Heather Bouchey (Interim Secretary, Agency of Education) appeared before Senate Education to discuss S.304 – CTE Opportunities for Grades Six through Ten.  Consensus on the bill could not be reached by all interested parties in Senate Education Committee.  Chairman Campion asked that Bouchey return with a consensus bill that parties could all agree on so the bill could be voted on and passed out before cross-over. 

When the House Ways & Means Committee met on Wednesday Morning, Chairwoman Kornheiser revealed that they moved some items that were “hanging around” into their miscellaneous tax bill. Notably, this included a meals and rooms tax surcharge on short-term rentals.

Legislative Counsel provided a walk-through of the House Education Committee's v3.1 of the draft bill on Wednesday morning. There were a number of minor changes, but section 8 of the bill would re-introduce a uniform chart of accounts that school districts and supervisory unions will be required to use to provide reporting data to the Agency of Education around budgets and other financial information.

Early in the week the Department of Labor (VDOL) presented numerous recommended changes to the language in H.707.  Most of the changes indicated that VDOL would like to see more discussion and significant review before moving forward.  The primary discussion is about the creation of a separate office reporting to the Governor rather than located within VDOL.  The Commissioner later in the week stated that the Governor is not interested in creating a new office.  There was discussion that with the right person in the job as Executive Director it might not matter where the position resided as long as the individual was capable of executing the job description as envisioned by the House Commerce Committee.

The House Education Committee reviewed a bill, H.630, on Tuesday that would allow for cooperative education services to be provided by a group of school districts. These services would be intended to provide the “least restrictive environment” for students that require a “higher level of care.” Most of the students who would receive these services have mental or behavioral issues that are disruptive in the normal school environment. Today many of these students have 1-on-1 para-educators which does not provide the necessary level of therapy and contributes to classroom disruption and high staffing ratios.

On Tuesday afternoon Nichole Lee (Director of Education Finance, Agency of Education) joined the House Ways & Means Committee to review updates from the Town Meeting Day votes on school budgets. Out of 119 budgets, 30 failed, 19 were delayed, and 8 have been re-warned.

On Tuesday, the Senate Natural Resources Committee began taking testimony from the Public Utilities Commission, department of Public Service, and Vermont Energy Investment Corporation beating (very carefully) around the bush regarding their worries about the June 1 statutory date to hire a Default Delivery Agent for Act 18 (the Clean Heat Standard). At first it was comments like “we’re just sharing others’ concerns” or “we’re neutral on the date, but….” However, by the end of the conversation the language had become “It’s unrealistic” and “it’s not going to work.”

The Senate Education Committee spent most of the week reviewing S.304 which overhauls the state’s Career and Technical Education (CTE) system.

Chairwoman Kornheiser outlined her “three-legged stool” framework of FY2025 (short term) changes, FY2026 (medium term), and long-term solutions on Thursday in the House Ways & Means Committee. She also pointed to needing to balance equity, local control, and simplicity/complexity.