Happy first day back to school session! How was your summer? The floors are a little cleaner and the eyes are a little brighter as the both the Senate and the House of Representatives begin their second year of the biennium.
The House gaveled back into session Tuesday morning after some seemingly requisite first-day-back technological hiccups and all-but-obligatory mentions of creemees and Carhartt, lest lawmakers forget they’re in Vermont.
As if compelled by some invisible force, the conversations in the halls and on the chamber floors all seemed to drift toward addressing the unfinished business of last year’s big education bill.
“If last year asked a lot of us, this year will ask even more,” House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, told her colleagues, nodding to some of the challenges on education, housing and health care.
So, as lawmakers go back to the books to figure out how to organize the state’s schools, I decided to talk to the building’s school-aged visitors about how it feels on the first day of session.
Winnie Liu is an eighth-grader from Montpelier who was mere hours into her first day as a legislative page when we spoke: “It’s not as busy as I expected at first, but it’s going really smoothly and all the directions are clear,” she said of day one. We will have to see how she feels come May.
For Liliana Klimanska, a high school exchange student visiting Vermont, “it’s a really nice opportunity to see, not from the TV or from the news, but from inside, how people behave, how people interact with each other and how they create this whole community. You can actually see that they’re casual with each other, they connect, and they appreciate each other’s efforts to make Vermont better. It’s really cool.”
That picture of a body going back to school was clear for Klimanska’s peer, Amelie Richter, a German exchange student: “Even before it started, you could see all of the House people just talking with each other, like us coming back after a holiday break.”
— Olivia Gieger
On the move
The House and Senate sent more than 100 bills to committee on Tuesday. Stay tuned as we track the key pieces of legislation.
Rather than attempt to override Gov. Phil Scott’s veto of last year’s attempted overhaul of Vermont’s motel housing program, Speaker Jill Krowinski sent the bill, H.91, back to committee.
In the know
On Monday, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scaled back federal vaccine guidelines for children, removing six vaccines from a “recommended” status. The House Committee on Human Services hit the ground running, reviewing the newly introduced H.545, which would reissue state-level vaccine recommendations and bolster Vermont’s ability to provide immunizations to those who want them.
—Olivia Gieger
In a moment of flipping the focus, so to speak, Rep. Doug Bishop, D-Colchester, recognized VTDigger’s own staff photographer Glenn Russell for the start of his 40th year covering the Vermont Legislature. “He has helped bring his keen eye and enormous skill to the stories published by the publications he’s worked with. He’s helped deliver the human side of those stories,” Bishop said. We couldn’t agree more.
—Olivia Gieger
Overheard
In the House chamber, one representative to another: “You need more syrup?”
