The House Education Committee returned after lunch on Thursday to review a strike-all amendment to S.133 that would continue PCB remediation with 100% funding. Completion dates for the program would be set for 2027.

The House Education Committee returned to H.461 on Thursday to review an amendment from Senator Hardy. A topic of conversation was the number of signatures required to get on the ballot for school board in some of these different districts. The Senate Government Operations Committee decided to replace the existing language with 60 signatures or 1% of the population of the district. This would lower the threshold in some of the smallest towns.

The House Education Committee returned Wednesday to review the Senate’s as-passed version of the bill with Legislative Counsel. Chairman Conlon acknowledged that the House did not yet have possession of the bill, but he wanted to start preliminary discussions.

Senate Floor

The Senate brought H.461 to the floor on Tuesday after skipping over it Monday. The bill makes a number of changes to education policy in the state. Senator Gulick presented the bill on behalf of the Education Committee, which had supported the bill unanimously.

On Friday morning, Representative Conlon and Representative Stone joined the House General Committee to discuss the Education Committee’s approach on the bill. He shared that while the intent of S.103 is appropriate, they believe it “must go hand-in-hand with state-level resources and more effort upstream” to address harassment behavior. That work will happen next year.

The House Education Committee walked through the Senate Version of H.461 on Friday in preparation to receive it early next week.

Senator Gulick joined the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday for an overview of H.461 and the Education Committee’s version of the bill.

On Tuesday, Chairman Campion brought up H.483 for the Senate Education Committee to see where members are at with the bill. He noted that the provisions related to discrimination were addressed in the 2200 rule series and “seemed to be working effectively.” He added that people had been asking about the moratorium on new schools receiving approval status. He thought it might make sense to move forward on that piece and then “assess” next year “how many [schools] are in the queue.”

The Senate Education Committee returned to H.461 again on Friday, with Draft 3.1 of the bill in front of them. Rachel Seelig (Director, Disability Law Project) was asked to weigh in on the draft language and she provided a couple anecdotal stories of students she was aware of. Her main thesis was that the current standard set the bar too low and that actions should not need to be “severe or pervasive” in order to be considered harassment.

Bor Yang (Executive Director, Vermont Human Rights Commission) returned to testify to the Senate Education Committee on Thursday regarding the draft amendment. She wanted to respond to concerns that Gulick and perhaps Campion had surrounding “unintended consequences resulting in more suspensions and expulsions of kids.” She noted that peer-to-peer harassment is disproportionately aimed at disabled, BIPOC, LGBTQ students. Additionally, disciplinary actions tend to fall more on these groups. Why is that, she asked rhetorically.