As the details of Governor Scott's education reform proposal come into focus.

Stakeholders are pushing back.

Don't rush into financial decisions without looking at potential unintended consequences.

This should go without saying.

And oftentimes, political pressure to do something leads to rash decisions with long term impacts.

Plus, seven days in Vermont public set out to count for the first time.

How many Vermonters have died while homeless during the past four years?

And hundreds rally outside the Vermont State House to protest the Trump administration.

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 Werlieb.

Thanks for being with us.

I'm Mitch Lieb.

It's Friday, February 7th, and joining us on the panel today, we have Alison Novak from Seven Days.

Stephen Biddix NBC5 and Liam Elder Conners from Vermont Public.

Thank you all so much for being here.

And of course, like every week there is a lot to talk about.

Alison, I want to start with you because you've been covering a lot of this education reform that's going on here in Vermont.

And as we refer to at the top, there's there's starting to be a little bit of pushback as details of the plans come out sort of piecemeal here.

What are some of the main objections you're hearing about now?

So we've heard last week we heard a little more about kind of the funding and how that would change this.

This week actually just yesterday we heard a little more about the governance.

So, you know, the number of districts, that type of thing.

And so I think, you know, there is this concern, speaking of the foundation formula.

So that would be the kind of new way that schools are funded, in which every every student would kind of get a lump sum or a base sum with additional money for English language learners, for students living in poverty.

I think, you know, what the administration has said is this would save $184 million while also improving educational quality, raising salaries for teachers, and kind of providing more opportunities for for students, in Vermont.

And I think there is this question, there's kind of this head scratching around, okay, so you're saying you're going to be kind of upping the game and, you know, improving education.

So how are we saving all this money while doing so?

And so I think that's kind of one of the biggest, issues.

Other pushback has been around things like the cost of health insurance for teachers.

So this is something that's grown, you know, very and that's a big cost.

It is a big cost.

And I think the I heard a stat this week that 15% of school budgets are actually health insurance costs for school staff, 15% of school budgets.

And that's, that's risen in the last couple of years.

And so this plan doesn't address that.

And I think some people are saying like that has to be addressed as one of the major cost drivers.

Another thing is mental health that we, you know, fund mental health services for students out of the education fund, whereas other states, fund it through out of the Health and Human Services, fund.

So I think this idea of like if that isn't also addressed in this plan, like, how are we going to get these costs under control?

And to your point about, you know, it all looks good, on paper, sort of, you know, we're going to keep the programs people like art and music and, you know, early education, we're going to up teacher salaries.

But there's some concern now about, like you said, where the savings coming from, layoffs.

Right.

Is that part of the concern now?

Yeah.

So, the modeling for how this funding would work is based on the fact that it was based on ratios of students to teachers.

So the assumption is that in K through three, there would be 15 students per teacher.

And in grades four through 12, there would be 25 students per teacher, which is a lot higher than what most schools in Vermont have.

So that assumption is kind of driving these funding amounts.

And so I think what, you know, the Vermont NEA, Vermont Superintendents Association have said are like this would probably, you know, amount to a lot of a lot of layoffs for for educators.

You know, we we touched on this briefly last week in the show.

They're starting to be some concern to about, who's got control of the curriculum, what these students are going to be learning.

Here's what education's, secretary Zoe Saunders had to say about that.

The kind of hyper local decision making often is quite burdensome on the districts.

And on our educators.

And so this would be able to, free up their, their time, to be selecting those curriculum choices and instructional materials, that have been vetted through a process that we design as a state, cause some concern here as Steven Biddick about, consolidation, perhaps being a part of the problem here.

Yes.

That's one of the concerns with a lot of the people that testified just a couple days ago at the state House, the Vermont Superintendents Association said some research that they've done, and they've seen two to 2000 to 4000 kids in a district is kind of a sweet spot from what they see about how to make education the best.

And the smallest school district under this model would be over 10,000 students, which is a big concern that they have.

But going back to the foundation formula as well, some examples were brought up when Alaska moved to this formula that there weren't necessarily incremental increases year after year, after year from their funding amount to the schools.

So then school districts were having to basically still cut things because they weren't getting more money from their state government.

So that's something that Vermont and EY touched on a lot, that there needs to be like an inflator or something like that in writing that this amount is going to have to go up year after year to be able to hold costs.

