MONTPELIER — The Vermont House will have more Republicans leading its policy committees — and is bringing back a committee tasked with overseeing the state’s digital infrastructure — for the legislative biennium that started Wednesday. 

Democratic House Speaker Jill Krowinski, who was reelected to her post Wednesday morning, announced committee assignments on the House floor that afternoon. The speaker has the sole authority to make committee appointments in the House. This year, she had more choices to make than usual, with a number of committee chairs and vice chairs who either did not run again or lost reelection campaigns — leading to significant turnover in leadership.

Only one Republican — Coventry Rep. Michael Marcotte — chaired a House panel in recent years, the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee. This session, Marcotte will be joined by a second caucus member — Swanton Rep. Matt Walker, who will helm the House Transportation Committee. 

Meanwhile, the number of Republicans serving as committee vice chairs has more than doubled — from four last year to nine members this year. Overall, nearly all — 11 of the 14 — House committees will have some GOP leadership this year. 

Notably, Rep. Jim Harrison, a Chittenden Republican, will be the new vice chair of the powerful House Appropriations Committee. The seat was held last year by Middlebury Democratic Rep. Robin Scheu — who will now chair the budget-writing panel.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday afternoon, Krowinski said the enhanced GOP committee leadership was a result of the increased power the caucus won in last fall’s election, when Republicans gained 18 seats.  

“Given the increase in the Republican caucus, it was automatic that they would be picking up a second chairship and increasing the number of vice chairs,” she said.

While the House announced committee assignments Wednesday, the Senate must wait until the lieutenant governor is sworn in on Thursday to do the same. The lieutenant governor is one member of a three-person panel, called the Committee on Committees, that doles out many of the leadership positions in that chamber. 

This year’s House Energy and Digital Infrastructure Committee is, in a way, a move back to the future. The House had an “Energy and Technology” panel as recently as 2022, but for the last biennium, jurisdiction over those topics was split between the House Environment and Energy Committee (which had the former) and the Government Operations and Military Affairs Committee (which had the latter.)

The former will now be just the “House Environment Committee.” Meanwhile, the new “Energy and Digital Infrastructure” panel will take up legislation related to “energy, utilities, telecommunications, broadband, information technology, cybersecurity, and other similar policies,” according to a resolution the House approved Wednesday. 

Krowinski said of the focus on digital infrastructure: “We make huge investments in it in the state, and I think there’s a greater need for some spotlight on that to make sure that the projects are running on time and they’re running on budget.” 

She added that energy policy was too heavy of a workload, on top of environmental issues, for the members of that committee in recent years. 

Notably, the new committee’s ranking member — the No. 3 slot — will be Rep. Laura Sibilia, I-Dover, who unsuccessfully challenged Krowinski for the speakership. Sibilia was previously vice chair of the now-disbanded environment and energy committee.

Among the House members who will take over committee chairmanships this year are Scheu; Walker; Rep. Kathleen James, D-Manchester; Rep. Marc Mihaly, D-Calais; Rep. Matt Birong, D-Vergennes; and Rep. Alyssa Black, D-Essex Town.

The Elmore-Morristown Unified Union School District has reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice following allegations it failed to address racial harassment among students, according to a press release Wednesday from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Vermont.

The settlement comes after a federal investigation found the district did not adequately respond to incidents of racial harassment from fellow students, which contributed to a hostile educational environment. The Justice Department said the harassment largely occurred at Peoples Academy in Morristown. 

An investigation, which examined three year’s worth of complaints, revealed the district failed to address severe and widespread harassment of Black and biracial students. The report described a hostile environment where students were subjected to frequent racial slurs, Confederate flags, and Nazi symbols and salutes.

“Racial harassment makes students feel unsafe, deprives them of a supportive educational environment and violates the Constitution’s most basic promise of equal protection,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in the press release.

Under the agreement, the district is required to implement measures to better prevent and address harassment in the future, including revising policies and procedures to make clear they cover conduct that contributes to “a hostile environment,” not just actions aimed at individual students. The district must also investigate harassment reports quickly and fairly and take action to address harm, prevent future harassment and protect students who come forward from retaliation.

