 Welcome to Senate Education on Thursday, March 24th. It's 340. We have with us Donna Russo-Stavage. I haven't seen you in a long time. Hope you're doing well. You're getting used to it. Yeah. There we go. Sorry about that. It's really great to see you. Thank you. It's nice to see, see you sort of as well. Yeah, sort of. So we are, we thought we would have you talk to us a little bit about Act 46 and give us some background. We have, you know, I'm a new chair, but was involved in it. We have a couple of new senators that weren't involved in it. It's just an overview of Act 46 would be really helpful before we dig into this, the House bill. I'd be happy to. This is Donna Russo-Stavage. I'm with the agency of education. And I did know that this is what you'd like me to talk about. I'd also like to explain because it leads into it why now is a really important time to make these proposed amendments to chapter 11. And I do have some written testimony because I knew I would need to go through this really quickly and you might want to look at it in more detail. So I'll send that to your committee assistant later today. Before I begin, and I know that your legislative council is going to go into more detail about this because it's a really significant aspect of the changes to chapter 11. I just want to make sure we're all on the same page with a couple of a couple of terms. And that is the first one is a union school district. And there are so many terms that are similar as you know, but a union school district is a district that is organized to provide for the education of children who reside in more than one town. There are a couple of different kinds of union school districts, but they all are union school districts. One type is a union high school district or a union elementary school districts, and they're organized to provide for the education of students only in a small subset of grades. And then they have member school districts at the town level who are responsible for the other grades. The first kind of union school district is a unified union school district or a UUSD, and a UUSD is responsible for all grades pre K through 12. And although it's similar in many ways, what is distinctly different and is part of the reason that the chapter 11 proposals are being made. It does not have member school districts and that one factor makes many of the operational processes just different. And it makes it raises a lot of questions because there isn't a local school board to perform certain duties or to stand in a certain place in the union school district. So in most of the, and I'll get into this in more detail, but most of the districts now are unified union school districts, which are the ones for pre K through 12. Act 46 is often used as a as a convenient way to refer to all of the activity that has occurred in the last few years regarding the creation of unified union school districts, but actually the legislature started this activity, several years before it enacted Act 46 in 2010 it enacted Act 153. And in Act 153 the legislature created a program to try to encourage districts to have these conversations, and then to, and then to merge hopefully into a unified union school district. And the program included certain tax rate reductions and other transitional assistance and and incentives to encourage districts to do so. Then in 2012, it expanded that program. In Act 1, or you all expanded that program in Act 156, and then in 2013 you amended these even some more in Act 56. There was some activity under this program that was initially established in 2010. Several groups of communities did come together and form study committees to study whether it made sense to form a unified union school district. And there actually were two union school districts that were created under this under under that those programs that were enacted earlier. In 2015, I believe that the legislature was not sad was not satisfied didn't believe that those earlier programs had really resulted in the number of changes that they had been anticipating. So the legislature tours at that time and acted Act 46 and Act 46 is really an extension of the earlier program, but it also added some additional factors. So the first thing that Act 46 did was actually pull that earlier legislation into itself, and say, you know, and also expand upon that legislation by having a program that depending upon what criteria was met. A group of districts that voluntarily created a unified union school district would get depending again depending upon the criteria differing levels of tax rate reductions and transitional assistance and and incentives. So that was the phase of what Act 46 did and this is what's different than the next three phases or what's different than the earlier legislation. It said that any district that hadn't merged by a certain time and didn't expect to be merged by a certain time needed to self evaluate its current practices against the same criteria that was used to determine whether a merger was a good idea in the first place because it listed certain educational and financial goals that that the legislators were hoping to achieve by this by this by this legislation. So this the second phase had these non merging districts evaluate themselves against the same standards, and then and then present a proposal that explained why it is that continuing in the way that they were currently was the best way in their particular situation to achieve those goals. So then that and then those proposals were set initially to the Secretary of Education. The third part of Act 46 was the Secretary of Education read all those proposals did additional research met with representatives of the school boards of every one of those districts that was making the proposal to stay the same, and then the legislation required the secretary to create a statewide proposed plan for what should happen, you know, did did they make their case did these proposals make their case, and should they stay the same or should some of them actually be merged into into merged districts into unified union school districts. The fourth and final phase was that the state Board of Education read the secretary's proposal, read all of the proposals from all of the various districts who were sending in their proposals to stay the same had meetings I don't believe were required in statute but state board did hold meetings around the state to meet with the representatives from the districts that wanted to stay the same. And then as required by Act 46 the state board issued an order that did indeed require merger in certain cases and in other cases said, Okay, what you're saying makes sense or we can't see anything that