An act relating to miscellaneous changes in education law

The 'Introduced by Committee on Education' line and the full 'Statement of purpose of bill as introduced' paragraph were removed from the unofficial version.

Throughout the Interstate Compact for Education section (Sec. 2), the word 'Compact' was changed to lowercase 'compact' in approximately 15 instances, and terminal periods on list items were changed to semicolons to reflect standard compact drafting conventions.

Placeholder lines reading 'Sec. 3. [Deleted.]' through 'Sec. 12. [Deleted.]' that appeared in the official version were omitted from the unofficial version, reducing page count from 65 to 27.

The bill was assigned Act No. 160 upon enactment, replacing the House bill header.

The statement of purpose describing the five components of the bill was removed, which is standard when a bill becomes law.

Throughout the Interstate Compact for Education section (Section 2), the word 'Compact' was changed to lowercase 'compact' and 'per-capita' was changed to 'per capita' as typographical standardization.

The rename from 'board of cooperative education services' (BOCES) to 'cooperative educational service area' (CESA) was fully applied throughout Section 3, including the chapter title, which now reads 'COOPERATIVE EDUCATIONAL SERVICE AREAS' instead of 'BOARDS OF COOPERATIVE EDUCATION SERVICES.'

Sections 3-12 were restored in the official version after being deleted in the unofficial version. These sections create a full statutory framework for Cooperative Educational Service Areas (CESAs) under 16 V.S.A. chapter 10, including rules for formation, governance by a board of directors, powers to employ staff and enter contracts, financing and budgeting requirements, annual reporting, and employment/retirement/benefits provisions.

A CESA Start-up Grant Program is established with $70,000 appropriated from the Education Fund in fiscal year 2025. Each group of supervisory unions exploring CESA formation is eligible for a single $10,000 grant to cover start-up and formation costs including development of articles of agreement.

In the background check provision (Sec. 14), the cost responsibility for FBI-related criminal record fees was shifted from the Agency of Education to the applicant. The unofficial version had the Agency paying both the fingerprinting fee and any FBI fee; the official version requires the applicant to pay a fee established by the Vermont Crime Information Center that reflects the cost of obtaining the record from the FBI.

Transition deadlines are set: supervisory union boards must vote on establishing a CESA by July 1, 2026; organizational meetings must occur by July 1, 2027; the Secretary of Education must review CESAs and issue a written report to the General Assembly and State Board of Education by November 1, 2028.

Multiple definitions across education, labor, and municipal employee statutes were amended to include CESAs alongside existing entities (boards of cooperative education services), ensuring CESA employees are covered under teacher licensing, retirement systems, collective bargaining, and municipal employee definitions.

Sections 3 through 12 were deleted entirely. These sections contained the full framework for renaming BOCES to CESAs, including policy statements, definitions, creation and organization procedures, powers of the new entities, financing and budgeting rules, employment provisions, annual reporting requirements, a transition timeline (with votes due by July 1, 2026 and organizational meetings by July 1, 2027), a $70,000 start-up grant program, and conforming amendments to definitions across multiple Vermont statutes (licensing, labor relations, retirement, and municipal employee definitions).

The bill's scope narrowed from five distinct policy areas (independent school moratorium, Interstate Compact, CESA renaming, class size minimums, and background checks) to four (the CESA/BOCES renaming was dropped entirely).