 there we go okay good afternoon everyone welcome to senate education it is march 31st wednesday and today we are starting with a conversation with senator white and mr carol and then we're going to move into uh return to uh public school facilities um it uh the conversation we started yesterday or continued yesterday with h 426 we're then going to talk a little bit about covid relief funding continuing that and then uh we have a request from uh the career and technical education folks and senator kitchell to look into uh their funding a bit so with that um senator white it's great to have you here and mr carol good to have you back you are becoming a frequent flyer i don't know if you're actually there but we see your name thank you he may not be because i was in the waiting room for a long long time and then it sent me a message that said i was trying to get in with the wrong code oh okay well we're glad you made it in senator white and mr carol mr carol you now terrific so i'm wondering if the two of you would be so kind as to uh bringing us back to uh and giving a little bit of history and a reminder of the situation that the two of you are particularly interested in having senate ed kind of endorse that would then perhaps move through government operations and i know some things happened uh last year in committee as the new chair i'm still reading those history books and uh we did have mr carol in to talk a little bit about i believe what we're going to hear from both of you about but it would be just a great reminder uh if you wouldn't mind bringing us back and giving us some some real understanding on this so with that uh the floor is yours sure thanks um so the we set up a committee called the boards and commissions sunset advisory committee and the goal was to eliminate unnecessary boards and commissions ones that didn't meet one or change the statutes of others to reflect the current situation in the summer of 2018 the committee chose to eliminate the state board of education and we put that in the bill for the 2019 session mr carol came and talked to us and told us that the he was the new chair and that they were going to be working on changes to the state board of education but we thought by putting in the elimination in there it would spur on the conversation there was they would have to have the conversation so we put it in the bill for the 2019 session the house took it out because the boards and commissions bill starts in the house the house took it out and um asked house education to address the issue they did not address the issue in 2019 and 2020 senate education worked with the state board and the agency and passed i believe it was one s 166 is that right mr carol that's correct s 166 passed it passed through the entire senate and the house education committee again did not address that did not take up that bill i'm sure part of that was because of covid it kind of passed at the end of the 2020 session before we when we were just about to adjourn for um covid issues so um then in the summer of 2020 the sunset advisory committee added the entire bill s 166 into the boards and commissions um the sunset advisory committee bill we thought this would again spur the conversation and again the house took it out because the education committee wanted to address it and what they decided to do instead of addressing it was to set up a summer study committee to look at the issue um so it has now been three years that house education has not addressed this issue senate education did pass the uh bill and worked with the agency and the state board on passing s 126 166 so the question now is should senate government operations put a portion of s 166 back into h 122 i understand that it probably wouldn't be wise to put the whole bill in because there are some details in there that might need a little more work but the sections that specifically address the necessary changes that need to be made as it turns out what we heard in the in the advisory the sunset advisory committee is that the current statutes are terribly out of line with what current practice is and um some of just one of the things and i'm sure mr carol talked to you about this and will more but one of the issues was that um it this current statutes give the board the ability to make all kinds of rules that um rightly should belong with the agency of education and so um that's that's the dilemma that we're in right now should we put this back in we would love to put it back in and send it back to the house and see what they do with it but we really need to have um the this education committee's um endorsement for doing that we won't do it unless you decide to do it and i think mr carol can talk more specifically about the sections that really need to be in there now and the sections that can't it's a relatively long bill because it makes all the changes whenever you're changing um a board so that's that's where we are and we would love to put it back in and that i'll tell you who is on the sunset advisory committee just in case you're interested it's representative leclerc and representative gannon senator colomor and myself and matt krauss who is a governor's appointee and susie ellar as a governor's appointee well i mean the idea of working collaboratively with government senate government office is incredibly exciting and i appreciate your willingness to to possibly do this for us uh and so and i also appreciate your your understanding and willingness to let us you know dig into this a little bit uh mr carol was in early on when things were getting started uh to take us through some stuff but we definitely would need a review senator white what is your your timing on this uh could you i mean if we could work between you know next week here and there on it you're okay oh yeah this is a house bill so it doesn't have to go back we would just like it to be able to go back so that the house actually because if we put something in there it's going to have to go back to the house yeah and so we would like to be able to send it back in time for them to figure out what they're going to do with it um and and i really think that this i mean it has now been three years that this issue has been worked on it and the house education committee has not taken it up so except to set up a study