Tag Archives: Jay Nichols

News You Should View: Education Reform With Bulldozers and Blasting Caps

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This week’s media roundup focuses on a single subject, which was almost inescapable as I made may weekly tour of Vermont news outlets. That subject is education reform, specifically the process outlined in Act 73, the wide-ranging measure railroaded through the Legislature by Gov. Phil Scott with the active connivance of Senate Democratic leadership. It’s now in the early stages of implementation, and wouldn’t you know, everybody seems to hate the thing.

But first. I took a brief trip to Cornwall, Ontario last week. It’s a smallish (by any standard other than Vermont’s; its population is bigger than Burlington’s) city known to Americans, if it’s known at all, as the Canadian side of an international bridge over the St. Lawrence River. While I was there, I did a little reading about Cornwall and came across the story of the Lost Villages.

I’d been through Cornwall many times while driving to and from my home state of Michigan, but I’d never heard of the Lost Villages. They were ten communities in the Cornwall area that were evacuated and deliberately submerged in the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1958. Roughly 6,500 people were displaced.

When I was back home and scanning Vermont media for this column, I found a common theme: stories across the state about local reaction to the rollout of Act 73. Reactions that include confusion, budding outrage, school officials trying to forestall the worst effects of the process, and universal dismay from those who work in public education. The closest thing to a positive view was, “Oh well, I guess we have to learn to live with this.”

Which made me realize, this is very much a large-scale, top-down, St. Lawrence Seaway approach to education reform. You know, the kind of thing Phil Scott spent his nonpolitical life doing — big, mechanized projects that might do a great deal of good in the aggregate while doing damage at the granular level. But it’s one thing when you conduct such a project for a large-scale benefit like improving long-haul travel. It’s a whole different thing when you deploy the heavy equipment to try to improve the educational experience of public school students.

Which is the goal of Act 73, right? Right?????

Well, I’m seven paragraphs deep into this piece, so I’d better get to the actual subject, don’t you think?

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Fear Not, My Friends, the VPA Is On the Case

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Oh boy, we’ve had another incident of abuse and taunting at a high school sports event.

According to the Morrisville News & Citizen, last week’s girls’ soccer playoff game between Lamoille Union High School and Missisquoi Union High School was rife with abuse from the home Missisquoi crowd. They reportedly showered the Lamoille team with “repeated harassment, sexualization and debasement” throughout the match, according to a statement from Lamoille administration. More from the statement:

“Those gathered on the sidelines directed their comments at the players’ weight, chest sizes and disparaging their physical appearances. In addition, other players reported repeated comments about their families and parents. The level of spectator comments exceeded typical razzing of visiting players and support of their home team.”

It gets worse. Lamoille says the game officials did nothing to stop the abuse, which left some players asking to be taken out of the game or switched to positions away from the home crowd. The officials said the abuse wasn’t “mean enough” to warrant action.

These are the same officials who read the newly-minted Vermont Principals’ Association code of behavior before the match began. So we know exactly what that’s worth.

It shouldn’t surprise you that VPA chief Jay Nichols completely failed to step up to the situation.

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