I mentioned that a lot of this is coming out piecemeal, little bit by bit.

Allison, have you heard any concerns about that, about why aren't we getting sort of the whole picture of this that people can digest and, and how are lawmakers dealing with that?

So I think lawmakers are really trying to kind of wrap their head around each kind of, each aspect of the proposal as it comes out.

But, you know, in this case, the Scott administration and the agency of education are really in the driver's seat, right?

So they're kind of controlling the way the information comes out.

And like you said, they're kind of releasing it slowly.

And so I think there is some concern that, you know, they're going to be releasing it little by little.

And legislators are just having to react and, you know, not necessarily be able to come up with, you know, a counterproposal or their own plan because they're reacting to the administration's plan.

And the latest thing was some news about school choice, right.

What can you what can you tell us about that?

So that just came out yesterday.

So Zoe Saunders, briefed the House Education Committee on the kind of governance plan for this transformation.

So under this plan, we'd move from 52 supervisory unions with 119 school districts to just five regional school districts, ranging in size from 10,000 to 34,000.

And so the kind of most provocative part of this plan, I think, in just in my assessment, is the fact that right now we have, school choice for only students who live in towns that don't operate a public school.

And so there's about 3500 students who are tuition to, private schools in Vermont and others who are tuition to public schools.

So, for example, if you live in Grand Isle, there's no high school.

You could go to South Burlington High School and with taxpayer money, or you could go to race Memorial High School.

So this plan would actually increase eligibility for school choice to the whole state.

So each school district, every student, every student would be eligible.

They might not necessarily get it, but they'd be eligible for a lottery.

So essentially each school district, each of the five school districts would designate at least one and an unlimited amount.

Sounds like, school choice schools.

And they could be independent schools, or they could be, public schools that maybe had a certain bent, like a performing arts school or aeronautics school.

And then there would be a lottery.

So students within that district, wherever, whatever town they lived in, could enter the lottery to attend those schools.

Stephen, you said that, some other states have tried that system before.

You're familiar with that, right?

Yes.

That's how it worked in North Carolina, where I went to high school.

So I was stationed for the high school that I went to.

But I had friends that say in my neighborhood, you can apply for a lottery to go to this school in this part of Charlotte, or this one that might be an art school or something that has more of a specific interest.

And yeah, it wasn't guaranteed to get in, but it's definitely something that they do in other states.

Briefly, I want to mention that Secretary, Education Secretary Zoe Saunders said, remarking on the lower than expected, I guess, reading and math scores that, fourth and eighth graders came in with Vermont just do pretty well with that latest score is not so good, she said.

Reform will help with that unless you too can tell me something specific, she said she didn't really say how reform would help with that, did she?

Not quite.

I think it's another pitch because they're obviously pitching the property tax angle and the money saving angle, but I think it's just another angle for them to attack.

We've been seeing test scores going down since the pandemic, so it kind of helps push this narrative that this needs to be done this year, whether it's for your pocketbook, whether it's for your kids education, it's just kind of another angle that they can try and tackle this out to get something done this year.

Because as we were mentioning timelines and the way this information has been put out, we can see timelines matter, but they can do anything in the state House.

It seems that the rules exemptions, but crossover date is halfway through March, and while that may seem like it's somewhat far away, it's really not because there's going to be a lot to digest once this, but actually be put in a writing form and then start going through the committees.

Yeah.

So this narrative that the status quo isn't working, look at our test scores.

So we have to do something drastic.

We have to do something completely different.

I think that is kind of like the way that the Scott administration is framing this.

Interesting.

Well, we'll have no shortage of information as this comes out more.

We'll be talking about this again.

I want to pivot now to, something that Liam Connors has been reporting on in collaboration with Derek Brewer at seven days, kind of an astonishing, series on homeless deaths in Vermont.

Liam, I really urge everybody to to read this either in the paper or listen, and Vermont public.

So Vermont does not track homeless deaths.

And this was between 2021 and 2024, I believe that that, you were looking at this, why don't that why don't they do that?

Is that unusual at all?

It's really not unusual.

Most states in the country don't track homelessness, or deaths among people experiencing homelessness.

A couple of municipalities and counties do this around the country, but Vermont is not an outlier.

It's a complicated thing to do.

One what is homeless like?

How do you define, homelessness?

Is it couch surfing?

Is it living outside?

Is it having unstable housing?

So that's one consideration.

