As lawmakers toil away trying to reform Vermont’s school funding and governance systems, they’ve declared better student outcomes a principal goal.
Well, on Friday, the students themselves showed up to testify on H.454, as well as on efforts from the administration of President Donald Trump to cut diversity, equity and inclusion programs in public schools. And while the youth had lots of positives to say about their schools, they weren’t so effusive about where lawmakers are headed.
“When I first read the governor’s proposal,” Zoe Epstein, a Champlain Valley Union High School junior said, “I was shocked by the absence of student input.”
Lawmakers often hear the same voices again and again, but the students who showed up before the House and Senate education committees Friday represented Vermont in all its complexity. The committees received testimony from public and private school students. Rural students and students from the state’s largest district. Students who have experienced racism, homelessness and those for whom English is a second language.
Almost all the students who spoke praised the individualized experiences small classes and schools provide.
“Consolidation may ease the burden on taxpayers,” Willow Sharma, a Brattleboro Union High School student said, but “small schools mean so much for our Vermont communities.”
Students at the Long Trail School, an independent school in Dorset, warned lawmakers of the diminished opportunities that restricting school choice would have on kids like themselves.
Attending the private school would have been “entirely out of my family’s financial ability without school choice,” Morgan Cable, a Long Trail student, said.
From southern Vermont to the Champlain Valley, high school students urged lawmakers to preserve or expand diversity, equity and inclusion programming, especially as the state grapples with confusing federal demands to end “illegal DEI.”
“As a person of color growing up in Vermont, I spent a lot of time in spaces that weren’t made for people like me,” Arena Coryer, a Colchester High School student, said, but DEI gives her “hope” not just for herself but “every student who’s ever felt like they didn’t belong.”
Though most students focused on the laudable outcomes they see in their small schools, Max Demaine, a student at Lake Region Union High School, addressed the economic aspects of lawmakers’ and Gov. Phil Scott’s policy proposals.
He pointed out that his Northeast Kingdom district, which serves a high proportion of economically disadvantaged students, spends far less than many schools in the state. Yet lawmakers were considering consolidating rural schools like his and allowing wealthy districts to keep spending more per student.
“Why not make other schools have the same model as us?” he asked.
— Ethan Weinstein
In the know
President Donald Trump’s administration on Thursday told states and other recipients of federal transportation funding that they could lose those dollars if they do not comply with the White House’s interpretation of federal laws — including on immigration.
The guidance, outlined in a letter from U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, told recipients that their obligations, by taking federal funding, included “cooperating with and not impeding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” as well as other agencies, “in the enforcement of Federal immigration law.”
Duffy said, without providing specifics, that there had been instances in which recipients of federal funding did not cooperate with “ICE investigations,” and that some recipients had “issued driver’s licenses to individuals present in the United States in violation of Federal immigration law,” which he suggested would be grounds for losing federal dollars.
Since 2014, Vermont has allowed people who live in the state — but who do not have lawful status or U.S. citizenship — to get “driver’s privilege” cards. It’s one of 19 states, along with Washington, D.C., that offer “driving privileges to unauthorized immigrants,” according to data compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Read more about the letter and responses later at VTDigger.org.
— Shaun Robinson
On the move
The Legislature has approved S.28, which makes technical changes that strengthen protections enacted last year for people who practice “legally protected health care activity” in Vermont, including reproductive health services and gender-affirming care.
The Senate also approved S.131, an amendment to the charter of the City of Burlington that would ban the carrying of guns into bars and other places that serve alcoholic beverages. The preliminary vote in support Thursday was 17-12 along party lines, with all Republicans present voting against it.
In the House, Rep. Alice Emmons, D-Springfield, rose to mark the 25th-anniversary of Vermont’s landmark civil union law, the first in the United States to provide legal protections for the unions of same-sex couples. She recognized former lawmakers visiting the chamber who aided in its passage through the Legislature: Tom Little of Shelburne, Bill Lippert of Hinesburg and Alice Nitka of Ludlow. Read her full remarks here.
— Kristen Fountain
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