Tag Archives: Alison Novak

Turn On the Light and Yep, Cockroaches

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Alison Novak, Seven Days’ education reporter and one of the brightest lights in Vermont journalism, has produced another scoop worthy of your attention. She reports that identical “Just Say No” signs have appeared in at least three Chittenden County communities where school budgets were up for vote: Essex, Milton, and South Burlington. The signs bear the imprimatur, in teeny-tiny print, of “CCGOP,” a.k.a. the Chittenden County Republican Committee.

It’s not illegal for an outside political group to try to influence local school votes, but it’s highly unusual. The CCGOP’s reaction to Novak’s inquiry was telling; some ducked and covered, while others offered what the reporter called “confusing — and sometimes conflicting — accounts,” as if they’d gotten caught with hands in the cookie jar. In fact, Milton’s own Republican Rep. Chris Taylor said he was “dismayed” by the signs, and found them “counterproductive” to civil discourse around the budget.

And when you take a closer look at the parties involved, well, let’s just say some familiar faces were on the list.

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Team Scott Tries to Count to 15 and Comes Up Short

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Ruh-roh, Raggy. Something has gone off the rails in Montpelier.

After several days of lobbying the Senate and slamming its critics, the Scott administration has asked the Senate to, um, postpone its confirmation vote on Zoie Saunders, the governor’s choice for education secretary. (The development was first reported by VTDigger’s Ethan Weinstein and later confirmed by Seven Days’ Alison Novak.)

You know what that means: They don’t have the votes. Which would be perhaps the most embarrassing failure in Scott’s seven-plus years in the corner office. He’s had vetoes overridden before, but that happens to every governor. These confirmation votes are usually perfunctory. Lower-level appointees have, on rare occasion, been rejected, but I haven’t seen any reference to the last time a cabinet nominee was sent packing. Certainly the administration didn’t foresee any trouble, considering that Saunders quit her job in Florida, moved her family to Vermont, and began working as education secretary, all before her confirmation was in the books.

Still, they should have seen it coming. What did they expect, when they nominated someone who’s patently unqualified for the job?

So of course the governor owned up to his mistake and BWAHAHAHAHAHA no he did not. He blamed the whole thing on “misinformation, false assumptions, and politicization” of her nomination by critics and opponents.

Which is a bunch of Grade-A Joe Biden malarkey. The criticism is focused on Saunders’ lack of experience in public schools, her long tenure at a for-profit charter school operator, and — at least from me — her nearly complete lack of any actual administrative experience.

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What the Hell is Going On with the Agency of Education?

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It’s been kind of a rough year for the Agency of Education, which would have likely warranted the Only In Journalism term “embattled” by now if there was a healthy Vermont political media ecosystem, which there is decidedly not. The Agency occasionally pops up in the press, and the news is always bad, puzzling, or both. But I have yet to see anything like an answer to the question posed in my headline.

It should have, by now. And here’s why.

The search process for a new education secretary has been going on for close to a full year. It was mid-March 2023 when Dan French, dubbed by Yours Truly “the Inspector Clouseau of the Scott Cabinet,” abruptly skedaddled. Gee, I hope it wasn’t something I said.

Specifically, it was March 17, 2023 (you needn’t ask, but yes, it was a Friday newsdump) “state officials” announced that he would, per VTDigger, “take an unspecified ‘senior leadership role’ at the Council of Chief State School Officers, an organization of state education officials.” His first day at the new gig was April 10, a little more than three weeks after the announcement of his departure from AOE. That’s an awfully quick turnaround for someone in the spheres of upper management. (The “unspecified role” turned out to be Chief Operating Officer, which sounds impressive enough. Doubtless working for a D.C.-based nonprofit is a more tee-time-friendly gig than running a short-staffed agency operating in a political minefield.)

Since then, things have meandered in a way reminiscent of a roadside DUI test. It almost makes you pine for the days when French’s hand was on the tiller.

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Adventures in Serial Journalism, Dirt Cheap Job Search Edition

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This post is about three very different attempts to cover the same story. But before we pick over the bones, let’s address the meat of the matter. For whatever reason, the Scott administration is not only rushing its search for a new education secretary, it’s spent a shockingly small amount of money on the task.

Seven Days’ Alison Novak got the goods, revealing that the administration has spent a measly $495 on a search now scheduled to close, um, tomorrow. By comparison, she noted, school districts routinely invest 20 times that much on a basic search for a superintendent, and often spend far more.

The only flaw in Novak’s story was the headline, written in the form of a question: Is Vermont Doing Enough to Find the Right Leader for Its Education Agency? Remarkably timid header for a story that clearly identifies the answer as “Fuck, no!”

I mean, they posted the opening on professional job sites and that’s about it. Maybe they also taped a photocopied listing to the agency’s front door (complete with little “Contact Us” tabs at the bottom), but whatever, it’s simply pathetic.

Okay, there’s the substance. Now let’s take a somewhat speculative walk down the Memory Lane of journalism.

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How Many Mulligans Does This Guy Get?

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Another week, another cockup by the allegedly competent managers in the Scott administration. This time it’s a mysteriously sidelined program to give retention bonuses to child care workers. The Legislature approved $7 million for the purpose in the spring; now it’s September, and the administration not only hasn’t spent a dime of the money, it has no idea when it will.

Meanwhile, child care is already difficult to find getting harder, as operators are stretched to the limit because of a lack of workers.

Seven Days‘ Alison Novak broke the story on Monday. As she tells it, the state Department for Children and Families’ Child Development Division has given out precious little information — and what they have disclosed is riven with inconsistencies and unmet deadlines.

Which raises the question, does the administration really want to spend the money at all? If they did, you’d think they would have gotten it going by now. The only other explanation is incompetence of a kind that we are seeing regularly from this regime.

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