By Jay Eshelman
H.634, allowing only public schools as alternatives if a local school closes, is an educational end run being perpetrated by the Usual Suspects.
By usual suspects, I do not mean Rep. Laura Sibilia. Sibilia is but the ‘front man’ for this crime against humanity. The real culprit is our old friend, and vaguely referenced co-sponsor of H.634, Rebecca Holcomb, former Vermont Secretary of Education. Holcomb has been a shill for public education special interest groups for years. She is almost single handedly responsible for the current mess in Vermont’s public schools. Holcomb resigned her post in 2018.
Now she’s baaack.
This is what I said with regard to Rob Roper’s recent VDC and Substack article – Constituents Want School Choice.
“And there is another tack that can be taken, although I hesitate to mention it specifically here for fear that Sibilia and the other legislative tyrants will seek to eliminate it too. Suffice it to say, your local school boards still have significant authority in this regard. And it’s easier to elect a sympathetic slate of school board members than it is to dislodge our legislative parasites.”
I should have known. H.634 is the point of the tyrannical spear aimed to eliminate the statutory language that has empowered Vermont’s School Choice programs for decades. Its target:
16 V.S.A. § 822 School district to maintain public high schools or pay tuition
(c)(1) A school district may both maintain a high school and furnish high school education by paying tuition:
(A) to a public school as in the judgment of the school board may best serve the interests of the students; or
(B) to an approved independent school or an independent school meeting education quality standards if the school board judges that a student has unique educational needs that cannot be served within the district or at a nearby public school.
(2) The judgment of the board shall be final in regard to the institution the students may attend at public cost.
Read the above statutory text, folks. 16 V.S.A. § 822 is the basis for the H.405 School Choice legislation collecting dust in the Education Committee that no one will discuss. 16 V.S.A. § 822 is what Holcomb and Sibilia are really after. If you let them get away with this… well, your children will get what they get – whether you like it or not.
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Categories: Commentary
Is ‘crime against humanity’ an overly harsh, critical, or unfair characterization?
Ten years ago, the then Vermont Governor, Peter Shumlin, invested his entire state-of-the-state address to confronting drug abuse. And he appointed Rebecca Holcomb as Secretary of Education. Since then, Vermont’s drug overdose deaths have quadrupled. And, today, Senate Bill S.300 proposes to decriminalize ‘personal use’ and sale of methamphetamines, depressants, LSD, ecstasy, and narcotics other than fentanyl, heroin, and cocaine.
In 2023, the rate and number of suicide deaths in 15–24-year-olds was nearly double the 3-year average for previous years. Meanwhile, the Vermont Department of Health is saying the data is not statistically significant.
In 2019, Rob Roper reported that the Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce surveyed 500 young professionals, primarily Burlington area residents between the ages of 22 and 34 and learned that over 40 percent intended to leave Vermont. The trend continues.
Ten years ago, when Holcomb was appointed Secretary of Education, Vermont already had one of the highest $16,000 annual costs per student in the nation. Today we have a projected 18.5% property tax increase driven by increased school spending. That’s $2.37 Billion for 75,272 K-12 students, or $34,522 per student, not including construction costs, subcontracted services, or consultation fees.
And every year, Vermont students in grades three through nine take the Smarter Balance academic assessments. Subjects include Language Arts and Math. Last year, no grade scored above 46% proficiency in any of the subjects. And still, nearly 90% of Vermont students graduate.
Do parents know what public schools are teaching their kids, or making them do, or telling them how to act? Last year, the parents of a child vaccinated against the parent’s wishes sued the school district and State of Vermont. The courts curiously dismissed the case because the tenants of Emergency Use Authorization that protect drug companies and hospitals from liability arising from damages that occur in treatment also apply to public schools.
Today, the legislature is considering H.89, a bill intended to protect and facilitate ‘gender-affirming’ healthcare policies. And we already have a constitutional amendment allowing everything one can imagine in reproductive parlances, for specific reasons or no reasons at all. However, according to the definitions in the Department for Children and Families – Policy 50: An Abused or Neglected Child is “… one whose physical health, psychological growth and development or welfare is harmed or is at substantial risk of harm by the acts or omissions of his or her parent or other person responsible for the child’s welfare. Also, a child who is sexually abused or at substantial risk of sexual abuse by any person and a child who has died as a result of abuse or neglect (33 VSA § 4912(1))”.
With this list of incongruent, contradictory, and destructive policies created by the Vermont Legislature over the years – guidelines that destroy the traditional family, harm their children, and bankrupt the Vermont economy – is it any wonder Vermonters are pushing back?
Am I being too harsh? Ask yourselves, what is the intent in these policies now foisted on us by a super-majority in a direct democracy? – ‘two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch’? What happened to the individual ‘natural’ rights espoused in what is, arguably, the most significant form of governance in modern human history – the U. S. Constitution defining our Republic?
This is not about Laura Sibilia, or Rebecca Holcomb, or even the impotent conservatives in the legislature struggling to save their own choices. It’s about us. This is a cultural shift from individualism to the collective. It’s about being “cured against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease … being put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
Do Vermonters honestly want these legislators caring for their children? The public-school monopoly has become the face of an illegal racket, circumventing every anti-trust law ‘prohibiting anti-competitive agreements and unilateral conduct that monopolizes or attempts to monopolize its relevant market’. At what point will we admit to ourselves that this is criminal behavior? How can it be anything *but* a crime against humanity?
Stop H.634!
No, ” ‘crime against humanity’ doesn’t seem to be an overly harsh, critical, or unfair characterization?” Indeed, unless it’s a product of delusion, it does appear to be willful.
ninety nine million dollar school bond in woodstock vermont//// you can not bond your way out of a depression///this is a money problem/// deal with it///more inflation coming///any questions///
Vermont Republicans voted for these policies by having unelectable candidates, pathetic messaging, and ignoring the majority of Vermont voters.
Remember, stand for something or stand for nothing.
Now you’re on your knees at the mercy of the people you helped elect.
📌 The Vermont public school system is unconstitutional:
Article 9.
“…previous to any law being made to raise a tax, the purpose for which it is to be raised ought to appear evident to the Legislature to be of more service to community than the money would be if not collected.”