House Democrats and the Scott administration attempt to reach a compromise on education and property tax reform.

Plus, Vermont's education secretary reverses course on D-I compliance.

And a look at who's helping design Vermont's new juvenile detention center.

All that and more ahead on Vermont this week.

From the Vermont public studio in Winooski.

This is Vermont this week, made possible in part by the Lintilhac Foundation and Milne Travel.

Here's moderator Mitch Wertlieb.

Thanks for joining us on Vermont this Week.

I'm Mitch Wertlieb.

It's Friday, April 11th, and joining us on the panel this week, Sasha Goldstein from Seven Days, Ethan Weinstein from VTDigger.

And joining us remotely today for from Vermont Public.

Thank you all so much for being with us on the panel today.

I want to say right from the top, we have fast moving news.

We're going to be talking about something here that's sort of ongoing as we're going to tape here today.

House Democrats are proposing an education funding and property tax reform kind of a compromise.

Ethan, what is the latest so you can tell us about this?

Yeah.

So this bill has consumed the legislature this year.

Things got off to a slow start as Governor Scott and Education Secretary Zoe Saunders unveiled their plan for education reform.

Basically, there's there's two fundamental, topics at play.

There's education, governance, consolidating Vermont school districts into larger regional blocs.

And then you've got changes to education, finance, specifically changing the funding formula that the state uses.

For months at this point.

Lawmakers have been working on their version in the House.

Democrats leading the way.

That's been slow going.

And all the while, there's been a lot of Republican resistance.

Finally this week, some of that started to hit the floor.

The Ways and Means Committee, the tax writing committee, and the House had developed their version of a foundation formula that spent a little bit more than the governor's idea.

And, Democrats in the House Education Committee.

They, wanted to slow down a little bit compared to the governor and, outsource the creation of new consolidated school districts.

Both of those changes drew ire from their Republican colleagues.

And, yesterday, when this massive proposal finally reached the House floor.

Things got a little dicey.

And all of a sudden, contentious.

Dicey.

Well, it was a lot of back room running around and people, you know, in hushed voices.

It wasn't necessarily clear how many votes, Democrats had on this proposal.

There was delay after delay and in what was really an odd move.

When the House first voted on this, they did it by voice vote.

And so that concealed, you know, the support that the bill had because, every member didn't have the details or didn't have, as you were saying.

Well, yeah.

But yeah, I mean, Lola's in Montpelier, so I'm curious, what she's hearing as sort of the latest here because, yeah, it's still changing as we're all sitting around the table.

What do you got for us, Lola?

Yeah.

So, I guess the first thing to understand is, in order for a bill to pass a chamber, it needs two votes.

And usually those take place over the course of two different days.

Unless you're spending rules.

And so, you know, with it being very much in question whether or not there was enough, support for the bill to pass, lawmakers yesterday passed this preliminarily on a voice vote, which is when everyone says, yay or nay.

And the speaker kind of decides which side was louder.

And, you know, they they passed it preliminarily, with the expectation that today we would have the real floor fight.

We have since seen, an amendment to the bill, that has a Republican sponsor and a Democratic sponsor.

The Republican is active, is very close to the governor.

The Democratic sponsor is Lori Hughton.

Who is the House Democratic majority leader.

Right.

So you can have a sense that these this is the message that is coming from leadership.

And what this amendment does is it put it puts lawmakers on the redistricting commission, which is in charge of kind of drawing these district lines.

In this new universe where we would have consolidated districts.

That's one thing that Democrats, sorry, that Republicans have been calling for.

They want lawmakers to be more involved in that process.

It's not a huge concession to Republicans.

But it is a concession in their direction.

And it appears to be an attempt to get enough Republican support so that the bill can survive and pass the House today.

You know, as you mentioned, we are, taping as the debate is ongoing.

And hopefully it will have wrapped up by the time this actually airs.

But but to be determined, I think I think people at this point do expect it to pass and to have the votes necessary, but, you know, but what's the upshot of it all?

Even if something does pass, what are we expecting to see that's going to really change here?

I mean, we're going to see if this were to pass.

You know, the next chamber and then get signed by the governor.

Profound upheaval in how we govern and how we pay for school.

To me, the kind of largest change, over and above, you know, school district consolidation is this idea of a foundation formula right now.

The way that we decide how much schools are going to get, in terms of funding, is that local voters vote on a budget.

It's it's local control.

And whatever that amount the state pays a foundation formula would see the state use a formula per pupil formula to decide how much money gets sent to districts.

