On Thursday morning, lawmakers in the House Committee on Education were shown an image of a raw egg, caught between the jaws of a vise and just beginning to crack.
That egg, part of a PowerPoint presentation by Franklin Northeast Supervisory Union Superintendent Lynn Cota, was a metaphor for the state of mental health in Vermont schools.
“There comes a point — a breaking point — where things start to break,” Cota told lawmakers. “And I think that we are dangerously close to a breaking point with all that we’re trying to hold in public education.”
The testimony came in a hearing about children’s mental health and staffing shortages in schools and Vermont’s designated agencies, nonprofits tasked with providing mental health treatment to communities across the state.
Over the past five years, schools and agencies have faced a two-pronged challenge: increased mental health needs from children, and a lack of resources to provide treatment. Like an egg caught between the jaws of the vise, the system is showing cracks, officials said.
Students’ mental health needs are not getting met. Providers’ waitlists are growing longer and longer. Children are spending days in hospital emergency rooms waiting for mental health treatment. Schools are forced to direct more and more funding toward mental health, all while competing with designated agencies for a limited pool of staff.
“Every school system in Washington County right now is essentially building our own mini mental health agencies within our buildings,” Montpelier Roxbury Public Schools Superintendent Libby Bonesteel told lawmakers. “We are doing this not because we feel it is our job or our area of expertise, because it’s not. We are doing this out of desperation.”
But school officials made it clear that they did not come to the legislature seeking reforms or money — at least, not for themselves. Instead, superintendents said, the state should invest in its mental health system writ large, including designated agencies and other treatment providers.
“You probably don’t often get people that come to you and say, ‘We’re not asking you for anything for us,’” Cota said. “I don’t think we’re asking really for anything for us.”
— Peter D’Auria
IN THE KNOW
A bill that would ban paramilitary training camps, such as Slate Ridge in West Pawlet, drew positive comments Thursday from members of the Senate panel reviewing it. However, some lawmakers expressed concern that proving someone violated the proposed legislation would be difficult.
The bill, S.3, would make it a crime to operate a paramilitary training facility if the person doing it “knows or reasonably should know that the teaching, training, or demonstrating will be unlawfully employed for use in or in furtherance of a civil disorder.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee took up the bill during a hearing Thursday. While committee members generally spoke in favor of the latest version of the measure, questions kept popping up about the possible difficulty of convicting someone of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt.
At the end of the discussion, Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, the committee chair, said he initially didn’t think the bill would go very far, but recent changes make it more likely to advance.
— Alan Keays
Damien Boomhower and his wife, Jessica, hoped to celebrate their organic dairy farm’s 10-year anniversary in 2022 with the pop of a champagne bottle. Instead, he was more nervous about the farm’s financial state than he’d been since he bought it.
Organic dairy farmers across Vermont are experiencing a crisis. The farmers have asked lawmakers to add $9.2 million to the state’s Budget Adjustment Act, H.145. Lawmakers in the House have already approved the funding, and the bill now sits on the Senate side.
“This is more to them than their livelihoods,” said Rep. Heather Surprenant, P/D-Barnard, who is vice chair of the House Agriculture Committee and also an organic dairy farmer. “It’s a way of life and something they’re actively seeking to be in, and I would hope that folks would look at that and want to support them in that.”
While the House has already approved the funding, it’s possible it could hit roadblocks as it moves through the Senate and as it reaches the Gov. Phil Scott’s desk.
— Emma Cotton
ON THE MOVE
The Vermont House has advanced a bill which intends to legally protect out-of-state patients who come to Vermont to receive reproductive health care, and safeguard the Vermont doctors who provide such care.
Colloquially referred to as a shield law, H.89 is Vermont lawmakers’ latest move to beef up protections for abortion access after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade case precedent. The bill also includes protections for gender-affirming care for transgender patients, as numerous state legislatures throughout the country attempt to restrict access that care, as well.
The legislation would protect Vermont health care providers from investigation, interrogations, subpoenas, extradition or arrest by out-of-state entities should that doctor provide reproductive care to a patient who traveled to Vermont from a state where such care is illegal. The bill is relatively limited in what protections it can offer patients once they leave Vermont but does provide some protection by essentially kneecapping out-of-state investigators.
The House on Thursday approved H.89 on its second reading by voice vote, so no vote count is available.
“Given the very aggressive attacks on reproductive rights and reproductive health care across the country, I think it was really important for us to pass this legislation to protect providers and patients,” House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington told VTDigger after the floor vote.
— Sarah Mearhoff
WHAT WE’RE READING
Vermont State University community surprised, dismayed by library and athletic changes (VTDigger)
UVM officials apologize to Vermont-state recognized tribes while Odanak reps continue to denounce them (Vermont Public)