committee so i would what i would suggest is that you work with mr carol to come up with the language that might be necessary to put back into h it's an h 122 bill and um we will do what well i think we've heard enough here we go what are you there yeah okay sorry you can't hear you're you're uh i'm losing you on my screen can you all hear you broke up a little bit there senator white oh i i'm sorry so we'll do we'll if you were can you hear me now yes perfectly so i would suggest i was just saying i would suggest that you work with mr carol to figure out what um what language needs to be in there from s 166 and i wouldn't put in new language yeah just the sections from 166 because if you put in new then it really changes um what we had done before and and then we'll do whatever you um want us to do great uh senator white and i know you probably have to get back and we can turn it to mr carol but just a quick question and others may have questions before we lose you so overall though this bill the sunset bill what is it what is it looking at just broadly oh it it eliminates we go we've been going through it's a three-year uh committee we've been going through every board and commission that exists in the state and eliminating ones that don't meet we actually eliminated one um that had to do with foreign trade and senator lions had a little fit and um we put it back in big and but it what it did was by us eliminating it it spurred that committee on to start meeting again so that's what we've been doing is eliminating ones that don't need to exist or that don't meet and changing the statutes of the ones that need to exist but current statutes are not in line with what they currently do and then what happens with that when we change those it goes to the committee of jurisdiction which is what happened here we went to the senate education committee questions for senator white senator lions please and my question is so uh how do we encourage the administration and the governor in particular to make appointments to some of these commissions or committees so that they can meet well we um we are working on with the archivist um to set up a software that will list all the commissions and committees and boards that it'll list their duties who their appointing powers are what their terms are who the current members are when they're and the archivist is working on that and if there are uh boards and commissions that need to have appointments i would um jason malucci was the person that was doing it for the governor but he is no longer doing it i'm not sure who the person is now but we we contacted we would contact him and say hey can you make these appointments and um it was it got results good work it did get results for at least a couple of appointments for the commission but still not okay other questions for senator white okay thank you senator white with mr carol thanks uh sticking around and we'll have a conversation with you that would be great okay and i'll if you have any more questions feel free to perfect thank you so much thanks bye senator perso do you want to just uh remind us this is work that you worked on um last year as well i remember that was raised when mr carol was first in um and the committee supported the work and unanimously to to make these these these changes and um because we had a bill last year i think brock had introduced to to get rid of the board and so i think we took that bill we had senator brock in explain why he think we should just get rid of it um but then what chair bruce did is basically had aoe the secretary french and then mr carol for the board just kind of go back and forth it was almost like a negotiation about which which things we should keep of which things and my understanding is in the end everybody agreed you know the board you know through mr carol and aoe through mr french agreed on a split of duties and the and the committee was unanimous in that support as well i think there was a you know at the beginning i don't know if there was anybody that wanted that supported the bill just to get rid of it but that's how it that's how it started the conversation this is the way i remember it thank you very much um mr carol uh thanks again for being with us uh as i recall when you first came in to see us uh back in january this was something that was a priority of yours something that you wanted to make certain happen these changes and correct me if i'm wrong while you were the chair as part of your um goals and objectives so if you wouldn't mind uh if you'd be so kind of suggest again give us the the broad overview we'll have mr demaray take us through the bill next week the sections that you would like us to include in the government operations house bill but for now if you wouldn't mind just again that refresher uh as to what you're hoping that we might do well thank you mr chair members of the committee for the record my name is john carol chair of the state board of education um as senator perch like we'll recall and jim knows really well uh it became a pretty comprehensive bill um 100 100 uh it's about 59 pages 69 sections um and i to put it in some perspective it had four elements to it um the first element was the one that i guess i frankly have to admit i was highly motivated about when i joined the state board in 29 2017 i think i may have told you in january i i was just mortified by what the board had been doing about independent schools i don't happen to have a stake in independent schools but it surely looked like like the state board was trying by means of rulemaking to marginalize some state schools some independent schools and you may recall there were several senators who and members of the house who introduced legislation who abolished the board because people felt um well the term was getting out over their skis um and and i i really felt passionately about that i think i supposed because i spent six years in your shoes um and so one of my goals as of joining the board was to to get the board reigned into where it is appropriate that is to say not pretending to be legislated but instead to be taking our cues from and directions from the legislature and writing rules which are faithful to the intent of statute that's what the first section of the bill does and then there are three other