The House Education Committee gave it first green light of the session to a bill aimed at making Vermont’s schools more inclusive.
H.3, which the group of lawmakers unanimously endorsed Thursday, would create a 17-member working group tasked with recommending changes to the state’s academic standards to “recognize fully the history, contributions, and perspectives of ethnic and social groups.” It also requires the state to collect additional data on bullying, harassment and hazing in the state’s schools, with breakdowns based on student demographics.
The bill will next head to the House Appropriations Committee, which must approve $13,000 to help reimburse the working group’s expenses, before it gets to the House floor. Lawmakers had proposed a similar measure last year, but the bill stalled out in committee and never made it to the governor’s desk.
Tabitha Pohl-Moore, the president of the Rutland area NAACP, began her testimony to the committee earlier this week by presenting a litany of racial incidents that had happened in the region’s schools. They included educators of color getting passed over for promotions in favor of less experienced – even unlicensed – candidates, and racial harassment going unaddressed by school administrators.
Since the Rutland chapter’s inception just two years ago, “we’ve received more complaints in the area of education than all other areas combined,” she said.
She acknowledged that the state’s schools are slowly investing in such initiatives as restorative justice and implicit bias training. But she said a patchwork of interventions was ultimately unlikely to make much of a difference.
“I think these are good, one-shot opportunities, but without the underlying structure, one-shot deals are not going to do it. Kind of like a booster without the immunization,” Pohl-Moore said.
Passing H.3 has taken on a renewed importance for those concerned about racism in the state after Kiah Morris, who had been the state’s only black female lawmaker, stepped down over the summer after repeated incidents of racial harassment. While in the Legislature, Morris had championed the earlier iteration of H.3, and was present during testimony this week, although she did not speak.
The bill has broad support from LGBTQ, racial justice, indigenous and school groups. But education officials have raised concerns about capacity at the state and local level, and encouraged lawmakers to think about the resources that might be needed down the road.
Vermont School Boards Association executive director Nicole Mace called the bill’s goals “extraordinarily important.” But she told legislators to be careful not to compound frustrations at the local level about unfunded mandates.
“We need to remind folks that if this a priority for the state of Vermont, we need to have access to expertise and support for school districts to really be able to do this work in a meaningful way,” she said.
And Krista Huling, the chair of the State Board of Education, also reminded lawmakers that while the board adopts academic standards for Vermont – which dictate broadly what children should know – the state cannot write curriculum.
Still, Amanda Garces, the founder of the Vermont Coalition for Ethnic and Social Equity in Schools, which has been the leading advocacy group behind the bill, said the legislation was a crucial first step in moving the issue forward.
“I think as we move forward, the culture will begin change little by little, until we get to where we need to get,” she said.
