Vermont lawmakers are considering a bill that would require schools to adopt immigration protocols restricting when school officials may cooperate with federal immigration enforcement and when law enforcement officers may access nonpublic areas of school buildings.
Democrat leaders refuse to fund a proven literacy program in Vermont.
“We did take testimony on the entire notion that we have 5,000 kids in home study who we have zero knowledge of,” said Sen Kesha Ram-Hinsdale (D-Chittenden Southeast).
The University of Vermont has opened the first weather station in the Vermont Mesonet, a planned statewide network of automated weather stations to monitor and report real-time data to improve extreme weather preparedness, agricultural planning, and research.
Two bills could change the way electronics are used in schools
Instead of disparaging our nation’s free enterprise (e.g., capitalist) system, the schools should be giving children the skills so they can earn the prosperity which only that system can provide.
The Vermont Principals’ Association and its executive director Jay Nichols have agreed to pay $566,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees to partially settle a religious discrimination civil lawsuit brought by the Mid Vermont Christian School.
The funds will reimburse schools for activities including summer and afterschool programs, school renovations, teacher training, literacy and math coaches, and mental health programs.
A national education watchdog group says dozens of Vermont school districts have policies that may allow student gender transitions to be kept from parents, according to a report released April 20.
Supporters frame it as strengthening “protective factors” for youth and increasing mental health awareness. However, we see it as shifting decision-making away from families toward schools and government entities, undermining parental authority in sensitive health and identity matters.
Lawmakers emphasized that the bill does not mandate school district consolidation. Any mergers would remain voluntary and subject to local voter approval.
A free online screening of the documentary 15 Days: The Real Story of America’s Pandemic School Closures on Thursday, April 16 at 7:00 p.m.
The university with the lowest in-state enrollment percentages of any large public school in the country is asking the legislature to let it take $15 million from a $66 million state scholarship fund.
According to the policy language, measures may include vaccination requirements for staff, mask wearing, social distancing, screening testing, quarantine and isolation protocols.
A student is considered chronically absent when they miss 20 or more unexcused days of school within the last school year, or 175 school days
House Republicans sharply criticized the measure, arguing it falls short of addressing Vermont’s rising education costs and fails to deliver meaningful structural reform.
White River Valley Supervisory Union’s controversial policy in question – the “C30 – Anti-Racism Policy” – states that its purpose is to “provide a call to action and a plan to address all forms of racism” within the Supervisory Union and its member school districts, according to documents obtained by Defending Education.
The draft includes a notable protection for communities with small schools: articles of agreement must prohibit school closures for three years without approval of the electorate in the town where the school sits. After three years, closure requires a union district-wide vote.
House Human Services advances pre-K framework while deferring cost decisions
In 2021, Vermont became one of the first states to put electric school buses on the road. The results were mixed from the start.
Within a new governance structure of fewer, larger districts, the state might contemplate statewide requirement for districts to provide transportation to all students who live one mile from the school (elementary) and two miles from the school (secondary).
Lawmakers on the House Ways and Means Committee have moved to block participation in a new federal tax credit program that could direct private donations toward student scholarships.
The cost of operating public schools in Vermont has been “a runaway train,” and no one seems to be able to get on board to control it. However, cost also comes in other forms that are not necessarily quantifiable in dollars and cents.
At issue is Vermont’s Universal Prekindergarten (UPK) system, which currently guarantees up to 10 hours per week of publicly funded preschool for most 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds. The program, fully implemented in 2016, operates through a mix of public schools and private childcare providers.
Beeman Elementary has canceled the entire DEI unit due to alleged communications that threaten the safety of students and staff.
One Big Beautiful Bill gives scholarship donors $1700 federal tax credit – but Dem majority doesn’t want it
If you had Exxon, Shell, Occidental, BP sitting on one side of the negotiating table, people would be up in arms! Why not the same for the heavy handed teachers’ unions. We also need to identify all legislators who have received political donations from these same unions and call them out on their voting records.
A Vermont school choice advocacy group is asking concerned Vermonters to contact their legislators and attend a Tuesday press conference as the Legislature considers school choice legislation.
Four electric school buses were destroyed in a fire late Wednesday night at Allen Brook School in Williston, causing an estimated $2 million in damages to the vehicles and their charging stations.
Twelve states explicitly allow teacher strikes, including Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Minnesota, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Vermont. In a few states, such as South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming, the legality of strikes is not clearly defined in statutes or case law.
The DQSH is part of an “identity unit” DEI week at Beeman Elementary School in New Haven.
The lawsuit, filed in Vermont Superior Court, argues the new law significantly narrows that option and violates the Vermont Constitution by arbitrarily limiting which schools families can choose.
Colchester taxpayers are absorbing double-digit tax hikes to heat, plow, and staff half-empty buildings in rural counties that have lost 40% of their students but flat-out refuse to consolidate.
