The Corrections Department plans to restructure its education programs. Gov. Peter Shumlin and Andy Pallito, commissioner of Corrections, announced on Monday that the Community High School of Vermont (CHSV), which provides education and workforce training to inmates, will merge with the Vermont Correctional Industries (VCI), which provides employment to about 120 inmates.
Under the current arrangement, the department’s education efforts have operated in “two different silos,” according to Wilhemina Picard, who oversees VCI and is superintendent of education services for the department.
Picard says the merger will allow the department to “streamline” its academic program with its workforce training program, and it will put a greater emphasis on the latter. The consolidation is, in part, a response to a steady decline in the number of young inmates over the past decade. This population of inmates has declined from 1,306 in 2010 to 938 in 2012. “There isn’t quite the education need amongst an older population,” Pallito said.
One consequence of the merger is that CHSV services will no longer be offered to people outside of the corrections system. In the previous system, struggling students who haven’t been convicted of any crime could access the CHSV services in their community.
The merger will save the state $600,000, Pallito said. Part of these anticipated savings stem from the plan to confine CHSV services to inmates. The rest will come from attrition and reductions in the duplication of services, according to Picard.
Picard says the merger will also allow them to expand their “industry certification” program. Part of this expansion will center upon a new food, beverage, and hospitality training program that is being developed in anticipation of the $600 million investment initiative planned for the Northeast Kingdom.
While Shumlin, Pallito, and Picard all emphasized achievements that have been made in keeping young people out of prison, Pallito pointed to a troubling counterpart to this trend: The prison population is aging, which will pose big budgetary challenges for the department in the form of higher medical costs.