And when you look at modeling, that's been done by, you know, on the House Democratic proposal.

What you'll notice is that the top line number doesn't change that much.

Actually, we wouldn't actually dramatically reduce overall spending.

But what we would see is really dramatic redistribution.

Right.

So Bennington, Rutland, the Northeast Kingdom would suddenly get a lot more money than they do now.

But Addison County, eastern Chittenden County.

Right.

So more liberal, more affluent areas would actually see a lot less.

Okay.

Briefly, Ethan, before we move on from this topic, it does look like there's going to be another study commission that's going to be formed to deal with some of these issues.

Yes.

This was another part of the compromise.

While the one committee is working on creating these new districts will be another committee working simultaneously, and their job will be to come up with the voting wards, which is a key element of creating these regional blocks.

But before we jump off the topic, I just think it's really important to underline that, what comes out of the house today is very unlikely to be the finished version of this.

It's still got to go through the Senate.

The Senate generally, doesn't just, take what the House has and they're not going to rubber stamp.

No, they're not going to rubber stamp it.

So I think we're going to be having this conversation again and again over the next few weeks.

Well, and we know obviously the governor's plan is moves a lot quicker than, this House plan does with the committees coming up and just the amount of time to actually implement all the changes.

And I wonder, I know you guys have probably talked about this a bit before on the show, but I'm wondering if lawmakers feel like they got a bit of a reprieve with some of the budgets that passed this year with a lower tax hike, feeling maybe we have some breathing room to actually think this thing out and flesh it out and wait until 2029 to actually implement, a foundation formula.

So, I think see what happens in the Senate is going to be maybe indicative of that and what the governor ultimately has to say as well.

The governor has certainly been pushing for this to happen sooner rather than later.

We definitely know that much.

And sticking with, education now, Vermont's education secretary Zoe Saunders made some news.

Reversing course on something to do with a Dei pledge.

Lola, what can you tell us about that?

Yeah.

So last week, the Trump administration went to schools nationwide, and they said, look, we think some, Dei programing that is happening right now is technically legal.

They were very vague about sort of what would count as quote unquote illegal.

Dei but, you know, told schools, if you don't affirm that you are not doing this kind of Dei programing, we are going to pull your title one funds.

And title one funds are, a pot of money that goes to targeted to high poverty schools.

It's one of the largest pots of federal money that schools nationwide receive.

And what, our education secretary did after receiving this kind of directive is, you know, sent this kind of legalistic threading of the needle, this guidance that tried to thread this legalistic needle to school districts and said, we want you to certify compliance with this, but we also think that you can keep doing what you've been doing and that it'll be fine.

That's a mushy message, isn't it?

It it is a very squishy message.

Yes.

And it, was not satisfying to, basically most education leaders.

It really examined it and it and made like, it put them in a, in an impossible situation.

And there was quite a bit of pushback.

Right, Ethan?

Yeah.

Almost immediately, you know, over the weekend, we heard news that, the superintendent in Winooski had had told the education secretary he wasn't, going to comply and submit, submit one of these certificates.

On Monday, as the news continued to develop, the associations representing school board members and superintendents, they met with Education Secretary Saunders and Attorney General Charity Clark, and they basically said, look, this, this, these certificates you want us to fill out, this isn't going to work for us.

We see this, putting our members at real risk.

Monday was an extremely hectic news day.

We had, you know, Saunders and Clark doubling down and saying, look, we believe you can fill out these certificates and, protect your diversity, equity and inclusion programing.

And then just a few hours later, we had them walk it all back and say, you know what?

The state's going to submit one certificate.

And individual districts no longer have this requirement.

And again, the fast moving pace of these things really it flows right into the next story that we have to talk about.

And, Sasha, this is something, that has been covered, in your paper, there were two Vermont high school students from Cvu.

The word that we had just from yesterday was that they're from Nicaragua.

And even though they had, permits to be here in the country, legally, they were going to be deported.

But there's news on that now.

Federal.

Just put a stay on that.

What's the what's the latest you can tell us about this story?

Yeah, the latest we know is that a judge has stopped, these these mandated deportations from people, for people from Nicaragua, Haiti, I believe a couple other countries.

I think Venezuela as well.

Yep.

So they were required the Trump administration said these people who are here and kind of this temporary protected, humanitarian parole status, I believe, is what they call it.

Would have to leave the country by the end of April, which was pretty shocking to these people who thought they were here and in good standing.

They hadn't been accused of anything.

They were going about their lives.

And that was the case with these two students at Champlain Valley Union High School in Hinds Berg.

