Tag Archives: School District Redistricting Task Force

They Didn’t Fail, Governor. You Did.

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After the School District Redistricting Task Force* recommended a voluntary plan instead of new district maps, Gov. Phil Scott responded with guns a-blazin’. And as is often the case when you go guns a-blazin’, there was a bit of an accuracy problem.

*Seriously, who named this thing?

Then again, one couldn’t really expect him to identify the real culprit: the governor himself.

For those just joining us, Scott said that the Task Force “didn’t fulfill its obligation” under Act 73. “They were supposed to put forward three maps for consideration, and they failed,” he said on Thursday. (Not true, actually; more later.) And he blasted Task Force members for being “OK with the ever-increasing property taxes, cost of education, and they don’t want to see change.”

I understand his dismay but he’s being a bit harsh on a group of Vermonters who know more about public education than he ever will, and who gave of their time, sweat and tears to try to meet an unreasonable deadline. He could have at least thanked them for their service. Even if he didn’t mean it.

Especially since the real author of this failure isn’t anyone on the Task Force. It’s the governor himself.

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This Is How a Bunch of Distinguished Vermonters Tells the Governor and Legislature to Go Fuck Themselves

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Well, the panel tasked with drawing new school district maps for the entire state has essentially turned down the assignment and tossed the whole mess back into the laps of Our Political Betters.

Instead of completing the assignment contained in Act 73, which was to draw up to three different maps for the Legislature to choose from or ignore), the School District Redistricting Task Force* instead proposed a plan to incentivize voluntary mergers among school districts.

*That name will never not be funny.

WCAX-TV called it “a departure” from the process mandated in Act 73. VTDigger, equally polite, said the Task Force proposal “in a way, flouts Act 73’s directive.”

“In a way,” my ass. This was a flat rejection of the Act 73 mandate and a slap in the face of the governor and Legislature.

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News You Should View: Manchester Journal FTW

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This week’s crop was looking a little thin until I visited The Manchester Journal’s website and found not one, not two, but three stories worthy of note. One of them was actually published on September 4, and I managed to miss it last time. But it remains relevant, and The Journal has since published a meaningful follow-up.

The Journal is one of three southern Vermont newspapers owned by Paul Belogour, an international financier type who originally hails from Belarus, one of the most corrupt and press-unfriendly dictatorships this side of Kim Jong Un. His 2021 acquisition of The Journal, The Bennington Banner and The Brattleboro Reformer raised many an eyebrow at the time, including mine. So far his stewardship seems to be fairly benign, at least by contemporary oligarchical standards. (Although I doubt that The Reformer will be doing any more overviews of Belogour’s wide-ranging acquisitions like it did before he bought the papers.) And this week, at least, one of his outlets occupies the top spot in Vermont’s incredible shrinking news pantheon.

ICE detainee whisked out of state. The Journal’s Cherise Forbes and Michael Albans were first to report that Davona Williams, the Manchester resident seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last month, had been secretly moved to the North Lake Processing Center in rural Michigan. This story ought to reverberate in Montpelier’s corridors of power; last spring, when leading lawmakers were looking to limit Vermont’s cooperation slash complicity in the ICE crackdown, the Scott administration successfully argued that people detained in Vermont were better off in Vermont prisons than elsewhere. Huh, turns out that ICE can move people around willy-nilly no matter where they live or where they were first detained. Which puts us back on the “complicity” side of the ledger.

There’s also a fascinating little Vermont connection with the North Lake facility itself, but that’s beyond the remit of this post.

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I’m Not Ready to Say Scott Beck is the Smartest Person in the Legislature, But He’s in the Conversation (Updated)

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Score another one for Senate Minority Leader Scott Beck. After his star turn manipulating the education reform process, he managed to wangle his way onto the School District Redistricting Task Force* established by H.454 (now Act 73). He’s one of five Senate appointees, and the sole Republican. Throughout the education reform debate, he was the most prominent Republican voice — and arguably the single most influential senator of any party.

*A name only a legislative body could concoct.

On Monday, the Senate’s Committee on Committees announced its five appointees to the panel tasked with redrawing school district lines. Beck will be joined by Democratic Sens. Martine Larocque Gulick and Wendy Harrison, retired Kingdom East Supervisory Union superintendent Jennifer Botzojourns, and Chris Locarno, retired director of finance and facilities for the Central Vermont Supervisory Union. (The House announced its five appointees on Tuesday morning; details below.)

Beck’s appointment capped off a remarkable rookie campaign as Minority Leader — in his first year as a senator. And in the “Way Too Early” parlor game of gubernatorial speculation, Beck has to be taken seriously as a potential Republican candidate whenever Phil Scott decides to step aside. More so, I believe, than everybody’s favorite maverick, Lt. Gov. John Rodgers.

You may think this a rash judgment, but let’s step back for a moment and describe the trajectory of Beck’s political fortunes.

I should make clear that this post considers Beck as a political actor without regard for whether I agree with him or, more often, not. He has shown himself to be a savvy operator, a respected member of the House who ran as kind of a centrist in his bid for the Senate, but has been a reliable spokesperson for Republican orthodoxy as Minority Leader.

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