would be better so stay the same. And then as you probably know, many of those districts that had been merged by the state board's order, brought a loss, several lawsuits, the state Supreme Court ultimately decided that the state board had been properly granted the authority by the legislature to do what it did, and that it exercised that that authority appropriately and that the order could stand. So that's really, really fast version of what's happened in 10 years. So I'll give you I want to give you a couple of statistics because these are important just to know how much change occurred. And I'm going to try to share my screen although I'm a little scared that I'm going to do something scary so I'll do my best. As of July 1 2019 which is the date on which all voluntarily merged or state board created unified union school districts were required to be operational so that's just like a really good point to have a cut off to see what had happened. The voters in 161 districts, residing in 145 towns had voluntarily approved the formation of 39 unified districts so that was a net reduction of 122 districts by that voluntary phase. The state board then was faced with addressing 96 unmerged districts, part of the reason if you add things up it's not going to come up to all of the districts that were then in the state and that's because Act 46 specifically exempted certain types of districts. If the districts were very large like Burlington or if it was an interstate school district which is subject to federal law and so it just if they're very often just kind of over there on their own. And instead of being included in legislation like this. So, ultimately after the voluntary mergers and those exemptions, the state board had 96 unmerged districts to look at and to consider its order did not change the governance structure of 47 of those 96 districts. And it did merge 46 districts in 41 towns to form 11 new union school districts, those 11 school districts were seven new unified union school districts so that was pre K through 12. And for that were responsible either for pre K through eight or pre K through six. And the reason that was done was because the structure of the various schools didn't allow for them to be able to merge pre K through 12. The state board also enlarged to existing union school districts by adding another district in into them. So you can see there was a great deal of change that occurred over a couple of years but most of it really hit everything in July one of 2019. And it's because of those changes and because there is a very distinct difference between a union high school district. And when I say union high school district just think union elementary school district to and unified union school district structurally they're different because because the unified union school district doesn't have a member school district at the other for the other grades. And it's because of these reasons that it's important that that these chapter 11 changes are made. And I just want to explain and I'm hoping I can bring this up maybe I won't bother it I'm just, I'm not very technological and I don't want to take your time trying to figure it out. But prior to 2010, only 20% of all school districts in Vermont were a unified school district of any type so 20% of all school districts in the state in 2010 were some kind of a union school district and almost all of those that 20% were union school districts. In fact in 2010 there were only two districts in the state that operated all grades pre K through 12 that were union school districts. In contrast in 2022 50% of all school districts in the state are union school districts, and nearly 84% of those 50% are unified union school districts so there's just been a huge increase in the number of unified union school districts in the state. So, when the legislature and acted acts 153 and 46 and all of the other related ones creating this these programs to either incentivize or require merger. It was just a program to try to encourage or require it. It wasn't language to for the process at all. And all of all of this legislation relied upon the statutes that are set out in chapter 11, both for the create the exploration and creation of a new union school district, but also once created the operation of a union school district. And that that set of statutes chapter 11 in chapter 11 were enacted in late in the late 1960s, and they've been hardly amended since then very few amendments have done have have occurred in the interim. As we were helping school districts both to explore the potential creation of union school districts during the voluntary phase of act 40 act 46 and the other related legislation. And since then since 2019 in particular when we've been trying to help guide unified union school districts to try to figure out how to operate as a unified union school district. It's become it became really very clear to the agency that chapter 11 is very poorly drafted. It doesn't include a lot of detail includes details about the same topic and several locations and you have to know like where to go among all these different locations to try to piece together, and then probably most significant. Well first of all does also doesn't even address certain topics, and then finally and what's most significant here is that it was written for union high school districts and even though there were some attempts made in later years to try to make it make sense for unified union school districts. Very often, it just doesn't. So, we have a situation where nearly half of all districts in the state are trying to get used to this new structure which is a big change anyway. And they're looking to statutes that essentially give them no help in trying to figure out what they're supposed to do. So, beginning in 2019. The agency met with a number of people that we felt like understood the issues and would have good things to contribute so we. We met with we began meeting with the elections division at the Secretary of State's office with the school boards association the superintendent's association. I believe that we reached out to the teachers union but there wasn't as you know as much to be thinking about in terms of teachers in this in this particular statute and they did not participate to any great and then also to a number of private attorneys who had been involved in advising study committees while they were trying to merge and then who now also represent unified union school districts. And we developed we first started off with okay we could start with from square one not changing the law but trying to make a structure that makes sense so that people can go where they want. And find the information they need