But it's also just difficult sometimes to to find people to know by looking at, death certificates, whether or not they were unhoused at the time of their death or living in a homeless shelter, which is it requires work to do this counting, as Derek and I knew and learned and trying to do it.

And I think it's a question for states, how how might they do it and how to allocate the resources to do it.

How did you do it then?

So, death certificates in the state of Vermont are public.

So we just requested all the death certificates for the last four years and combed through those.

There are some, people who are labeled as homeless in those, whether that's in their address field or another place.

So you can filter that way.

But, we identified at least 82 people who died while unsheltered or living in some sort of shelter, including, this motel program.

But not all of them are listed as homeless.

So you just we sort of looked through our spreadsheets for little clues.

Things like, the person was found in a tent or in a shed that was used as a residence or just, you know, we just looked for little clues that indicated to us that they might have been, living outside or were homeless and then requesting police reports, doing interviews and just kind of normal reporting to try to confirm more details of their situation.

So we likely didn't get everybody, but this is at least a first attempt to, to get a number.

And again, that's 82 people between those years of 2021 and 2024.

Even more than one death, you found people dying in dumpsters.

I mean, it's it's really the piece really humanized, I think, these deaths, you brought these stories of people to life.

One of the ones I found quite remarkable was, you spoke with a policeman who knew a gentleman who had died because he was local.

He had lived in the area and he even found, you know, a note that he had written about trying to get himself better.

And, you know, tell us about some of the problems he was having.

Yeah.

So that's, Michael Mallin, who was a 45 year old man who in, Morristown, and he was found deceased in a, in a shed next to it in a softball field.

He had died of a drug overdose, which is the most common way that we found, people experiencing homelessness died.

Obviously.

It's a tricky question.

Like, does, drug use cause homelessness, or is it sort of a factor that comes into play when people are living unsheltered as a way to cope?

These two things are sort of complicated and play into each other at times.

But yeah, Michael, had struggled.

He'd been in and out of prison for most of his life.

He had issues, using alcohol and drugs and he, in his note, was talking about how he didn't feel like the systems in Vermont were really set up to help him be successful.

You know, when he got out of prison, he didn't qualify for the state motel housing program, except under the cold weather exemption.

So he ended up living in a shed, alone.

And, you know, a lot of experts can point to that if you or, someone who uses opioids, being alone and using alone, you're going to increase their likelihood of dying of a fatal overdose because no one is going to be there to give you Narcan or call the an ambulance if you overdose.

And the police officer you interviewed for that particular story was basically agreeing with him that this was a person who needed the help, that he just wasn't getting right.

Yeah, it was pretty striking.

Its chief Jason, you know, in Morristown and just feeling this sort of emotional response to this note in this situation, like, how do we do better for people?

I mean, he's seen more people living outside and in their cars, in his community, and they've hired a community resource in, like, mental health, position in the agency who helps people who are unsheltered.

But just asking, like, what?

What can we do?

More drug treatment and longer term drug treatment is something that Chief Luno has pointed to is maybe being something that could be really helpful here.

Helping people not only, like, get through an initial period of becoming sober, but, kind of learning to, to maintain that sobriety over a longer period of time.

It was also remarkable that that one of the people who died is somebody that you had reported on because he had been in and out of prison.

You actually got to know this individual a little bit.

What was it like when you found out about his death?

Yeah, it was hard.

You know, going through the death certificates when I saw Todd Gordon's name and had to confirm it was, this man that I knew and had actually seen two weeks before he died and didn't realize he had passed away until I was doing this reporting a year later.

But I think it kind of for me, just sort of brings it a little bit closer to home when, I've, I've written a lot over my career about people who have who've died either from Covid or, drug use or all these other things, but you don't really know them.

But before that, you learn through family and friends who these people are, but to to have some personal connection sort of changes.

Just changes the feeling of doing the work.

And it can make it.

It's it's hard.

It's definitely not easy.

I'm sure that's true.

Ultimately where you would Derek hoping people get out of this series if they if they read it or listen I think it we're trying to to capture both a moment in the state.

Homelessness in the state of Vermont is is at higher levels than it has been.

Service providers are concerned about more people living outside and being, threatened by cold weather, which is very dangerous.

We didn't find anyone had died from exposure over the last couple of years, but that doesn't mean it's not a risk.

Right.

