Wednesday, March 16, 2022
State officials have prepared for statewide PCB testing by surveying schools to see which ones qualify and contracting with six environmental consulting firms to conduct the work. They've also released updated guidance that details what schools must do if certain levels of contaminants are found.
But in a meeting of the Senate Education Committee last week, DEC Commissioner Peter Walke and senior environmental program manager Patricia Coppolino told lawmakers that the 2024 deadline won't allow them to provide a personalized response to schools with elevated airborne PCB concentrations.
"I think we set ourselves up for an inability to provide that level of service that Vermonters are going to want in response to the discovery of PCBs in school if we try to rush the testing process," Walke told lawmakers.
Tags: Department of Environmental Conservation , PCBs , education , Web Only , Image
Thursday, March 3, 2022
As of March 14, Vermont will no longer recommend that students and staff of all ages and vaccination status wear masks in K-12 schools, officials said on Thursday. That will align schools with the state's guidance — or lack thereof — for all Vermonters.
While the state is eliminating its mask guidance, officials said that individual school districts can ultimately impose their own rules. And in districts that do away with masks, students have the right to wear face coverings — with "no stigma surrounding that" — if they choose to, Gov. Phil Scott said at his weekly press conference on Thursday.
The decision also applies to school buses, according to Education Secretary Dan French, "since masks are no longer required on school buses as a result of a recent change in federal regulation."
Tags: Vermont , Ukraine. COVID-19 , health , virus , masking , schools , education , guidance , recommendations , Web Only , Image
Wednesday, March 2, 2022
On Town Meeting Day, voters around Vermont roundly rejected school board candidates who ran on divisive, political issues.
Last month, Seven Days documented the phenomenon of national culture war issues filtering down to the local school board level, where elections are nonpartisan. But those Vermont candidates, running for boards including Mill River, Milton and Springfield, failed to garner enough support for their grievances about critical race theory, "socialism" and "indoctrination" of students.
In Milton, three candidates — Brock Rouse, Nichole Delong and Scott O'Brien — sent out a manifesto citing those exact issues, and all lost by hundreds of votes.
Had Rouse, Delong and O'Brien won, they would have formed a majority on the five-member school board. Some community members feared that could have led to a reversal of some recent equity initiatives in the district.
In Rutland, a debate over the Raiders mascot fueled a crowded race, with 10 candidates running for four seats. The school board had first ditched — then brought back — the name in a matter of 18 months.
Another group of four — Courtney Collins, Sara Doenges, Marybeth Lennox-Levins and Marisa Kiefaber — were promoted by the left-leaning political group Rutland Forward.
Tags: school boards , Springfield , St. Albans , Burlington , Milton , Rutland , Web Only , Image
Tuesday, March 1, 2022
The Burlington School District said on Tuesday that a new high school and technical center could come with a price tag of somewhere between $161 million and $207 million.
That estimate doesn't include an additional $26 million to $29 million the district would need to demolish the current buildings on the Institute Road campus and safely remove contaminated soils and building materials.
The district released the estimate on the afternoon of Town Meeting Day, as Burlingtonians voted on a potential tax hike and a capital bond for new city spending. Also on the ballot was the $98.2 million school budget, which represented a 13.1 percent increase in per-pupil spending over last year. But the district said it would likely amount to a reduction for taxpayers because of a surplus in the state education fund.
Tags: Burlington High School , Town Meeting Day , Tom Flanagan , Web Only , Image
Thursday, February 24, 2022
It's unclear how the state would enforce the policy.
Tags: Senate Education Committee , Abenaki , Indigenous people , Judy Dow , Don Stevens , Vermont Agency of Education , Dan French , Web Only , Image
Friday, February 18, 2022
Several of the 21 bullet points echo politicized talking points that have pulled school boards into the national culture wars. Seven Days wrote about the trend in a cover story published on Wednesday.
Should the three candidates — Brock Rouse, Scott O'Brien and Nichole Delong — win election at Town Meeting Day on March 1, they would have the votes to control the direction of the five-member school board. Some community members believe such a scenario could lead the board to walk back some of the district's recent equity initiatives.
Milton Town School District board chair Rick Dooley, who faces a challenge from Delong for a one-year seat on the board, said the messaging coming from the three candidates is concerning.
"The town and the school all benefit when the board is working together, they're coming from their individual backgrounds, their individual ideologies, they evaluate facts, they look at information, they have a robust discussion and they make a decision based on what's best for the Milton Town School District," Dooley said in an interview Thursday. "And I don't think you will have that if you have a politically charged group that is looking to take over a majority stake in the board."
Some of the tenets listed in the candidates' email "are not in the purview of the school board," Dooley added.
Tags: Milton Town School District , school boards , Town Meeting Day , Black Lives Matter , Web Only , Image
But in the days following the announcement, some superintendents in the most highly vaxxed parts of the state — Chittenden and Washington counties — have signaled that they will proceed cautiously when it comes to ditching the face coverings.
All six of the schools in the Champlain Valley School District — which draws students from Charlotte, Hinesburg, Shelburne and Williston — have vaccination rates near or above 80 percent, according to superintendent Rene Sanchez. Leading the way is Champlain Valley Union High School, where about 91.5 percent students have had at least two COVID-19 vaccine jabs.
But with a number of unanswered questions about the guidance, all students and staff in the district will remain masked when they return from school break on February 28, Sanchez wrote in a letter to families on Wednesday. Part of the concern, Sanchez wrote, is that the date for lifting masking requirements coincides with a return from vacation, a time when many students will be traveling.
Tags: Vermont Agency of Education , Dan French , Phil Scott , Montpelier Roxbury Schools , Champlain Valley School District , Burlington School District , Web Only , Image
Tuesday, February 15, 2022
The move, which takes effect on February 28, is aimed at alleviating some of the social anxiety that students have experienced since the pandemic began two years ago, Gov. Phil Scott said Tuesday at his weekly press conference. He added that he hopes to soon lift mask requirements in schools altogether.
“Our kids need to get back to normal,” Scott said.
The governor said that he’d heard of schools where students are not allowed to use the library, talk with others at lunch, or play without masks on the playground. Mental health professionals, parents and students themselves have reported that last year's prolonged period of virtual instruction, and the continuing uncertainty and isolation of the pandemic, has been bad for students' psychological well-being.
Tags: Vermont , health , COVID-19 , masks , schools , education , guidance , Web Only , Image
Thursday, February 3, 2022
The newest thresholds — dubbed "immediate action levels" — are also three times higher than the "school action levels" the state released in November.
The changes come as the state Department of Environmental Conservation prepares to tests hundreds of schools across Vermont. Results of those tests could prove costly — and disruptive — for school districts if high levels of the chemicals are detected.
Under the new regs, schools can't use rooms with more than 90 nanograms per cubic meter of PCBs in the air for prekindergarten students; more than 180 nanograms for K-6 students; and more than 300 nanograms for seventh graders through adults.
Tags: PCBs , Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation , Vermont Department of Health , EPA , Web Only , Image
Wednesday, January 12, 2022
The move reversed a 6-4 board decision made 15 months ago to retire the name because it perpetuated racist stereotypes.
During the final hour of Tuesday's meeting — following subdued presentations around the school budget and other funding — board members got emotional during the discussion about bringing back the Raiders name.
Tags: Rutland City Public Schools , mascots , Vermont Principals' Association , Raiders , high school sports , Web Only , Image