in order to be able to operate on a day to day basis and I mean the simple things like if you want to nominate if you want to submit a petition for someone to run for the school board. Where do you bring the petition there isn't a local school district where you can you know bring it there it's it's you do you bring it to the to the unified union school district clerk. Who you know might be in some other town or do you bring it to your town clerk or so there you know many deep little tiny details like that that just permeate the whole process of how do you create a union school district but also how do you operate it. What we came up with was in large part, what is has been included as the House bill, although they went through it very carefully and and with with Ledge Council and you know made changes throughout. We tried to only make technical changes that would that you know that would expand upon what is there or that would take from existing municipal law or common practice, and to create this this much more comprehensive set of statutes. Anytime that something was really went into a policy realm, even if it wasn't something that we felt was particularly controversial, we didn't make we didn't make any changes and we just kept a list of all of the things that we felt were policy choices. In most part those were not controversial they're things like an amount was set for us for a certain purpose in 1968 that was $25,000 is that the right amount. Now, you know should that amount be changed that wasn't something that we were going to get into but we listed that in the in the policy considerations, the one big area of that is controversial. And we again did not draft anything is this group the agency of Ed and this group did not draft anything is about withdrawal from an existing union school district and that's because the statute, especially for unified union school districts is so deficient and has so many chicken egg problems that anything we would have done would have changed it so dramatically that it just would have gone beyond anything we felt as though we we should be even thinking about doing. Because it had some experience recent experience trying to to deal with its portions of of the withdrawal process the State Board of Education did decide that it wanted to propose something. And the Secretary authorized me to work with the State Board and I helped them draft a proposal relating to withdrawal. I also accepted some of that proposal, but based on testimony that it received both from citizens in communities that wanted to withdraw, and from the school boards Association and you know, various people who came into the community into the committee. There are, there are significant portions of the of what is in age 27 for withdrawal that are different from what the State Board suggested. That was an awful lot and very fast. I know I speak very quickly but I was hoping that if you had questions there would be time for questions. So I guess I'm just looking at does that give everyone a good sense of what at 46 was and is and I am happy to come back or to be available to, you know, to do anything that would be helpful to you I feel, I feel very strongly that this legislation is necessary because there are so many districts out there that don't have any guidance, and I would be very happy to help in any way I can. Thank you, I would be interested in the future to learn what the differences were on the withdrawal recommendations from the board and what that's definitely. Okay, I can work with legislative council and yeah. That that would be happy. I'd be happy to do that or if it's more appropriate if she thinks it's more appropriate coming from her will will will get that to you. I was going to say will there be a review session before the exam on this. I hope you were taking notes. Of course, three credits. Anything else for Donna before we jumped into this for probably the next 45 minutes. Okay. Thank you Donna. Okay, if I stay on just to listen. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Please. Thank you. The same James. So we everybody has a paper copy on their desk. I believe I have more than one. Thank you. Which one do we look at? Yeah, so that's me James office of legislative council. What we will be working with is the 114 pages today. Okay, chunk one. And you have the entire bill together. And then tomorrow Daphne will print out chunk two for you and then whenever we do chunk three. Okay. But if you, if you want reference to anything in chunks two or three, you have the whole bill there today. Okay. Okay. So I'm not going to take that quiz. No, I will say that Donna and I. Pretty much appeared at every. Every. Every time the house took testimony on this. From either one of us. We were usually both there to provide support to each other. Just as an, that's how we worked to get that to this place. I'm happy to continue to do that at the committee's discretion or direction. You continue to work that closely with. Donna and Amy, or, you know, whatever is most comfortable for you. And however, you know, you feel. You can best effectively get your work done. Great. Yeah, whatever works. Donna has been working with us for almost three years. I've had about three months. So you're going to give us 45 minute overview. If even that. We're going to step up. For 45. On. On the first shot. Yep. Okay. Great. And I need to see. At some point, but when I stepped out, just keep going. Yeah. And the center of approval. Take over. Okay. So the first chunk is titled chapter 11 main rewrite. This is the portion that Donna was talking about. She convened the stakeholder group with the secretary of state's office, the private bar, the school board's association. This is what they were working on starting in, I think, 2019. She said, this does not include the controversial piece. She was talking about withdrawals. That's chunk two. Chunk three. It's the session law. That was put forward. I believe the original proposal came from the state board of education. And then there were significant changes to it in house. Add. To address with girls currently underway. That's chunk three. So what you're, what we're going to look at today in this chunk one. Is what Donna has kind of referred to as kind of a non-controversial technical changes. With, and I will flag them when we get to them. Some. Limited and very focused policy decisions that were made. The agency of education. Prepared a policy consideration document related to this piece of legislation. That house Ed went over. I would encourage you to ask Donna to give that to you. If you're interested in seeing the places. That we had identified as places. House Ed went through and made policy