If we don’t join together to reimagine public education as a cost-efficient institution that fulfills our constitutional obligation to provide a free and effective education to our citizens — one that embraces change — we’re flunking this test.
I appreciate a well-reasoned conservative argument and often find myself in agreement with some or all of what I hear, but the far right’s invectives against a sincere effort to confront the implicit bias and racism of the past at a deeper level seems to me sound and fury signifying nothing.
We must rebuild an economy that values the working class and awards them wages adequate to own a home, raise a family, and ensure the rudiments of well-being.
A disturbing lack of vision, leadership, policy formation, and accountability in health care strategy is at the root of the Vermont problem.
A gun designed for hunting is an intrinsically different killing tool than a military weapon designed to kill as many of the enemy as possible in the shortest amount of time.
Naively, I had assumed that the measure of diversity in a school system was the number of languages spoken — some 20. But the metrics are much more complex. Imagine a diversity of diets, dress, medicines, gender relationships, and religious traditions.
A parent’s duty is not to take the easier, softer way that results in adulation, but instead to raise resilient, responsible adults. The parallel for the legislator is the duty to make the difficult decisions that underlie a just and sustainable society.
Bill Schubart is a retired businessman and active fiction writer, and a former chair of the Vermont Journalism Trust, the parent organization for VTDigger.
Today, the $2.7 billion earmarked for Vermont includes $731 million worth of direct $1,400 payments to those earning less than $75,000 and $152 million for rental assistance, as well as $47 million for child care subsidies and support for child care providers.
Vermonters should insist that the current system be objectively reviewed and redesigned for fairness, accountability and cost-efficiency, and with greater consideration for the interests of both the child and parents.
When and if we finally act, we overlook the connected nature of our problems, and so our “solutions” are too narrowly focused and generate unintended consequences on which we pile new legislation.
If the health care system continues as it is now — managed for profit even in the “nonprofit” realm — we’ll never achieve the goal of improving our national wellness.
Colleges need to be reinvented, transformed, so they acknowledge change and fiscal realities — and guarantee a quality, accessible education for learners of any financial ability.
Bill Schubart is a retired businessman and active fiction writer, and was a former chair of the Vermont Journalism Trust, the parent organization for VTDigger. The term “social media” has never made linguistic sense to me. It seems like an oxymoron. To me, “social” implies my predigital childhood, where people I knew walked and talked […]