funding directly for those students. The weighing system results in relatively lower educational tax rates and the ability of school districts to more cheaply increase education spending to provide additional resources. So it's creating more taxing capacity. School districts may choose not to provide additional resources, but instead benefit from lower educational tax rates. So there's a question that was not answered in the weighing report about whether, in fact, this tax system results in better outcomes for students. It definitely results in lower taxes. It's not clear that that tax capacity is being spent to help these students. Okay, so Act 173 from 2018, the weighing report found that the weighing formula does not reflect contemporary educational circumstances and costs, and that the existing weights have weak ties with any resources needed. The weighing report recommends adjusting the weight and adding new weights. We're going back to Brigham as our last slide. Remember that Brigham found two levels of inequity, taxpayer inequity, leading to unequal educational opportunities for students. Brigham found that the distribution of a resource that's precious as an educational opportunity may not have as its determining force the mere fertility of a child's residence. So the current weighing factors may result in taxpayer inequity because school districts receive a relative tax advantage or disadvantage from the weights, may result or lead to unequal educational opportunities for students because school districts which are most in need of additional resources are not gaining the tax and capacity to afford those resources. And this may result in unequal educational opportunities based on the mere fertility of a child's residence. So that's why when you hear, I'll stop my screen share. Brigham, that's why you hear that the weighing area is the next Brigham case because it has parallels to the fact pattern of Brigham. By that, Jim, a lawsuit is anticipated. Yeah, yeah, so that's what people make that connection. That's why, because there are factors there that do think up. OK, yeah, questions. We're going to get into this more on Friday when we hear the report from the weighting on the weighting study. We'll be presented to us. But any any questions at this point for Jim? In this, what was an incredible everything from the US Constitution to recent major education policy? Senator Lyons, please. So this is kind of a high up question. And it does relate to Act 60 and our common benefits clause. So going back to unequal treatment. When the Brigham decision was rendered, did it did it include overall spending or did it also dive down into programs? So I'm thinking of athletic opportunities. And I'm thinking of, I'll say dual enrollment, but maybe it would didn't get that discrete. But in terms of the decision, the Brigham decision, how far down into the school did it dive? It didn't dive down that far. And I'll say a couple of things about Brigham, because often I think it's been miscorded. So so first of all, Brigham was based upon gross inequities across the state for students and taxpayers. Right. So and that was just a given in the case. I wasn't going to argue. So gross inequities across the state involve both taxpayer inequity and student outcome inequity. OK. I've heard people say, well, every every town should be able to every school district should be able to tuition their students. It's it's unconstitutional under Brigham not to allow that opportunity for everyone. I've heard that it's unconstitutional for public for independent schools to take public tuition not to take special education students. OK, there are a lot of people who say based on Brigham, it's unequal, it's unequal. But remember that Brigham, as I just said, had basically basically gross inequity across the whole state on the tax side and the student side. So I think that's why I also mentioned that Brigham has no further precedents after it to interpret. So we only have that one decision. So I think people can easily say it's unfair or it's unequal. Therefore, by Brigham, I think it's a lot more nuanced than that. And I think the argument has to be much larger than that to maybe violate Brigham. Well, thank you. Other questions, comments. A lot to take in today. I recognize that I appreciate everybody's everybody's time and willingness to jump into both the weight weighting study, educational finance, as well as everything that that Jim has presented. Tomorrow, we are going to move on to our first bill, which will be presented by Senator McCormick. For those of you who are new to the Senate, again, we asked the presenter to come in, talk a little bit about the genesis of the bill, and then we'll have some witnesses and folks from the Agency of Education talk to us about civic education, where we're at in this state. And hopefully we'll have some time at the end of the committee to sort of talk a little bit about what direction people may be interested in going in with this or not. Any other final questions or comments for the day? Senator Hooker, everything all right? OK, OK, OK, you might have have a question. Thank you, everybody. Jim, thank you very much. I realize how much time and presentation, prep time, this kind of thing takes. It was well done and certainly help clarify a number of things for me. And now we have these resources to refer to. So thank you for your time today. But preparing for this. Senator Campion, yes, I will stay on. Do you need to have a comment for the committee? No, just for yourself and Jim to stay on. And let me know when you want me to stop the live stream.