Tuesday, June 15, 2021
In an email to Superintendent Sean McMannon, middle school principal Kate Grodin and high school principal Jean Berthiaume, Uwilingiyimana wrote that after three years of teaching in Winooski, district leaders “have made it impossible for me to stay.”
The science and engineering teacher called out the white supremacy culture in the school district, which he said was not “overt racial prejudice” but “racism that is hidden in plain sight.”
“It looks like a district that is majority People of Color but entirely led by a white leadership team that resisted for decades to reflect that diversity. A leadership that would rather talk about diversity than be diversified,” he wrote. “It looks like a district in which most of the underpaid and overworked staff are [Black, Indigenous, people of color], with the most highly paid at the top.”
The money is part of a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grant program aimed at improving access to health care for all, including minorities and rural populations. The CDC plans to invest $2.25 billion nationally by 2023.
State officials learned June 3 that the state would receive the award, said Heidi Klein, director of planning and health care quality at the Vermont Department of Health. Klein said she’s been told the state won’t have the authority to spend the money for at least another month or two.
Tags: Vermont , health equity , CDC , grant , health department , BIPOC , rural communities , access , Web Only , Image
Monday, June 14, 2021
Weinberger’s $87.3 million budget would restore city services that were curtailed during the coronavirus pandemic and invests in racial justice, public health and additional staffing. Only two of the 13 tax rates that comprise the city's municipal rate will go up substantially next year, making the overall property tax increase about 4.4 percent, according to chief administrative officer Katherine Schad.
"We have attempted to minimize property tax increases as much as possible, recognizing that this remains a challenging financial time for many Burlington individual households," Weinberger said.
Tags: budget , Burlington City Council , FY22 , fiscal year 2022 , CityPlace Burlington , taxes , Burlington , Mayor Miro Weinberger , Web Only , Image
Slightly more than 80 percent of all eligible Vermonters have now received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, according to Gov. Phil Scott, who celebrated the milestone by making good on his promise to lift all remaining COVID-19 restrictions.
At a press conference on Monday, Scott said that he was moving Vermont into the final phase of its reopening plan. Capacity restrictions and gathering limits are now lifted, mask wearing is no longer required and most businesses are now under recommended guidance instead of the stringent health mandates that have governed their daily operations for much of the last 15 months.
The announcement comes 464 days after the state identified its first case of COVID-19 and marks a major step toward normalcy, signaling what many hope will be an end to the pandemic in Vermont.
"There are no longer any state COVID-19 restrictions," Scott said. "None. So unless there is a federal requirement in place — like [for] public transportation or long-term care facilities — employers, municipalities and individuals can operate under the same conditions as before the pandemic."
Tags: Vermont , Reopening , Threshold , 80 Percent , Gov. Phil Scott , Web Only , Image
Saturday, June 12, 2021
Students and staff from the Champlain Valley School District organized the event. It included a march from Champlain Valley Union High School to a celebration at Hinesburg Community School, complete with speeches, pride-themed art and ice cream. Marchers carried signs that announced, "We embrace and celebrate you. You are amazing!" and "Hinesburg LGBTQ+ Pride."
“We wanted to show our support for people in our community that don’t always feel it,” Samantha Raymond said. She's a rising junior at CVU who helped emcee the event.
Tags: Hinesburg pride march , Hinesburg , LGBTQ , Web Only , Image
Thursday, June 10, 2021
Redstone ramped up its opposition to the CityPlace Burlington project this week with two new lawsuits that challenge the project's legal standing.
The Burlington development firm filed cases in Vermont Superior Court’s civil division and in U.S. District Court. The filings name not only Redstone's rival developers as defendants but also city planning staff and members of the volunteer Development Review Board.
The federal suit claims that the city violated Redstone’s property rights because the project permit allows a new road to be built underneath its building at 100 Bank Street, which is adjacent to the CityPlace site.