These were, two seniors there.

And they were basically told, you know, you're going to leave at the end of the month.

Our understanding is they were going to leave voluntarily rather than try to fight it and possibly actually be deported.

So what we don't know at this point in time is whether that is still the case.

And they are going to leave, or whether they plan to, wait it out and see what happens with this judge's ruling.

An interesting thing about this, it's actually really kind of sad.

The school decided, in light of this news, to hold a brief graduation ceremony for these two students so that they could leave the U.S with, their high school diploma.

They they had earned enough credits.

And, you know, it's just heartbreaking when you think about it.

You know, we heard from a librarian who had worked closely with one of the students who said, what a hard worker they were.

And, again, I want to be clear.

We're protecting their identity and not naming names or even gender.

But, just hearing these stories, you know, it's just.

Yeah, it's kind of a shocking one.

And again, you fast moving, you just.

We don't know.

Yeah.

We'll have to keep following that and see what ultimately happens to superintendent of schools.

Kvue as you were saying, Sasha was saying, you know, these were really well liked students and it just it hit the community really hard.

Yeah.

Once the an email went out to community members and we heard that there were hundreds of responses to that email, including from Senator Bernie Sanders office, state treasurer, my paycheck read reached out people were offering money, lawyers, whatever they could do to try to help, these students.

I think it really hit home for people that these are community members who are being, forced out for no reason at all.

And this shift in federal policy, by the way, affects up to 500,000 people in this country.

The countries we mentioned and also including Cuba.

But we're seeing it have an effect right here in Vermont with these two Kvue students.

Thank you for updating us on that.

Lola, back to you.

There is, a problem with Vermont schools, having some money, that's going to be reimbursed now because of any sort of an aid clawback.

What's the latest on that?

Yeah.

He, Biden administration had given schools extra time to spend their pandemic recovery money.

As folks will probably recall, schools across the country got, historic, infusions of cash post-pandemic.

So did Vermont.

And, schools were supposed to spend that down by September 30th, 2024.

And then there's also kind of an extra, I think, 90 days that you have after that to sort of close out invoices.

Anyways, the Biden administration had given schools extra time.

And the Trump administration very suddenly said, actually, never mind, you don't have that extra time if you haven't spent it and you haven't received a reimbursement.

We may not give you that reimbursement tech.

We almost certainly will not.

And so schools learned, I want to say last week that they had maybe about, $16 million in kind of outstanding exposure, that those were the estimates that the agency of education gave at that time.

And, you know, some of that was for things that was already spent, and some of it was for programing that was actually, planned for the summer.

And it literally is, literacy, summer programing.

So, you know, $16 million in the grand scheme of things is, sort of recoverable given that we spend $2 billion on schools, but, definitely not good news for our schools.

Given the 2000, it wasn't that, a lot of budget decisions had been made based on, those commitments that had been made by federal officials.

Thanks for the update on that.

Lola.

Sasha Gold student, want to turn back to you for a moment?

Really interesting story.

In seven days, written by Alison Novak about a new juvenile detention center.

There's one coming to for regions.

We know it's going to be a big one there.

Small one in, Middlesex, run by Jeff.

Karen, owner of the Sentinel Group.

And then some troubling, news came out about some some of the places that he's been involved with before.

What, what are some of these troubling things?

Yeah.

So, Jeff, Karen runs this this company called Sentinel Group, which the state, signed a $10.7 million contract last year that lays out, a few things for his company to do.

One being running a sort of a temporary, facility for they called justice involved youth, a used, detention detention facility for for for people in Middlesex.

For about two years until they could get this for Jen's facility off the ground, which would house approximately 14 kids, up to 14 kids.

Now, now, the this contract, was laying out some pretty serious, cash for this company that about $343,000 per month to run this four, bed facility in Middlesex.

But what was interesting about this company is it's actually linked to a program in New Hampshire that's, facing some very serious allegations of abuse and misconduct, 125 lawsuits against another Jeff Karen owned company called, Mount Prospect Academy.

It's actually a nonprofit.

He also runs, the Bennington, the Vermont School for girls, which is in Bennington.

We recently learned that a staff member there, was arrested for sexually abusing a young woman, who was at that school.

Now, these are all programs that, involve, teens who are in custody of the state.

So what this kind of raises questions about is a did the state that this guy before and his companies before they signed this big contract with him and be, what steps is the state going to take to prevent these happening at the new facility?

Obviously, this Vergennes facility is coming on because Woodside, the former juvenile facility in Essex, shut down over really shocking claims of abuse there in 2020.