And so I think we're trying to capture and understand this moment we're in while also highlighting, what are the dangers, for people who don't have shelter, which is increasingly becoming, an issue here in Vermont?

You know, I thank you for your reporting on that.

It's really very good.

We need to move on now to what's happening here in the state of Vermont, as more and more people are sort of paying attention to the news that's happening, federally and hundreds of people were protesting, the Trump administration outside the Vermont State House, recently, and we heard from, some of the protesters there and the governor, I believe, as well, I want to protect our Constitution.

I think it's been taken apart, overwhelmingly.

And it's not right in some ways.

I feel, the president is fueled by what we're seeing outside.

We can't sustain this, and we can't, be outraged that every single thing that happens.

So we just want to take a measured approach and provide the facts.

Now, that's a very interesting take that the governor had there.

We're going to hear a sort of a different take, from, Representative Rebecca mount in a moment.

But I want to first ask about, you know, what people are starting to pay attention to here.

And one of the things, Stephen, I think that's happening is there is a new state task force now that's sort of trying to get ahead of all the sort of the firehose of actions that are coming from the Trump administration.

What does that about?

So a big aspect of this group is going to be looking at the impact of how tariffs would affect Vermont, because that was the big thing early this week on Monday.

What's going to happen.

How's it going to affect us?

I mean we were calling power suppliers, restaurants, groceries, pretty much everybody and anybody trying to get answers of how is this going to affect us, people everywhere, just the public in general.

And a lot of them came back of, we don't know, stuff's going to get more expensive, but we don't know how expensive.

And so there's a lot of just questions.

And I think state government may have heard pick that up a little bit.

So they're hoping by putting this task force together to not have what they called knee jerk moments, but be able to really take deep dives into, okay, if there was a world that there was a 25% tariff put on goods from Canada, how exactly is that going to impact timber, for example, and just be able to provide people with more details instead of it just being a bunch of questions that nobody has answers to, can they actually get the answers to those questions?

I mean, that's the thing about this.

It's like some of this stuff that is happening just seems to happen so quickly that how you can get a head of something that you're not expecting or, you know, it just it seems like I'm curious to see what they're actually going to be able to do and how effectively they can they can do that.

I get what you're saying, which I agree, but a lot of their focus is on the tariffs and what President Trump could all of a sudden change something.

Again, I think they're going to look at it from the fact of, okay, we know it's going to be 10% on power and energy.

And some of those resources and 25% on other goods.

They're able to take the math from what they already know, at least for what could potentially put be put in again at the end of the month and go from there.

I know Matt Cota with the Vermont Fuel Dealers Association was saying that, you know, if those tariffs do go through, they are eventually going to hit people's pocketbooks.

And especially in the northern part of the state where a lot of the people are living more, remotely.

One of the things that I said that, you know, Governor Scott had his take on this kind of like a step back.

Let's not overreact to everything.

But Representative Becca Balint was recently protesting as well and making some remarks about the involvement of the billionaire Elon Musk.

I think consider the richest person in the world and his Department of Government, expenditure.

I think it's called Doge efficiency.

Thank you.

Getting involved with the Treasury Department.

There have been protests over that.

Becca ballot had this to say.

First and foremost, you cannot lose hope.

Authoritarians win.

When we stop paying attention, you have to tune in.

You have to document.

You have to post what you're saying.

You have to record the truth and get the truth out.

I know, I know how tired you are, I know it, but you are not just doing that for you.

You're doing it for your neighbors who don't have a part to.

Then you're doing it for the folks who don't know if their kids are going to get fed tomorrow.

It's it's not just about us.

It's about everyone.

It's about everyone.

I want to mention, too, that Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark, has joined 11 other attorneys general around the state in suing to stop whatever involvement Elon Musk, is having with some, information from the Treasury Department that includes people's personal, financial information and much more.

And again, there's a lot that we still don't know about this.

That's quite a contrast, though, Allison, isn't it, between what Governor Scott was saying and back about coming out swinging, I mean, absolutely not pulling any punches.

There it is.

And I think there is this kind of like rift in terms of how people are thinking about Trump's actions and whether to, you know, react to everything or whether to kind of be more measured about it.

Even as a reporter, I think it's difficult sometimes to try to figure that out when you hear rumors about things happening and, you know, trying to kind of separate what is just kind of rumor and then what is also actually happening on the ground.