changes, but they didn't make changes in everywhere that was suggested. So. I'm just a pitch to get your hands on that document. And you just defined. Third trunk. Third chunk is the, it's the session law. Oh, session. Session. So the withdrawal is number two, but the session law for. This, the session law is for withdrawals that are currently underway. Both are withdrawals. Correct. Correct. And the session law addresses the withdrawals that are currently underway are all in different. Phases. Yeah. Different. And they're, they're compared to this. They're short. So the session law address there's, there's four different sections to address the four different phases that people are currently in, but it's all related to withdrawal. So chunks two and three are all related to withdrawal. One is. Exploration. Are we interested in doing this? Okay. We're interested in doing it formation. How do we form it? Okay. We've done it. Now how do we operate it? And it's a lot. So I will say. For Tuesday, I think I sent Daphne. So I don't know if it's been reposted for today. Is it been reposted for daily outline? Okay. Okay. I did not redo it for chunk, but I did give an outline for the entire bill itself. And the state of the page numbers. Just as a reference. Going forward. Also posted today is a little handout. On with visuals on union school districts. Okay. I think it's called union school district. Is it. Common terms. Just as a refresher, if you need to go to it to remember the difference between the union elementary or in high school or unified union school district. Are you all okay on that? Do you want to just breeze through that? You don't want to go over that in detail. Okay. Okay. So the next slide. Before we dig into the actual language of the bill is the concept of board proportionality. Which is another document. That. Daphne has posted. School board member proportionality. So this is a concept that will come up. Throughout. This rewrite. So this is a, this is a form of representation. On the new school boards that we're forming. Because it's not just the town anymore. You've got a bunch of different towns, a bunch of different districts, all with varying levels of population. How are they? How. Who decides who has what voice on the school board? So the US constitution has decided under the equal protection of the school board. So one person, one vote concept applies to school boards as well. And there's lots of case law on that. It's very well settled law. So in Vermont, there's three types of proportional representation. And you'll see this repeated in the formation because they have to elect initial board members. And then you'll see it in the, okay. And then you'll see that we do that. So this is a concept that will repeat itself. The three different types of the proportional by town model. And Senator, we are looking at board member proportionality, which is a handout that Daphne has posted. Just a concept to get us going. A concept that will repeat itself. So the proportional by. And please stop me. If you are not sure where I am or if I'm going too fast. And the proportional by town model is achieved at the town level by ensuring the number of seats of portion to each town is closely proportional to the town's population. The articles of agreement of the board are going to set out the specific number of seats for each town within the union district based on the most recent census. And you can monkey with that a little bit by waiting votes. So it doesn't necessarily have to be the humans in the seats to achieve the proportionality. This is, this is, we're going to, we're just, this is just so that it's not gobbledygook when you see it. You don't have to master it to understand all of it. So, if you were going just based on people. And it would be like, let's say town A has three people on the board, town B has three people on the board and town C has one person on the board. Instead of town B having three people on the board, they could maybe have two people on the board, but their votes have to be weighted in such a way so that it's as if they had the same effect of if they have three people on the board. Their votes would be 1.2. Yes. Something. I don't know. I don't know. That's current law. Weighted voting is a current law. Yep. It's an option. So all of these are options that. Districts that are forming can choose or districts that are currently running or either operating under or at some point in time they may choose to, to change things up. So the important thing kind of to understand about the proportional by time model is related to who can be a board member. So the board member must reside in the town. Which the seat is a portion because when you vote for that one person in your town to serve on your school district board. They are representing. That. The voice of that town. It is one town voting for that person. The voters of the town, which the seat is a portion to sign the nominating petition and only voters of the town. Elect candidates. That are a portion to their seats. On the complete opposite end of the spectrum is at large. No towns are a portion to any. No seats are a portion to any town. Any member, any person residing in the district. Can serve on the board. Anyone, any petition, any voter in the district can sign the nominating petition. And only voters of the town elect candidates. That are a portion to their seats. If you're sitting on that board, you are presumed to represent the interests of the district as a whole. All of the voters in the district. To further confuse matter. In the middle. There's a hybrid option. Called the modified at large model. This came out of a 19, 19, 75 for not supreme. Nope. Actually it was a federal case. 1975. Referred to as the Mount Anthony case. Where basically there was a lawsuit about board proportionality. Yeah, my way. Yes. My Anthony. Yep. There's a lawsuit about poor proportionality. Someone complained and said, I don't think. My, my. I don't think that's a good idea. I don't think that's a good idea. I don't think. My, my town is being adequately represented by the number of people on our school board. The court said, you're right. Go back to the drawing board, figure out how to meet the constitutional requirement of one person, one vote in your representation on the school board. And they came back. The school district came back with this hybrid model. And they said, okay, so now it's an option. So the hybrid model is just what it sounds like. It's a mix between proportional by town and at large. The articles of agreement. Are going to specify a specific number of seats. Her town within the union school district. But everyone in the union school district votes on