So the last five years or so, the state has been scrambling to try to figure this out.

And I think it's a it's a tough industry, a tough thing to to do for any company to take on really some troubled kids.

And you get them together in an environment like that, it can be hard.

It can be hard on the staff.

It's obviously hard on the kids themselves.

But it does raise a variety of questions about how the state plans to make sure we don't see, something like what happened at Woodside happened here.

Now, nobody wants a repeat of that.

Ethan Weinstein, I want to ask about this case.

So we talked about this, on the show last week, and it's made national international news.

A student from Tufts was taken out of Massachusetts, taken to Vermont.

Now is in Louisiana, and this is over some allegations from the Trump administration, that this was a person sympathetic to Hamas.

The case, though, is being tried here at least, initially in Vermont.

Why?

Yeah.

So maybe just a quick reminder for viewers, I think, video of of this woman roommate Oz Turk being, detained by, Ice officials in Massachusetts.

They were, you know, plainclothes officers, and they, they picked, this woman up off the street.

I the country was sort of shocked by what they saw, what was caught on tape, by security cameras.

The the case is now coming to Vermont because, after all, Turk was taken into custody.

A few hours later, her lawyers, followed her lawyers, filed a lawsuit claiming she'd been wrongfully detained.

And and through the course of that lawsuit, what's been determined is, as Turk was actually in Vermont at the time that that lawsuit was filed, suit brought her from Massachusetts, I think, then, to New Hampshire, moved her to Saint Albans.

And so now we're expecting a hearing on Monday where a judge, may determine whether the case should stay in Vermont or, it could perhaps be moved to Louisiana, where the student is currently being held.

Or perhaps, it will, come to fruition here in Vermont.

And this is bringing up questions about immigration detention in Vermont in general.

Yeah.

Some reporting I've been working on in, in recent weeks, has looked at the way Vermont prisons collaborate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Border Patrol.

What we know is that, since President Trump took office for his second term, the number of people in Vermont's prisons who are detained for immigration authorities has increased.

There's something like 20 per day at this point.

Who are held.

They typically are in Saint Albans if they're men or they're in South Burlington if they're women.

From talking to, incarcerated individuals, what what I learned was that, a lot of these folks who are brought in, because they don't speak English and no one at the facilities speaks their language, they have trouble using the phone systems and and calling their families.

They might have trouble accessing medical care.

It's it's, it's not, a set up that Vermont seems to be too well prepared for at the moment.

I appreciate your reporting on that.

Everything we've been talking about here, all these stories, all of this sort of dovetails with what happened last week, April 5th.

There was a nationwide protest, about a lot of the policies that are coming from the Trump administration and happened right here in Vermont.

Just seems like every corner there were protests.

Sasha, you know, people were out in small communities and large.

Yeah, absolutely.

We had, a reporter up in Barton, which was one of the places, all the way down into Manchester and southern Vermont as well.

I think, you know, Montpelier, there was a huge crowd there, by some estimates, 10,000 people.

So obviously it's these, these Trump policies that are that we're seeing on immigration and all the rest, as well as what Elon Musk is doing with his Doge.

Department that's sort of slashing funding, for all these school districts and all the rest.

And I think the reach of these policy changes, is so vast that I think even people that might have voted for Trump are seeing it now and maybe are among the people that are sort of like, enough's enough.

Well, that seems to be the big question, really.

Because, you know, you can expect some pushback, certainly, in a blue state like Vermont.

But, Ethan, were you seeing signs that there were in some of these more conservative pockets of Vermont, that there were people out there who were protesting as well?

I mean, one thing that was noteworthy was that, Lieutenant Governor John Rogers, who is a Republican, he was one of the speakers at this, Montpelier rally, I believe.

And he's no fan of Trump and people know that.

But, certainly the people that put him into office, many of them likely, support Donald Trump.

And so I think, him taking that stand, is maybe a sign of, how everything that's notably not Governor Scott, though, did did not come out and do anything strongly in that.

In that sense, no, the governor has definitely been walking a fine line, calling out policies, from Washington that he vehemently disagrees with.

But, we'll see.

Yeah, we're all going to have to wait and see.

So much moving so quickly, and we're gonna have to leave it right there because of that.

Thanks to our panel today, Sasha Goldstein from Seven Days, Ethan Weinstein from VTDigger, Lola Duffot joining us remotely today for from Vermont Public.

Thank you all so much.

I'm Mitch Wertlieb.

Thanks for watching and listening.

Join us again next week for Vermont.

This week.