So, yeah, yeah, it's going to be interesting to see, Stephen, as you're watching some of these protests happened.

I mean, does it seem like Vermonters are getting more engaged now than they were at the very beginning?

I mean, it hasn't been that long that the Trump administration is sort of come back into, into power again.

No, I mean, it's been a couple of weeks now.

We just saw this big rally, as you mentioned, with hundreds of people at the statehouse focusing on these politics.

And as you mentioned, there are two very different messages.

But I think Vermonters may becoming more engaged because you have certain executive orders and things that are signing that go against some of the very big values of the state, for example, the one about transgender athletes and how that would affect us and rights in general.

And then you also have the grants and funds freeze.

That was eventually rescinded.

But you still have certain organizations like the Vermont Afghan Alliance and Molly Gray, who say they haven't been able to get access to their funds.

So I think is more of these things are really impacting some of these core values and beliefs of Vermonters.

People are really going to be paying attention going forward.

And just on the, on the question of transgender athletes, I did, email Jay Nichols of Vermont Principals Association about that.

And he said that, you know, I said, is anything changing because Vermont's policy is that transgender athletes can play the sport of their that they choose.

And he said, you know, we're holding firm for now until we hear differently from the attorney general, of Vermont or the agency of education.

We're going to just, you know, go with our policy.

So they're not they're not reacting, to the executive order, you know, right when it came in.

So just for all of us following what's on the books here right now and saying we're going to stick with that, let's bring it back to some more local things.

Now, Stephen, I understand you've been covering, a bill that would expand hate crimes qualifications.

What can you tell us about that?

Yeah.

So the way that works right now is it is an enhancement charge.

Someone would already have to be crime to something before that.

But at this moment, it has to be tied to a victim.

So there has to be a direct victim of an act for that hate crime enhancement to be able to get tacked on to the charge.

But for example, if somebody were to spray paint a slur or something on the side of a municipal building, it was an example I was given.

It's not a direct victim because it's a building, but you could still argue it's a hate crime, depending if it's something against a protected group.

So basically what this bill would do is it would change victims to say, groups of people that are in those, protected groups.

So, for example, if someone were to spray paint something on a building and, prosecutor thinks that they have enough evidence to then motive in everything to be able to charge somebody with that crime, they would then be able to do that because under this law, because it's right now you have to be an exact victim.

But the building couldn't technically be the victim under this because it's affecting groups of people compared to just one person.

Allison, I know that you've been covering this, and I have a daughter who's in high school, so I'm sure she's going to be watching this, too.

There's a bill going to be introduced to ban smartphones in all schools.

Do I have that right?

Yes.

That would it would apply to both private and public schools.

And it would basically say that students, every school would have to have a policy where students, couldn't be on their phone or personal electronic device from bell to bell.

So from arrival to dismissal, it would also prohibit school districts from using social media to communicate with students.

So, you know, if a sports team, for example, had an Instagram that they used to communicate with students or a Snapchat, they would no longer be able to do that.

That is something that does happen now sometimes.

And so this bill has 49 sponsors.

There was a similar bill last year that just had four sponsors.

And I think there's definitely like some traction around this bill.

Just the climate is kind of shifting.

Other states are, you know, contemplating or have passed bills around, banning cell phones.

So the time could be right for this bill.

Not a slam dunk, though.

Not a slam dunk.

Okay, I'm going to be watching that one closely.

I think a lot of us will quickly that the Bennington Battle Monument is having some problems.

Apparently there's major water, damage there.

The estimated cost to repair it, $40 million.

It's a pretty big price tag.

Of course, the, the battle didn't actually even happen here in Vermont.

But that is something that we're going to have to be watching closely.

And also we want to mention that, news just came down, that health commissioner doctor Mark Levine is announcing his retirement.

A lot of Vermonters got to know Doctor Levine very well.

Of course, during Covid, in the pandemic, he had been first appointed in 2017, but now he will be, retiring.

So doctor Mark Levine, is not going to be the health commissioner anymore.

And we'll find out about his, replacement.

As that happens.

That is all we have time for today.

We'll have to leave it there, but I want to thank our panel so very much.

Alison Novak from Seven Days, Stephen Biddix from NBC5 and Liam Elder Connors from Vermont Public.

Thank you all so much for being here today.

Thank you for watching at home.

I hope you'll do so next week as well.

Join us again next week for Vermont this Week.