Windham Elementary School has been closed since 2023, when financial, staffing and legal troubles led the Town to shutter the school and tuition children to nearby Townsend. Town Meeting voters in 2024 opted to sell the asbestos-ridden building to the Town for $1 for possible use as a community center. According to the Commons, the community newspaper for Windham County, school voters will be asked to approve a two percent funding increase.
“At this point I will be voting no,” Scott said, citing a projected increase of $250/$100,000 of home values.
During recent House Health Care Committee discussion on H.817, a bill that proposes to provide optional mental health literacy and peer-to-peer mental health clubs in public schools.
School apologizes, says practice has been stopped
A Vermont education advocacy group is raising concerns about the state’s school governance reform law, saying it increases consolidation, reduces school choice, and fails to address high costs and stagnant student performance.
In the Senate Education Committee on Tuesday, Committee Chair Senator Seth Bongartz (D-Bennington) introduced a new plan to revise Vermont’s education system. The main goal of the system, said Bongartz, is to increase governance efficiency and enable a higher quality educational delivery, in a way that moderates the growth rate of state spending on education.
Twelve Vermont schools have been newly identified among the state’s lowest-performing and added to the Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) list, according to the latest accountability report released by the Vermont Agency of Education.
The parental choice mechanism would be Vermont Education Accounts for every student age 5-18. Parents could allocate funds to any qualifying school.
State policies and regulations considered in Archbridge’s index include “child-to-staff ratio requirements by age, maximum group sizes by age, required annual training hours for staff, and minimum educational requirements for center directors and lead teachers.”
Beginning in 2027, any individual can contribute up to $1,700 per year to a “Scholarship Granting Organization” (SGO) and receive a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit.
Reflecting at his Wednesday press conference on recent votes in towns like Calais and Worcester, where voters this week decided by about 2-1 to keep the small local schools open, Scott noted that the results were “not surprising,” despite the “unfortunate” reality of the schools’ situations. He specifically pointed to Calais, which is not anticipating having a kindergarten class next year due to low enrollment, calling it “indicative of the future” for many small Vermont towns.
First published February 16, 2016. Note the similar problems and proposed solutions, 10 years later.
We need strong incentives or disincentives to change the status quo. We need to make the school systems feel a little more financial pressure from the taxpayers.
I have very high property taxes. I don’t like to pay property taxes, but I can afford them. And I know that many owners are income sensitized. So, I would like to dig into that premise a little bit more because we throw it around a lot.”
University of Vermont President Marlene Tromp silent on dorm squalor while she lives with her entire family in ‘free’ campus housing.
State subsidies and regulation made childcare more expensive, less available, and less effective.
When schools shifted to remote learning and later reopened amid ongoing health concerns, attendance became harder to track and harder to maintain.
Bingham was selected as one of only seven finalists from across the state in an election that saw more than 1,000 Vermont fifth-graders cast their ballots. As a Cabinet member, she will serve alongside Vermont’s first-ever Kid Governor, Roslyn Fortin of Highgate, to address critical issues facing the state’s youth.
A new initiative in Bennington County signals a major shift in how Vermont enforces school bus passing laws, but the full legal framework won’t be in place until August 2026.
Scott’s speech was long on the need for change at the school district level, but did not dwell significantly on potential areas to reduce in-school staffing and curricular costs.
But back in Vermont, state policy allows schools to keep two separate records on your child, one of which parents cannot see!
The new law excludes the private Christian school in Quechee and all religious approved independent schools in Vermont from town tuition funding and other public benefits.
Their nominations have been submitted to the academies, which will make final admissions decisions.
The real solution is to reduce current education spending and put in place mechanisms that apply downward pressure on future spending. Many of the components of Act 73 do this, the governance changes are intended to reduce administrative overhead, class size minimums will reduce instructional overhead, and a statewide foundation formula will provide the mechanism for downward pressure on future spending.
When Federal promises meet property tax reality
Last year’s Danville eighth grade class saw 13 out of the 30 students choose another school. In 2023, another mass migration of eighth graders occurred
Hulsen filed an equal pay violation lawsuit in U.S. District Court in November 2020 claiming she was cut loose from her high school job when the position was redefined and a younger man was hired at a substantially higher pay rate for the new post in August 2020.
I’m very grateful for Jarrod Vaillaincourt’s excellent commentary in the Dec 10th issue of the Vermont Daily Chronicle. He exposes efforts by elementary school staff to market a new school-sanctioned “sexuality” club – to elementary school students! Although such conduct by public school educators is beyond revolting, it’s unfortunately not surprising.
Richard Heinberg, a senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute and a prominent voice on global energy trends, will give a public presentation on December 16 examining what he describes as mounting pressures on both the world’s—and Vermont’s—energy systems.
Families in the Plainfield–Marshfield region are voicing alarm over repeated sightings of a registered sex offender on local school property, a situation that has prompted residents to launch a petition aimed at state lawmakers.
Parents have the right to know what is going on with their child at school. That right is not surrendered at the schoolhouse door.
The final vote was 75-480 against the petition, thereby opting to keep 81-studentDanville High School open.
Student Government Association approves club after initial denial and pressure from a club member’s parent.
