House Education reviews maps, debates whether bill should lock or allow changes to school-district groupings

The House Education Committee on Wednesday reviewed draft 8.1 of legislation and a set of interactive maps that would define CISA (regional) and study-group boundaries for proposed school-district consolidations, and spent most of the meeting debating whether the bill should fix lines in statute or explicitly allow flexibility for local study committees.

Beth St. James of the Office of Legislative Council walked members through the posted drafts and the map keys, noting where staff had flagged boundaries and supervisory unions that appeared to be split. "Section 15. This requires AOE in consultation with the study committees and the state board of education to make recommendation for SU boundary adjustments and CISA boundary adjustments that take into account new union school districts formed pursuant to this act," St. James said, and told the committee she would draft language to recognize the southeast region's existing articles of agreement so they "don't necessarily have to do anything different." She also said the secretary would…