An actual apology — one that fulfills the definition of the word — is a rare and precious thing. People who make public apologies, especially politicians, never put their hearts and souls into the task. Instead, it’s something they feel obliged to do, and they do a piss-poor job of it.

Take Gov. Phil Scott, who made an unforced error during the third and final debate of the gubernatorial campaign, broadcast on WCAX-TV and now viewable online. Scott was asked a question about education funding. His response included an obvious falsehood about the Winooski school district. His general point was that the quality of public education is too variable and that every student deserves equal opportunity. His answer also, as is his wont, pitted rural Vermont versus its more settled areas.

When you look at the Brigham Decision, it was about equalized education in all parts of the state. They decided to do it by the cost of education, and that’s been hampering some of the rural areas of the state where some have one or two languages being offered, whereas in Winooski and some of the Chittenden County areas, they have 17. That’s not an equal education, and we need to do better.

Well, that would be a troubling disparity if true. But it isn’t, at all. The Winooski school board issued a statement saying that in fact, it only offered courses in one language (French), not 17. The board called Scott’s assertion a “dog whistle” meant to stir up rural Vermonters over alleged “special treatment for a district that looks different from theirs.”

Which, of course, is exactly what it was.

Scott wrote a letter to Winooski Superintendent Wilmer Chavarria which has generously been termed an “apology.” It is not. Nowhere in his statement does he take responsibility for his remarks and the damage they could do. He said he “misspoke,” but apologized not for what he said but for “any confusion my comment may have caused.”

That’s pretty much the same as the terrible “sorry to anyone who was offended” non-apology. Scott then doubled down on the point he had tried to make in the debate: That many Chittenden County schools “have significantly more course offerings” than rural schools.

So he’s still blowing the dog whistle.

I spent about two minutes on the DuckDuckGo machine and discovered the apparent cause of Scott’s blunder. A document about the city of Winooski’s “Language Access Procedure” includes a list of languages spoken by students in the school district. And wouldn’t you know it, the document lists 17. Not including English.

I assume that some idiot doing debate prep saw that, jumped to a totally unwarranted conclusion, and fed the false “fact” to the governor. Who didn’t ask any questions, he simply ran with it because it seemed to validate his anti-Chittenden views so vividly.

Anyone with an ounce of insight into public schools would have immediately suspected that no district could possibly offer instruction in 17 languages. It’d be a rare public school, or even private academy, that would do much more than French, Spanish, and maybe German. Hell, I doubt there are many colleges or universities that teach 17 languages.

But hey, Phil Scott wanted to make a point and he couldn’t resist an obvious falsehood that offered reinforcement for his views.

In fact, when you realize the truth of the situation, you understand why districts like WInooski have a much more complicated job to do than a relatively homogeneous district in a rural area. Winooski schools don’t offer instruction in 17 languages, but they are legally bound to accommodate students whose first language is not English. The district employs a number of multilingual liaisons who work to ensure that all students can learn.

Just to illustrate the complexity of the district’s task, and to illustrate the stupidity of Scott’s assertion, here are the 17 languages represented in the Winooski school population (from most students to fewest): Nepali, Swahili, Somali, Spanish, French, Mai-Mai, Karen, Arabic, Kinyarwanda, Vietnamese, Punjabi, Burmese, Pashto, Kizigua, Hindi, Portuguese, and Kirundi. I’ll give you a shiny new quarter if your local school teaches Mai-Mai or Kinyarwanda.

Accommodating those students isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity under federal law. It’s a consequence of WInooski being one of the most diverse communities in the state. And since the governor is a big supporter of immigration, you’d think he would understand all of this — and applaud it. Instead, he grossly mischaracterized the situation to make a political point.

And then he issued a non-apology when he got caught doing it.