In consideration of this agreement, the justice department agreed to close its investigation without further enforcement action.

The Justice Department said the school district cooperated with the investigation and is actively implementing improvements.

“We have been transparent about the harmful and dehumanizing language that has been used in our schools, especially when students returned from the pandemic,” said Ryan Heraty, superintendent of the Elmore School in a letter Tuesday to the Elmore-Morristown community . “Through this intentional work, we have seen dramatic declines in student misbehavior.” 

This commentary is by Peter Langella of Moretown, a public high school and college educator.

Imagine that education in Vermont is a game of chess. 

Over the years, many pieces have been taken away from the board. Student enrollment has declined, but there has also been a steady stream of cuts and consolidations, spiking during Act 46 mergers and now again over the past two years.

Conversely, many other pieces have been added that don’t mesh with the original rules of the game. This is because the United States (and Vermont, under Gov. Scott and his vetoes) has rejected many social foundations and safety nets; and schools, admirably, have often tried to fill the gap by employing special educators, social workers, psychologists, intensive paraeducators, behavior interventionists and a plethora of other important and helpful humans.

So when legislators and bureaucrats talk about “right-sizing,” they are mostly trying to play a conventional game of educational chess based on Carnegie Units, the metric developed in 1906 that awards academic credit based on the number of “seat time” hours in a given course, especially at the high school level. This is the “Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic” model many of today’s decision-makers experienced as students. 

Simply put, it’s stagnant, outdated and inequitable.

So, Vermont has a choice. We can react to this education funding crisis by further cutting and consolidating, trying to put all the pieces back the way they were and play chess by the original rules, or we can flip the board over and play a new game — completely transforming our model of public education. 

Public schools in Vermont must become more personalized and community-based, partnering with local organizations for experiential and service-driven learning. Schools must think about what it means to be a compassionate human in our modern world and appropriately backward-design curricula to grow young people to meet that challenge. Schools must be interdisciplinary, creating a fusion of conventional academics with the arts, outdoor education, and sustainability. Schools must center inclusion and intersectionality, striving to represent, honor, and affirm all learners in a way that shares power. And, schools must value the whole student, concentrating on physical, social and emotional well-being above all other metrics.

The possibilities abound. We have so many creative and empathetic people here. We also have so many amazing students, who are truly our resident experts on what school is and what it can be. 

We could harness that, but we aren’t, at least not at a statewide level. For example, the Commission on the Future of Public Education, by statute, was supposed to “represent the State’s geographic, gender, racial, and ethnic diversity,” and it knows it failed on multiple levels of its most basic charge. There also aren’t any current educators or school employees who are part of the group, and there are no students, who repeatedly lack power, access and representation in official spaces where their future is being decided, especially when they come from marginalized backgrounds.

On a more micro level, this isn’t happening in most districts or schools, either. Like many around the state, the district I work in had its budget defeated last year. The school board moved quickly to adopt a new number, and district and building administrators were tasked with identifying cuts.

Instead of having a more transformational conversation, they cut librarians, drama teachers, music teachers, business teachers, French teachers, personalized learning coordinators, restorative practices coordinators, mentoring coordinators, instructional coaches, intensive paraeducators and JV sports programs.

It was and is horrendous. 

Imagine something better. Imagine flipping that chessboard over and looking at an open canvas. Before talking about tax rates, yield bills and common levels of appraisal; imagine centering teaching and learning. Imagine a visioning process where we, all of us, collectively redefine what school can be.

I’m not naive enough to think it would fit my exact hopes, and I’m not idealistic enough to think it wouldn’t include some cuts and consolidations. But at least it would be intentional.

The current narrative around this crisis is reactionary. The state is trying to force its way back to the chessboard, and it’s being falsely portrayed as the harder choice.

The harder choice, in actuality, is to transform. Create a bold vision and initiate a brand new game of school — creative, holistic, inclusive — that could serve as an example for the entire country.