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.
Before we get to the best of Vermont media, a reminder that many organizations have begun their end-of-year fundraising campaigns. In these uncertain times there are numerous causes clamoring for a share of your generosity. But please make room in your list for the news outlets you depend on, by subscribing or making a donation. They keep you informed about critical issues. They provide information you couldn’t get anywhere else. They connect us to our communities and to each other. Vermont is blessed to have a lot of local and statewide news operations, and all of them could use your help. Thank you for attending my Ted talk.
Two sides of the immigrant story. From The News & Citizen, two very different pieces, both by Aaron Calvin. First, he covers a “chaotic and violent” action by Customs and Border Parol — this time at a Jeffersonville gas station, where seven people were detained. And as usual, federal officials provided virtually no information about who the detainees were, what they had allegedly done, or where they were taken. Your tax dollars at work.
Second, Calvin writes about Tony and Joie Lehouillier, owners of Foote Brook Farm in Johnson, who have depended on Jamaican migrant workers for years. Those workers helped the farm recover from the July 2023 floods; the Lehouilliers paid it back this month after Hurricane Melissa wreaked havoc on the workers’ communities in Jamaica. They raised enough money to send each of their four employees home with $1,600, and will continue to send food and relief supplies as they are able. Gee, maybe migrant workers aren’t a nameless, faceless threat after all.
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?
This feature, which was once published with plausible reliability once a week, continues to break its own schedule with distressing regularity. No excuses, not even a promise to get back to weekly status, I’ll just press forward and do the best I can.
Not to say there’s been a shortage of quality content worth your attention. Our local outlets (and a pair of podcasts) are still hard at work — despite the bad news about the Brandon Reporter and a setback for the Hinesburg Record, which merits a post of its own. Meanwhile, let’s get to the top-shelf offerings, shall we?
If you’re homeless, do you really deserve to own stuff? The usually big-hearted town of Brattleboro has been removing encampments of the unhoused on the ever-popular principle of “If you can’t see poverty, it doesn’t exist.” And in the process, as The Commons’ C.B. Hall reports, there are signs of a cavalier attitude toward the belongings of The Removed. Larry Barrows, survivor of three strokes, lost everything he had via official town action, including prescription medications and “My kid’s Bible, my kid’s photos. It’s devastating.”
Town Health Officer Charles Keir III, depicted in this story as a real piece of work, insisted that during the removals, “I don’t remember seeing any personal belongings that we deemed as salvageable.” He must have an interesting definition of “personal belongings” because he acknowledged that tents are not considered personal property. “We destroy them,” he told Hall. “They go to the landfill.” Well, isn’t that special.
It’s no surprise that Gov. Phil Scott is turning a deaf ear and a jaundiced eye toward the Queen City, rejecting any idea that his do-nothing administration has contributed to downtown Burlington’s troubles. It’s somewhat more surprising that Democrats on City Council are effectively taking the governor’s side in the argument. Well, perhaps more ill-timed than actually surprising. Because talking like Republicans is what Council Democrats do best.
Let’s take this from the beginning. On August 13, VTDigger published an opinion piece by Burlington’s Progressive Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, in which she slammed the Scott administration for dramatically increasing the number of unsheltered people and failing to offer Vermont’s cities any help in dealing with the ensuing humanitarian crisis.
The governor’s response, delivered at a press conference last week, was akin to then-president Gerald Ford’s response to the financial troubles of New York City in the mid-1970s, as reflected in the greatest tabloid headline ever written. LIke Ford, Scott didn’t actually say that Burlington should Drop Dead, but he did argue that the city needed to step up and address its own problems before it could expect any outside help.
Even worse were comments made by Jennifer Morrison, Scott’s commissioner of public safety and former interim police chief of Burlington. According to VTDigger’s Shawn Robinson, Morrison described the city as “terrifying” without explaining what she meant by that, and sounded like someone carrying a grudge from her brief tenure as chief:
The gaggle of 50s throwbacks pictured above, tightly bunched around a single print newspaper, would have no idea what a podcast is. But in these days, when The Burlington Free Press‘ readership is not much more than the… 14?… avid readers in this image, podcasts have become a vital part of the Vermont media scene. We have two worthy entries atop this week’s roundup, followed by some worthwhile stories from Vermont’s doughty local outlets.