filling those seats. Everyone's voting on it. And any. And the board member does have to reside in the town of the seat as a portion to. But everyone votes and because everyone's voting, it is presumed that that board member. Is representing the interests of the entire district, which is how we get at the one person, one vote. Constitutional. Yes. Is that clear as my. No. Who decides or how is it decided. Which model is going to be used. So if it's a forming, um, if you're, uh, just getting ready to form your district or exploring that, the study committee, it's going to, all of this is going to be spelled out in the articles of agreement. Okay. So to be clear to Senator Linus point, the Senator model is really the out and large model, right? The high, the modified, I've never heard of this before, but I'm intrigued. That would be if say, for example, you had a district with three school districts equally weighted for a Senate comparison. That school district would be, it would have up to two candidates that everybody would vote on, but they would have to reside in that third of the district. Yes. That's intriguing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All those towns vote on it. One of them. Well, it's worth it. Yeah. You can have two. Okay. The articles of the court, they call it articles of agreement. They're not really agreed on. They're like, here are your articles of agreement. Yeah. Yeah. I think some of the concepts and the. Things that need to be in the articles of agreement. Yes. That is part of what is in chapter 11. But each, each school district has their own articles of agreement. And there is variation. In this part of that deal with how. Or numbers, however they do it are reelected or if somebody leaves. Yep. All spelled out. All spelled out. That's why this is so big. You'll see if you have a chance, I would encourage you to take a, just a breeze through chapter 11 as it stands currently, you'll see significantly. I do have a question. I remember what one of the controversies was that first year I was on the 2019 was. That the school board appointed. The unified school board member. So maybe this is only anyone in new district as far. So there's. Which I don't see on here, but maybe that's only because it was when it's newly created, when you're doing the study board or something. They were complaining that there's select board. Or they're, or the old, like, the school board that's going away with electing somebody. So the people of the town didn't get it. Yeah. So, well, I. You said something that threw me up a little bit. So I think I'm guessing it's just to guess what you're talking about is related to a vacancy. And a school district that is already off and running and just, there happens to be a vacancy. How is that vacancy filled. This does address it and it addresses it by incorporating session law. That has been around to address this issue since I believe 2017. And it's in, it was in the big bill last year. And it's sunset this year. And so what current law says is. If there's a vacancy in the school board. I believe that the select board is making an appointment. But the session law says is. If it's a proportional, and this is. We probably won't even. We'll see. But the way this is organized is we're thinking about it. We're going to do it. We've already done it. And so we're in the already done it phase. And so it's the very end here. And it's the soul. It's this draft says that it is the school board and consultation with the select board. That appoints the person to fill the vacancy. And then on the, on the first part, I'm thinking about, okay. Yeah, please. Who appoint, there's a, there's a, there's, I don't know if they call the school board, but there's a board that forms to. Prepare to. The study committee. That study committee is, or it's either that or the next one when they do it. Is there a part where just the existing school board that will be dissolved appoint people to the board? No. So the vote to elect initial members of the union school district board is on page 25. We are first. I think that's what you're talking about, right? Yeah. So there's been a study committee. They're interested in forming a unified or a union school district. If that interest is successful, there's got to be people to run it, right? So how do we appoint those initial members? So it's section seven 11 vote to elect initial members of the union school district board. So the voters elect the initial members who will serve on the board of the union school district. And then this goes. The voters. Yeah. So it depends on the representation model that this new district is going to use. It depends on who is going to use on who is doing the voting and the eligibility of the people to fill those seats. Yeah. Does that answer your question? Yeah. Okay. This section seven 11 is very large and it lays out very specifically. So if you jump to. Okay. Okay. Okay. And then on page. 28. If it's a proposed unified union school district. And they are choosing to do the proportional to town population. It spells out exactly. What needs to be on the petition. And then who's voting. And then on page 29. It says to give the same information for the modified at large representation. And then it goes through it all over again. For if it's a proposed union elementary or union high school district. So it really lays it out. So that the people who have to do all of this work. Can go to one place for their specific situation and know that all of that information is there. Rather than trying to hunt and pack through a bunch of different sections that might apply to their specific situation. So in the, the apportionment piece. I'm looking at page 29. And it says. The board members to the unified union school board. Elected as a portion based on the town's population. So. Then it says. Modified at large model. Is that fixed within the town's population? Or is that fixed within that large model? Is that fixed within this. Section of law or to this town. Hicks one of those choices. So why is it sitting there? So this is so. Let's go back to page 25. And look at the organization of this. This specific section. So it starts by saying. The, so all the voters, the voters are going to elect the initial members to serve on the school board at the same time that they're voting on whether or not to form the school, the district. And then it says that the. Initial membership on union school districts and the method of member representation has to be set forth in the articles of agreement. And then there's some operational definitions. That help you understand the difference between the town clerk and the district clerk. And the school. So that really