parts so so for me the primary goal of this bill was to rein in this essentially abusive authority a second was to get the board out of i've got to find a more delicate way to put this micromanaging the state the agency of education you recall the board used to be in charge of the agency of education back until 2012 and really in many ways the board had never really quite got the memo that the world had changed and they were no longer in charge and his credit secretary french kind of in the first meeting with us and by the way i don't answer to you folks and that was sort of kind of news to some of the board members um and so part of my goal was to get the statute modified so these best digital provisions that senator white was alluding to uh would would be history um we would think things like um if if the school district needed to modify their school year because of additional snow days the state board would have to look over the shoulder of the secretary in granting that approval and frankly we bring no expertise no value to that conversation and we just delayed the process and made him jump through more hoops than he or she should have to do uh so we wanted to get the board out of this business of micromanaging and a third area that was important to us both was and is the rulemaking and and senator persnick referred to this this was an area where there was a lot of frankly tension between the agency and the board the agency wanted to get all the rulemaking to them and we wanted to we offered to transfer about 27 about 22 of the 30 rules to the agency and the general algorithm we used was is the rule essentially administrative in character i mean there are rules that that determine how long school buses may idle and um i'm sure there's a need for such a rule but frankly the age the board of the state board has no expertise in in such an area and that sort of thing should be under the authority of the agency in the in the end the bill that the senate committee um i think that senator persnick used the term negotiated and i think that's actually a pretty good term uh was the the baby was divided about five or six of the rules stayed with the board of education and those are the rules that really uh speak to educational quality what happens in schools the quality of education uh and all of the rest um so that's about 24 out of 30 went to the agency and i think it was the committee's understanding and certainly mine that we had an agreement on that that went forward uh was endorsed by the committee unanimously and voted by all of you unanimously last year went over to the house and of course it got stuck in the covid pipeline i i don't fault the house for that at all and and then early this year it turns out that uh secretary french either changed his mind or never had agreed and has put forward a proposal to transfer all rulemaking uh to the agency of education he didn't tell us about this but that's been circulating in the general assembly we found that surprising and maybe even disturbing we thought there was an agreement but he tells us i asked him the other day and he said no i i didn't agree to that so senator persnick and i and others apparently were under a misimpression um in any case it seems like that's a big sticking point and is going to take some serious conversations um and then finally the fourth purpose of the bill so let me just be clear the first purpose was to rein in excess of uses of authority the second was to get the state board out of micromanaging the agency the third was to share some rules and the fourth was simply to do a ton of um what do you call them conforming changes that jim and others spotted throughout the entirety of statute and that's what really added to the brought us up to the 59 pages what i what i when senator white contacted me so well so let me back up so before i was contacted by senator white i was just in touch with uh chair web of the house committee saying i hope you can do something on this and she for various reasons felt they wouldn't get to until the summer and i said okay well we'll get to it then but frankly quite worried about how how we're ever going to renegotiate this rules business anyway senator white contacted me two weeks ago and said we'd like to put something in uh what is it uh commissions and boards and commissions bill and um my my counsel was that we should be very careful about that i think that that runs the risk of really um and running the committees of jurisdiction and i recommended to her that only the very basics of the bill which were the concerns raised by the sunset committee should be included in anything that would be in the boards and commissions bill um and that's a very small part of 166 it's actually about two pages um it's so what i'm so if you are interested in pursuing this at all and i can understand if you're not but if you do wish to pursue it at all my my recommendation to senator white and to you is to limit what's included to be the language which uh really goes directly to the i hate to use the term abuses of authority it's so strong to the indiscretions that that were practiced by the board in the past and that were a cause of great concern to many many legislators and would have been to me if i were in your shoe and that it and so specifically what i have drafted um um really i haven't drafted anything i've simply excerpted pieces of 166 and and it comes from what's called section one which is the part that speaks to what the board will do part two speaks to what the secretary will do my thought was given this tension between the board and the secretary that has recently arisen in the last couple months about rulemaking it's not my place to say anything about the secretary of education we ought to confine our advocacy to the board itself and what how the board needs to change and improve and specifically what the the very brief excerpt it's about two pages it takes the very beginning of the bill and where where the bill says it repeals the language which which was put in in in 2012 which gave the board the authority to quote establish policy and that language however well intentioned has been what was exploited by the board to do some stuff that simply was never counted in sin law and also at my request jim added language around rulemaking to say