[T]he House Education Committee on Tuesday gave its seal of approval to “compromise” legislation that would allow for a delay in the implementation of forced mergers under Act 46.
The committee amendment to H.39, which gives some districts a one-year extension, and requires others to abide by the original deadline, sets the stage for a showdown in the House chamber Wednesday. A different amendment to the bill, which allows for a simple one-year delay for all districts facing forced mergers, is also headed to the floor, and is generally favored by those lawmakers who pushed for the legislation to begin with.
Rep. Heidi Scheuermann, R-Stowe, who sponsored H.39, told the committee Tuesday that their version of the bill would be a “hard sell” with lawmakers. And she said one of the main problems with Act 46 had been that the State Board of Education, which decided which districts should merge under the law, didn’t fully understand the local context.
“I would submit to you that picking out certain districts for extension and not extension, is something of a challenge. I don’t think members of the committee understand all of the districts, and what each of the situation is on the ground,” she said.
The committee amendment would establish what legislative counsel Jim Desmarais referred to as “five and half” categories of school districts facing forced mergers. But broadly, it put districts in two camps – those in which local officials had once crafted merger plans, only to see them fail at the ballot box, and those where local officials never proposed mergers to their electorate at all.
Operating under the assumption that districts that had never put together merger proposals would be ill-prepared to consolidate by July 1, the amendment gives those districts an extra year to merge.
“This was an attempt to give a compromise,” said House Education chair Rep. Kate Webb, D-Shelburne.
Webb, and other lawmakers who backed the committee’s amendment, were in large part responding to testimony from local officials like Barre superintendent John Pandolfo, who argued giving schools the option of a delay would embroil them in another debate about the law, and paralyze a fragile momentum forward.
In many instances, administrators, school boards, and community members are divided on the question of consolidation, and some argued that the Legislature would just open a new can of worms by allowing for a delay.
“Throwing the whole thing back to the locals, I believe, would be the worst case scenario,” Nicole Mace, the executive director of the Vermont School Boards Association, told the committee Tuesday.
Mace told lawmakers the committee’s amendment at least set an “objective” standard, one that was “clear, and seems fair.”
“You will hear from folks that say, ‘a blanket delay is just cleaner’. This is really complicated, the language before you. Maybe it feels overly complicated. But in my view, it’s reflective of the complicated situation on the ground,” she said.
The Legislature is not the only venue in which a debate about delaying mergers is playing out. Three lawsuits have been filed against the state, and superior court Judge Robert Mello is expected to hold a hearing in mid-February on a request by plaintiff school districts to postpone mergers while he considers the merits of their cases.
Several committee members Tuesday said they would have preferred to let the courts weigh in first, and some expressed irritation that backers of the delay had extracted a promise from House Speaker Mitzi Johnson to move the question on to the floor this week.
“I think it’s regrettable that the decision needs to be made immediately. But legislative maneuvers being what they are, and the tactics of the members who wanted a delay … forced the hand,” said committee member Rep. Dylan Giambatista, who backed Webb’s proposal.
It’s unclear how the two amendments will interact on the floor tomorrow, and several lawmakers expressed confusion about what might happen. But Webb said Scheuermann’s amendment – the simple one-year extension – will get a vote first.