The filing also claims that the Development Review Board could not objectively assess CityPlace’s development plan because the city would financially benefit from its approval.
“The City of Burlington cannot be a judge in its own case,” Matthew Byrne, the attorney representing Redstone partners Erik Hoekstra and Larry Williams, wrote in the filing.
Tags: CityPlace , Burlington , Mayor Miro Weinberger , Redstone , development , 100 Bank Street , lawsuit , Erik Hoekstra , Larry Williams , Web Only , Image
Wednesday, June 9, 2021
The declared contenders — Ryan Addario, Julie Macuga, Joe Magee, Owen Milne and July Sanders — appeared in a virtual candidate forum hosted by the Vermont Progressive Party on Wednesday night. All five said that if elected, they would support policies to transform public safety, increase the city’s affordable housing stock and uplift the voices of historically marginalized city residents.
The special election is needed after former Ward 3 councilor, Brian Pine, resigned his post last month to serve as the director of the city’s Community and Economic Development Office.
Progressives are eager to hold on to the ward — a Prog stronghold that covers a portion of the city's Old North End and downtown — to keep their plurality on the council. Before Pine left, the 12-member body was made up of six Progs, four Dems and two independents.
Wednesday’s forum comes about a week ahead of the party’s June 17 nominating caucus. Online voting will be open for two days, with a winner announced on June 19. Democrats will caucus June 18 and name a victor on June 20.
Tags: Ward 3 , election , special election , Brian Pine , Ryan Addario , Owen Milne , Joe Magee , Julie Macuga , July Sanders , Web Only , Image
Leading the rare public display at the private Catholic school were young women, including a rising senior, a recent graduate and a 2020 graduate, who each said they’d been sexually assaulted or harassed by fellow students on and off campus in recent years. They said administrators mishandled and downplayed their reports and, in at least one case, assigned a student to the same classroom as the young man she had reported as assaulting her.
“Jesus would not turn his back on a victim in the way the administration has,” they wrote in a letter to school officials. Administrators dispute the students’ claims.
Tags: Rice Memorial High School , Diocese of Burlington , Lisa Lorenz , Bishop Christopher Coyne , sexual misconduct , sexual assault , student protest , Web Only , Image
It opened this week, after a pandemic year of remote learning and social isolation that hurt students’ mental health.
Tags: Burlington High School , art installation , Web Only , Image
The University of Vermont will require all of its students to be vaccinated this fall, pending full approval of the vaccines from the federal Food and Drug Administration.
All full- and part-time students — “undergraduate, graduate, medical, and continuing and distance education students” — must be fully vaccinated and have proof of it, UVM announced on Wednesday. The school will also “continue to encourage faculty and staff members to get vaccinated,” the statement said.
“A fully vaccinated student population on our campus is the best way to protect the health of students, employees, and the broader Burlington community against COVID-19 infection,” UVM wrote in a list of reasons supporting its policy. “This public health approach is consistent with longstanding efforts across the United States to protect students of all ages from a wide range of serious and contagious diseases.”
Last fall, UVM enrolled a total of nearly 13,300 students, a spokesperson said.
The first day of classes begin August 30.
Both Pfizer and Moderna have applied for full FDA approval for their two-dose vaccinations, though Pfizer started the process earlier, in the beginning of May. It’s unclear how long the full approval will take, though it is generally many months.
Other Vermont schools of higher education, including Middlebury College, Saint Michael’s College and Champlain College, have announced similar requirements for student vaccinations. Norwich University has said that it will reopen with the “expectation” that all students, faculty and staff be vaccinated no later than August 1.
Gov. Phil Scott has said he'll lift all pandemic-related restrictions once at least 80 percent of eligible Vermonters age 12 and older receive at least one dose of vaccine. As of Wednesday, 79.6 percent had gotten at least one jab.
Tags: vaccination , requirement , COVID-19 , Vermont , college , university , University of Vermont , St. Michael's College , Champlain College , Norwich University , Web Only , Image