Parents of independent school students: rattle a few cages and get your school’s leaders to step up.
Governor Phil Scott has been, for some time, the clarion: the State is losing its young people. Flood recovery, increasing school taxes, healthcare costs, illegal drug use, and climate change took center stage. Meanwhile, the workforce kept descending. And institutions of learning have kept closing.
Scott said education taxes already have risen more than 40% over the last five years while student enrollment, performance, and educational opportunities have declined.
In all, a stunning failure and lack of respect for the will of Vermonters who have said that the status quo of our schools – educationally and financially is no longer working and needs dramatic change, very soon.
After hearing from more than 5,000 Vermonters who overwhelmingly said, “keep our local schools and local boards,” the Task Force chose to protect the community connections that make Vermont schools more than just buildings. Just as importantly, they recognized that the research shows no cost savings from consolidation and instead put forward a plan that actually achieves those goals.
What Sam Clemens said about his demise may be true about the plan contained in Act 73.
It’s time to hold the Unions accountable.
According to the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, public school students cannot be forced to use “preferred pronouns” when referring to others who claim to be “transgender.” The Court ruled that doing so is compelled speech and a violation of students’ First Amendment rights.
Gen Z wants straight A’s.
Neither the lengthy time frame nor the details were what either most legislators or Gov. Phil Scott had in mind when they passed the law this spring.
And Republicans have a second chance to avoid disaster.
What was once a proud and local endeavor to cultivate the minds of our youth has become a labyrinth of policy, regulation, and bureaucratic entanglement—so dense and disjointed that even the most earnest reformers find themselves ensnared.
“We face hard choices,” the document continues. “Some people in Vermont are going hungry and going without health care. Others are taking vouchers away from the academies and public schools to fund taxpayer funded ski schools that require parents to ‘top off’ the tuition…”
Barre bones of new report. More details soon!
Imprecise data muddles turf field debate at Champlain Valley Union
Beginning in the 1990s and accelerating with the Common Core State Standards in the 2010s, American education policymakers sought to “modernize” math instruction. The stated goal was reasonable: help students understand why math works, not just how. But the result has been a system so abstract and bureaucratic that many parents — and even teachers — struggle to follow it. Vermont remains part of that experiment, still aligning its math curriculum with Common Core as of 2024 despite years of flat test scores and growing classroom frustration.
Vermont’s EQS is failing miserably at its goal of enabling each student to achieve or exceed the performance standards approved by the State Board of Education. Vermont students are struggling with basic educational concepts, and there is no evidence that EQS is improving academic outcomes. It is unconscionable to continue to promote and spend taxpayers’ money on these programs.
New eligibility requirements for the state’s town tuitioning program under Act 73, which went into effect on July 1, blocks all religious schools from receiving public funds. Mid Vermont Christian school (MVCS) and families affected by the requirements are challenging the new law.
Each candidate developed a campaign platform centered around an important issue facing our state and a three-point plan for how fifth graders can address that issue in their own communities.
Education agency admits a years-long failure as student performance nosedives
The LGBTQ-inclusive program pays students to learn about gender identity and expression, sexual orientation spectrum, contraception, and safe sex practices for the prevention of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI’s) and HIV/AIDS:
A federal lawsuit, a First Amendment violation, and sworn allegations of evading public records laws defined the tenure of UVM’s new president and her top aides at Boise State.
The school’s positive impact on the lives of their students and experiences in the larger Deaf community are important stories that will now be preserved for future generations of scholars – and members of the Deaf community wanting to learn more about their history.
During October 14 oral arguments, a Supreme Court justice asked Hassan whether the Burlington elections would impact statewide spending and policy.
Jarrod Vaillancourt said he was inspired to approach the school board again after reading a commentary in VDC by SPEAKVT president Marie Tiemann.
A Paradox in Policy and Politics: While all of Vermont’s New England neighbors have passed Holocaust education mandates, Vermont lawmakers have actively chosen to become the regional outlier.
“We had a lot of volunteers in the streets, down Main Street and Weaver Street, positioning themselves at different blocks to have an additional presence,” Chavarria said. “People were watching on corners, making sure kids were OK.”
Parents can’t exercise their rights if schools never inform them about what is being taught or how their child is being treated.
State officials said results were mostly consistent with the previous year.
The Nancy Wicks Bemis, RN Endowment will provide scholarship assistance for undergraduate and graduate nursing students with financial need who demonstrate potential to become future leaders in the profession. Priority will be given to students who are Vermont residents.
The new center would expand CVCC’s construction trades, electrical, plumbing, and heating programs, with potential additions like business, cybersecurity & IT, diesel mechanics, digital media arts, and human and natural resources programs.
The Committee on the Future of Public Education created by the Legislature has launched its public engagement and input-gathering this week with an online survey to collect feedback from Vermonters regarding education reform and the redistricting.
Vaillancourt argued that despite increased spending, “our children continue to be well below proficiency.”
A student reported Martin was ‘behaving unusually.’
