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Policy & Politics
Punt and Study?
House Speaker, Jill Krowinski’s difficult decision to do a punt-and-study of the looming pension crisis, about which we have effectively been advised for almost a decade, forewarns us of some… Read More
Education
Early Childhood Education and Child Health
The institutional and administrative silos that differentiate the care and wellness of children from their progress through the public education system can derail a child’s education and development if he… Read More
Social Culture
Winooski: A pioneer in diversity and learning
On March 15, Governor Scott took a courageous and prescient action. He wrote the U.S. Department of State requesting they triple the number of refugees sent to Vermont next year.… Read More
Policy & Politics
How To Spend a Windfall
I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth… …but the $2.7B one-time federal tsunami of cash coming into a state of 624,000 people is a big deal,… Read More
Policy & Politics
When the State Takes A Child
The most extreme authority Vermonters have accorded their government is the taking of a human life. This ended in 1972, 18 years after the last Vermonter was electrocuted in Windsor… Read More
Policy & Politics
Vermont: Reactive or Reactionary?
To our detriment, we’re largely a reactive state. Our ship of state is captained from the stern. We scan our wake for bad signs. A corpse floats by… we need… Read More
Arts and Humanities
Do You Have a Book in You?
Apart from speaking and drawing, writing is one of humankind’s earliest forms of communication. The first written words emerged as cuneiform writing in 3200 BC in Mesopotamia – present day… Read More
Education
Vermont State College System and the Headwinds of Privilege
Change is relentless. Humanity’s efforts to understand, accommodate, and survive it are invariably buffeted by the headwinds stirred up by those whose privilege may be curtailed by that change. Reversing… Read More
Education
Draft Vision for a Unified VT State College System 102220
Problem Statement: As is, the current constellation of Vermont’s four State Colleges(VSC) is financially, pedagogically, and demographically unsustainable. What has changed? The sheer financial burden of tenured and administrative personnel… Read More
Health Care
Healthcare: A Lucrative Business or a Definable Right?
In healthcare, as in hunger and housing, we face a moral choice. Is Mammon or caritas – profit or wellbeing – the best driver of community health initiatives? In his… Read More
Policy & Politics
Social Media, Free Speech, & The Right to Bear Arms
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… Read More
Arts and Humanities
Hi, Bill: Rep. Kathleen James here (Bennington-4). Read with great interest your essay this morning on reinventing our schools as community hubs and thought you might be interested in a… Read More
Education
An Open or Shut Case? Our Community Schools
Photo courtesy of Nancy Stevens Many Vermont towns are torn between the financial imperative to consolidate their shrinking student populations into larger nearby educational facilities and their deep desire… Read More