Liberal lawmakers speak out against H.454. The latest edition of “There’s No ‘A’ in Creemee*,” the newish podcast from former state senator Andy Julow and Joanna Grossman, chair of the Chittenden County Democrats, is an insightful interview with two Democratic lawmakers who voted “No” on H.454, the education reform bill that split the Dem caucuses and won the support of almost every Republican. Rep. Erin Brady and Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick, both professional educators, barred no holds as they spoke of their disappointment bordering on betrayal. “A gut punch” is how Brady described the maneuverings on the House floor that left many lawmakers feeling hornswoggled by leadership. Gulick’s verdict: “Some serious harm has been done with the public education community.” My only disappointment is that the hosts didn’t take my suggestion that they ask Gulick why she got swindled out of chairing the Senate Education Committee. So maybe a few holds were barred, after all.
*The podcast issues new episodes on Mondays, so there’s likely a new edition available by the time you read this. But I close the books on this feature every Sunday night. Gotta draw the line somewhere.
Four perspectives on civil unions. David Goodman of The Vermont Conversation devoted the latest episode of his weekly pod to the 25th anniversary of the passage of civil unions in Vermont. He had previously interviewed former state representative Bill Lippert, who played a key role in getting civil unions through the Legislature. This time, Goodman wrapped three interviews into a single program. Most memorable were Stacy Jolles and Nina Beck, two of the six plaintiffs in the court case that prompted the enactment of civil unions. Goodman asked them if they feared for their safety during the overheated Statehouse debate, and Jolles replied “Okay, well, we’re both martial artists,” and laughed.
Other moments weren’t so funny. Both women said that when civil unions became law they felt defeated, because it was a halfway measure that didn’t provide anywhere near the full legal protections of marriage. They didn’t celebrate until full marriage equality became state law nine years later. And Jolles believes her rights are unlikely to survive the Trump presidency. “I think it’s going to get very bad, and I’m going to be active until the very last minute I can be active,” she said. “We’re going to have to fight harder than we have before.”
Not gonna lie, it’s a bit of a thin crop from our ever-diminishing media fields. Maybe it was the runup to the first big holiday weekend of the season? Maybe it was the amount of MSM attention lavished — rightly — on the education reform debate in Montpelier? Whatever the reason, I had less than usual to choose from. Still, there’s definitely stuff worth consuming. Also, apologies for posting this a bit late; I was out of town for nine days, and I’m still in catch-up mode.
Just like the good old days. We’ll start with the comprehensive coverage given to the education reform issue. It was front and center in the Statehouse, and our major outlets delivered solid, blow-by-blow reporting. If you followed my personal Big Three (VTDigger, Vermont Public, Seven Days), you got a very good sense of what was going on. It was like we were suddenly transported back to the year 2010, when multiple outlets competed for the big stories.
My only complaint: As a whole, the coverage didn’t much question the fundamental assumption of the debate: that the rising cost of public education is the result of shrinking student population and Balkanized governance. Not addressed, or not enough anyway: the fact that Our Betters are failing to address the real cost drivers in the system: (1) the skyrocketing cost of health insurance, (2) the slow-motion crisis sparked by the state withdrawing its traditional support for school infrastructure almost 20 years ago, and (3) social services for schoolchildren being paid for by schools instead of the Agency of Human Services. Our Betters aren’t trying to solve the problems with the cost of public education; they’re just shifting the burden onto the schools.
A new podcast from the Democratic mainstream. Former state senator Andy Julow and Chittenden County Democratic Committee chair Joanna Grossman have teamed up on a podcast whose title they may come to regret: “There’s No ‘A’ in Creemee.” Cutesy, kind of an inside joke, doesn’t roll off the tongue. But hey, whoever thought “Amazon” was a good name for an online bookstore? Well, Jeff Bezos did.
The Vermont Political Observer. 