comes into play when we're talking about who's posting things, who's issuing the warning. That's not as. That's not clear in current law. And so I believe that was one of the guiding. And so we've got those definitions. And then we go into subsection D on page 28. And so this is saying. If you're going to your voting on whether or not to form a unified union school district. And then it gives all of the options. For the representatives of the district. So it's not saying you have to pick one or the other saying. The voters of each school district identified as necessary, advisable, which we haven't talked about yet. So vote, whether to elect initial board members of the proposed union school district as follows. And then it gives information on if they've picked proportional to town population. And then it, and that goes into. And then we're bumping back out to subdivision two. So that was subdivision one subdivision two is now modified at large model. And then, and then it keeps going that way. So it's, it's not telling a school district that they have to use those. It's telling them they have to use one of those. And then we're bumping back out to subdivision two. So that was subdivision one subdivision two is now modified at large model. So it's telling them they have to use one of those. It's not telling you which one to pick. Yep. Page 31. They're all there. Yep. They're all there. And then it, but that's for a unified union school district. Yes. It goes on on page 32. We start all over again. But the same concept. With just different tweaks, depending on whether you're a unified union school district or a union elementary school district, there's different people doing different things. This is not clear. I think we should start. Don't, don't. Okay. But I'm sorry. Anyway, that's how it's, that's how it's organized. So there's a lot of repetition. Right. But that's where those concepts. Yeah. The opening of this, you said this is the non controversial. I'm curious from your very cost perspective. How do you use that term? And why would you argue that this is not controversial and the others might. Without any. I'm just the, the person who gives you legal advice. I'm not policy person. almost all entirely current law. The withdrawal sections, and there's changes in here. There's changes that were made by House Ed as policy changes, and there's additional information in there to clarify roles of who's doing what. Is there someone who has to drive around each town to post something, or can they disseminate it to the people in the towns to post it? So there's reorganization. There's additional detail. There's clarity added. I'm out with the Mount Anthony case. Most of these statutes were in 1960s. The Mount Anthony case came in 75. So it's updated a little bit. The withdrawal section, the chunk, is all brand new. All brand new law. It's almost 4.30. We can, we can, we're on page one. Do you tell me if, when, because we have a 4.45 stop, you tell me when it's right. I'm fine with, or when stopping early, if it's the right time. Yes, Senator. I have another overarching, I've got to look through the outline. Do we need statute anymore about what the people that didn't like it called horse burners? Is that, you know, that was x-46. Is that still in chapter 11, or is that somewhere else? Or do we need it anymore? So what Donna was talking about related to x-46 is the vast majority, so x-46 did a lot of things. What Donna was talking about regarding the incentives, the kind of phases, the intentives, the studies, and then the state board of education action at the very end there, which you have this map. So, the vast majority of that is fashion law. So it's not in chapter 11. What, the way chapter 11 and act 46 interact is you'll see in act 46 when there is a talk about union, districts getting together and exploring merging under act 46 direction. It's all pursuant to chapter 11. The procedures and the processes that they have to follow was all, the only referencing current law was chapter 11. Chapter 11 at that time, and still today as we sit here, hasn't really been updated since the 60s. Donna's right, there have been small updates here and there, and Donna would know that she was probably here for most of those updates. But the vast majority of it was written back when there wasn't, there were a lot of union school districts. There's nothing in the law now that we would need the board to rule on a forced merger. That was, that was required for everybody to do that work to see about it, but that happened, that's done. It's not gonna happen again unless we change. Well, there's nothing in current law that is asking the state board of education to force districts to merge. What Trump too will look at is what happens if someone wants to leave a union school district and that is has heavy state board of education involvement. Is that clear to know about act 46 being really session law to get to a place and the place that the legislature wanted people to get to, the only mechanism and law they had to guide them there was chapter 11 and the only law to govern how they are currently operating is chapter 11, currently. I think maybe what would be helpful for today and then you can think about what you wanna do next is to just really look at the outline really quick. They don't have this in like a corn bowl. I think the outline is the easiest. I went through this with House Ed line by line. I'm happy to do that with you. I like the outline and then what is the outline. The outline is just a little easier. So this is the outline of the entire bill. Okay, so I'm only trying to extract the back of the right one. Oh yeah, outline with page number. So this will correspond to the whole bill that you have. So section one, so it currently in chapter 11, there's two sections 571 and 572. They are about contracts between districts to operate schools jointly and contracts to construct and operate joint schools. That was just, yep, you're in the right place. Yep, that was just, that's currently in chapter 11. It doesn't really seem to have anything to do with how a union school district is formed or run. And so the first section of this act just redesignates those sections to the chapter above chapter 11, which is chapter nine. So that's the first section, so. Yeah, outline is a redesignation. So I was just wondering if that's a word I'd never heard of before. It's not, thank you. Half hour in, already a learning time. Oh, thank you. I'll pick that. Section two is a repeal of current chapter 11. And then section three is chunks one and chunks two. It's just the complete rewrite of chapter 11. And then sections four, five, six, and seven are the session law. And