that such rulemaking shall be to carry out the powers and duties of the board as directed by the general assembly within the limits of legislative intent so was it just an attempt to fence the board even more around or into the corral that says this is what you can do as stated by the general assembly and no more and you can't you can't wonder out of the corral anymore you've got to stay true to the legislative direction you have so again just so that we know so you had four prior you have four priorities we're really addressing that first priority really and jim has language on that jim right i believe i'm just looking for a nod you have language for us to look at next week so yes i don't have new language i had a language from last year in this bill s166 if the first priority is to change the wording around state board's responsibilities take away reference to making policy that's a very simple change once you get into rearranging who has rulemaking authority then the consequence of that is it affects the entire tala 16 so that's where you can't just change the rulemaking authority up front and not align it with everything in the whole title and so that's what we get into a 60 page rewrite so if that's what you want to do is a much bigger deal if it's just clarifying that the state board doesn't have policy making responsibilities that's a very simple thing to do mr carol what are you thinking that's precisely okay the thrust of the two pages that i accepted from 166 um it it it's it's simply sections one through seven uh in in the beginning of the bill i can go over this with you jim if you like uh i think what would be probably uh and i'll look to mr demiray for his endorsement or uh thumbs down on this if you would forward it to mr demiray and to uh the members of the committee or to genie and she'll get it to all of us uh we can have a look at it and um we can talk with mr demiray as to whether or not that fits in the with the description of of your goal and we may hear you know uh back from you again next week when we take it up um and perhaps from the agency just to make sure that again they're on board but this doesn't sound like a terribly heavy lift and it sounds and i really appreciate you reaching out to the house to get there you know it would have been nice if they had the time to do it but i completely understand but i appreciate your outreach there as well as to senator white it only helps our work in advances uh but i think makes a lot of sense mr demiray do you please yeah just to say i think uh sir carol i think page one through seven also rearrange responsibilities for making rules but i don't go as far as page one through seven i stop at page two okay okay perfect okay i don't want to mess with rules okay senator hooker well um thank you senator campion and uh mr carol but you did make reference to rules and said something about fencing the department in uh the board the board in fencing the board i said the department i apologize i want to fence the board in on its rulemaking so that it does not excurs out into territory okay so you're considering keeping those five rules that the board that pertain to the board of the board has some um actually this would remain silent on rules okay on specific rules because there's same i thought we had an agreement and there seemed that seems to have dissipated and so i just don't feel like i can speak about which rules go where that seems to be a new fight that we have to work through offline somehow okay thank you i must have misheard you your reference to who was going to have the fence around them oh yeah i'm sorry i did i must have misspoken it's it's it's the board that needs to be fenced senator perchler yeah well it's i'd be interested to have secretary french in just to see but i mean i trust mr carol but it would be good to hear what he says what what has changed since last year and i thought it was a good progress on clearing up all those rules but i guess if there's a disagreement it's going to take a bunch of time and i understand trying to just do the the quick and easy version but if we have time mr chair would be good to hear what he's thinking maybe for next year or something yeah well i absolutely think you know as as i understand and please if others would like more on this i'm thinking next wednesday we would hear perhaps again from mr carol we'll have mr dimmer a bring the language we'll have secretary french i'd like to see mr carol's language to make sure there's no pork or anything for nor which sneaked in there uh so uh so yeah that's where i think um and then if others want to hear from additional people but um we're happy to do so but i think we can we can get this work done and i appreciate uh mr carol sticking with us on this any other questions for mr carol or mr dimmer a on this mr carol final word just i wanted to observe that we on the border so frustrated by this rulemaking conversation that i i'm going to propose to the secretary that we put together a working group between a with a couple board members and a couple folks from the agency and sort this thing out once and for all without taking any more time with the general assembly until until there's an agreement that will hold up i think this has become quite futile at least the big picture rule allocation so i i hope we can get that sort of solved offline in the next couple months so that when when the house committee is ready to take a look at that this thing is back online and there's an agreement um no thank you and if there's any way that we can be helpful in terms of facilitating those conversations uh please just let us know and appreciate your patience uh and i'm sorry we didn't get to this sooner um but i'm glad we're we're going to try to advance uh at least this this one piece uh this year fine i will i will then send to uh to jim and to all of you um the the draft that i shared with senator white the two pages that does not go into rulemaking other than to say be careful how you do it all right great and uh genie if you would be so kind as to uh for wednesday we'll have uh mr carol and secretary french uh back networks for both of their schedules on wednesday yes sir great thank you all right thank you so much it's great to see you again thank you so much appreciate your help very much