then section eight is your effective date. Sure. Yeah, please. So if we do spend a little time looking through this and now that some things are highlighted. Oh, in this, yep. In that where the house made some, Correct. Where it's noted. Correct. That's where they made policy. That's, again, I highly recommend you get your hands on the AOE policy document. Don, I could probably shoot it over there right now. She's listening. You mind doing that? Happy to pull it up right now and send it to Daphne. Okay, thank you. Oh, I see. This is good. And I will, I have, and I'm happy to give this to you guys, but it's right now, it's just mine, but I have an annotated version with all of where current law is. It's like a teacher position. Exactly. So as we look at sections, I can point out this comes from here or there. There is new stuff in here. I don't want to say that it's just the words that are currently on the books regurgitated in here. The concepts are all the same. They might have been rewritten for clarity or detail added or reorganized, but the vast majority of this is found in current law. And then those highlighted sections are corresponded to some policy changes that house at me. Of course, there's not a lot of. No. Nope. You'll see that the organization, so if we're looking at chunk one in the context of the outline, you'll see that it's organized by just how I started. So there's a policy section that is the same as current law with the addition of adding the goals of Act 46 to it. There's a definition section. Current Chapter 11 has one definition in its definition section. This bill proposes several new definitions to again provide clarity to roles and who are we talking about here. And then it jumps right into we're gonna propose, we're gonna explore, we're gonna form, and we're gonna organize. So how does a study committee school, a union school district is created with different school districts talking to each other and trying to decide if they wanna merge into one school district? And the way they do that is through a study committee. And so sub chapter two in chapter 11 is about that study committee process. How does it form? Who's on it? Budget and membership, how do we figure that out? And then if it's an existing union elementary or union high school district wanting to form a unified union school district, what does that look like? If it is an existing unified union school district wanting to form an even larger unified union school district, what does that look like? That's how specific this gets for each possible scenario that could be out there. There's a section in here that addresses that specific. So there's something specific for each scenario. Yes, there's one scenario. You'll see in the proposed policy document, there's one scenario. Actually, I don't know if it's in the policy document or I just, it was from conversations with Donna. I think you could devolve and create scenarios forever. And then you would have a million page bill. And so my understanding and Donna can correct me anytime I'm wrong is that this was written with the eye to what AOE has seen and has been experiencing since all of these mergers have happened. What are the most common scenarios that they have seen? Does the study committee do anything except the merger? No, in fact, so it's called study committee. Would it make sense to call it a merger study committee? A merger study, just because that's what it does. Does anybody think about that, talk about that? Did not come up renaming the study committee. Things matter. Yeah, I mean, it makes it, for me, it's simpler if you just say it's the merger study committee. It's not the other study committee. It goes on to talk about the study committee budget, because that's a lot of work to do all of this. And that was one of the policy changes that was made. Current losses, the study talks about if the budget is above or below a certain threshold, does it need to go to the voters? And current loss, 25,000. And there was a policy decision made to bump that to 50,000. But section 707 talks about what counts towards your study committee budget. And there is some additional information in there based on things that A&E has experienced and that additional costs and grants. It addresses subsequent appointments of persons to the study committee and a vacancy on the study committee, formal participation in the study committee, additional formal participants for informal participation. A lot of the study committee is looking at whether to create a union school district. And so there has to be two towns at least involved, right? It's two or more towns. And so the formal participants in the study, there are formal participants in the study committee who have members, voting members in the study committee who are contributing to the budget. It's possible that after the study committee is going, they realize that there are other towns or school districts that should be added. And so there's a section that addresses how do we get additional people onto the study committee? And then it's possible that there are districts who maybe the study committee doesn't really think they're necessary and maybe the school district itself doesn't really think it's necessary, but they just want to cover all their bases. There's a section that addresses informal participation by other school districts. So that's how detailed this is getting. And then section 708 is about the study committee process. What do they do? What is their deliverable? It talks about necessary and advisable school districts from at the bottom of page two on the outline. Again, a necessary school district is necessary to that formation. The study committee has decided this union school district can only work if these necessary school districts join for whatever reason that is. They may also find that there are school districts that they would love to have joined them, but if they don't join, school district is still going to be able to form and function and those school districts are called advisable school districts. And so section 708 subdivision B1 and two address the necessary and the advisable school districts. So in the study committee and it says process page 16, that is only the study of what process would be or how it will play out. I mean, it's not, is it the actual process or is it? Yep, so let's look at page 16. So it gets real granular here. Can we even convene the study committee? Oh, yeah, down over to Savage, do you want to have something? No, I had asked to say something at the very, very end that I had forgotten that it's not about this, I'm sorry that that wasn't clear. So we start with how do we even get everyone going on the same page? The superintendent stopped convening a study committee of the first meeting and then it talks about what to do if there was more than one supervisory union involved. Page 17, the staff of the supervisory union shall provide administrative assistance and AOE shall make their staff available to provide technical assistance and make sure everyone knows that the study committee is a public body and so meeting law applies. It talks about whether just a majority of the committee members present in voting are all that is necessary for a committee decision and then it goes into, so that's the process to kind of get everyone going and then it goes into necessary and advisable school districts. If there's more than one supervisory union which superintendent is talking about. Well, in which staff does that voice supervise? It says the staff of the supervisory union or unions. So it's contemplated that either or both. If the participating, so we're on page 16, lines 20 through 21. If the participating districts are members of more than one supervisory union then the superintendent themselves shall decide. I think we move that this is too complicated. We just merge everybody into one school district. We've already had that. I have an overall like 60. Yeah, that's probably, that's probably, it's fine to have him done. I don't know, Donna has an example. This came up at all. The one thing that I hear from the constituents that have that are start lingering bitterness about the whole process is about the goals, you know, in the waiting study that we heard, we set up an audit to look back and people said that was never done with Act 46. I don't know if it was ever done or if there's ever talk of doing that. So when Act 46 was passed, there was all this talk about why we need to do it. Several people say that never happened or there was at the very least no analysis of whether it did or didn't. And so I didn't know if that came at all, came up. This was just so about rewriting the wording about which are all that probably didn't come up and maybe they wanted to avoid those, making those band-aids off, but did that ever come up or has there been a talk of that? I think there have been comments here and there about was Act 46 effective? I will tell you that because current law was written in the 60s, there's no reference to Act 46, obviously. But this bill does make reference to the goals of Act 46. It's written into the policy section and there are several places throughout where the State Board of Education has to make a finding and there's a reference back to the policy section which includes the goals of Act 46. So the goals of Act 46 are woven throughout this now in this draft. I would, I wasn't here when Act 46 was written, but Donna was. So I think she might be the best person to answer about conversations back then, but to my knowledge, there has got, nothing was contemplated for this rewrite to do any sort of analysis on the effectiveness of Act 46. I think that's sort of the goal. So I mean, It's kind of interesting, right? And maybe it's even as the death settles and the districts operate, maybe in two more years, three more years, should there be a look back at those goals, especially if we're still referring to them and say, that's how it all go. Yeah. So, and I know I was thinking about the audit today as well and wondering who is charged with performing the audit? In the Latingston, it's the auditor. It is the auditor, no, this. There's no audit in here. I was just thinking, since we talked about it today, I was thinking about the Latingston. Yeah, and I was thinking about, that was a complaint I heard a lot. Okay. That there was a lot of promises made about the goals and how this would meet it, but did they do it? That's so difficult. How would you do that on a statewide basis? We'd have to, by district, by district to get the data and analysis. Right. You don't have to figure out what you're talking about. It would be a project. A big project. So we would put it a few years out, I would think, but some of the things that I would think about. Yeah, thank you. John, did you want to make some final comments on this at this point? I had, oops, wait a sec. I had one, it's not related to what Beth was just saying, but it was something that I had meant to mention before when I was giving you the overview. And that is, there is one aspect that is not included in this bill. It was something that we started to become aware was an issue pretty much as we were starting to help the house education work through this proposal. And technically it was so complicated that they said, why don't you guys all go back to the drawing board and think about it and think what might be best and suggest it to the Senate and the Senate can take it up. And what it is is that, well, even before I 46, when Act 153 was enacted, the legislature realized that if you transition from a single district, school district with contracts with employees to a unified union school district with employees, even if they're the same people, how do you transition employees? How do you transition contracts? What happens in that transition? And language was put in to deal with that with mergers, either mergers into larger school districts or mergers of supervisor unions. And it became apparent as the state board was working with some of the districts who are seeking to withdraw that there's no comparable statute that deals with what happens if a town that has a little tiny elementary school wants to withdraw and wants to keep its current, the teachers who are currently there and those teachers would like to stay there, is there a way that the contracts can transfer or what will happen? So you don't need to be thinking about the details about this at all right now. I just wanted to let you know that there is this piece that I've been working on with the stakeholders that is complicated only because we had to try to think of all the possible situations that could come up and I've sent something out to them. I'm hoping for responses. And as soon as anything is in readable form, we'll get it to you so that you can consider it. Thank you and I'm sorry. So I'm suggesting, I mean, I know people's time is tight but if people do have any opportunity to kind of go through some of this at least before we pick it up tomorrow, it would be helpful. We'll really, we'll do that, we'll start again tomorrow. If that's okay. And we'll, Daphne will work with you to set up times for next week as well. Yep. I'm gonna show this. It actually does make sense. Yeah, yeah, it does, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, thank you. It's a big one. I feel like K-Ball's been big this year. Okay. We're adjourned.