During the summer of 2020, PCBs, a class of toxic chemicals, were detected at elevated levels throughout Burlington High School, and the state condemned the campus. After a few months of planning, district officials came up with a solution that made international news.
In just ten weeks, they converted a vacant department store in the Queen City’s downtown into a makeshift high school.
Now, four years later, the students who first stepped onto the escalator in the former Macy’s building as freshmen are graduating. And while attending class in a defunct department store may sound pretty dystopian, for BHS’s class of 2024, that was just high school.
“Obviously it’ll be different than other people’s high school experiences,” said BHS senior Elliot Laramee. “But like, for me, I don’t really feel, like, bad that I ended up here. Because I just never experienced anything different than this.”
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It’s not that students at BHS aren’t keenly aware of how strange their high school experience has been. It would be hard to miss all the reminders of their temporary school’s former life. There’s a giant escalator in the middle of the building — which students said is often broken — and sports trophies are on view in former jewelry display cases. Some of the old signage is still up from when things like handbags and jeans were on sale, and students eat at the so-called “Michael Kors Cafe.”
Lola Duffort
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Vermont Public
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The cafeteria in the downtown Burlington High School campus is located in the former Michael Kors section of a Macy’s department store.
But over time, they’ve gotten used to it. Brooks DeShaw said at first it was strange to go to school in a place where she once went Christmas shopping. Classrooms didn’t have doors when students first arrived, and the walls didn’t go all the way to the ceiling.
“But I feel like I’ve adapted to it,” she said.
If Burlington’s seniors have adapted to their makeshift home — which students will be attending for at least two more years — it’s also partly because the building has adapted to them. Classrooms do now have doors, and many of the partitions that section off classes go all the way to the ceiling.
Staff and students alike also often talk about something that might, on first blush, appear pretty trivial — the decorations on the walls. Rowen Clarke still remembers when staff first put up these big vinyl decorations that say “Burlington,” in all capital letters, at the top of the escalator.
“I was pretty hype when they put those up. I thought they were, like, really cool,” he said. “Because they were the first, like, ‘Burlington’ thing we had. So yeah, I thought that was pretty cool. And added a lot of schoolness to the school.”
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In the intervening years, student artwork, posters and athletic banners have accumulated on the walls.
“It’s unfortunate, and we can, like, laugh about the Michael Kors cafe, but you know, the lunch ladies are there every day with a smile, serving food. There is that. The people make the place.”
Medea Daly
Medea Daly recently took pictures for a project in different places throughout the school, in the exact same spots as she had when the downtown campus first opened. She said she was struck by how lifeless the building seemed then. And in general, Daly said she’s thankful for all the work staff and faculty have put into making the building feel like a home.
“It’s unfortunate, and we can, like, laugh about the Michael Kors cafe, but you know, the lunch ladies are there every day with a smile, serving food. There is that,” she said. “The people make the place.”
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Students have also leaned into the absurdity of their situation. In the fall of 2021, BHS seniors asked Lauren McBride, the principal at the time, if they could hold their own Macy’s Day Parade on the Friday before Thanksgiving break. She agreed. And every year since, seniors have kept up the tradition, complete with balloons, costumes and themed floats built from rolling janitorial carts.
“It’s honestly a blur because I’m wearing earplugs because the drums are so loud, and I don’t know anything that’s going on behind me,” said senior Vivian Halladay, who has been in the drumline every year. “It’s one of my favorite things we have at the school. It’s so much fun.”
Students were matter-of-fact about the very real drawbacks of going to school in a building that was never meant as a space for learning. There basically are hardly any windows, for example, and the fluorescent lighting can make it hard to concentrate — particularly if you’re recovering from multiple concussions.
“Trying to go back to learning in a school where there’s really, really harsh lighting, and just getting crippling headaches is not a good thing,” Halladay said.
But on the whole, students said that as much as they liked to joke about how bizarre their high school years had been, it had also helped bind them together.
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“It’s not been, you know, great or perfect, but it’s been — it’s been very good,” Halladay said.
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A person holds a giant penny at a mock funeral for the coin, which was discontinued in 2025, in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson
What good is a penny at this point? Penny candy is a thing of the past, and a modern-day penny-pincher wouldn’t get very far if this were their get-rich strategy.
(This newsletter, though, costs you less than a penny. Chip in if you can.)
U.S. mints no longer make pennies, a decision that saves taxpayers an estimated $56 million annually. When the U.S. Treasury Department announced the country would stop minting them, it marked the end of an era — sorta.
Though those pesky copper-colored coins remain in circulation, some businesses, both in Vermont and nationwide, have begun experiencing penny shortages.
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Enter H.837. The bill outlines a plan that could allow retailers to phase out the penny by rounding up or down cash transactions to the nearest nickel.
Other states, including Arizona and Indiana, have passed rounding legislation, and a handful of others are considering it. As written, Vermont’s bill wouldn’t require rounding, a similar approach favored in other jurisdictions.
Some Vermont businesses have already adopted rounding. But lobbyists for Vermont businesses say some of their members fear the practice — without explicit state blessing — could open a business up to a lawsuit over alleged unfair and deceptive practices.
Worried or not, rounding will likely become more necessary as pennies get harder to find, Maggie Lenz, a lobbyist for the Vermont Retail and Grocers Association, told the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee Tuesday. She encouraged the state to create a rounding framework, but discouraged lawmakers from making such a program mandatory.
Rep. Tony Micklus, R-Milton, agreed that rounding should be optional, but said the state should mandate a specific rounding framework for the businesses that choose to round.
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H.837’s approach, which would round down totals ending in 1,2,6 and 7 cents, and round up totals ending in 3, 4, 8 and 9 cents, would seem to be the fairest to consumers and businesses, those who testified agreed.
But the change is likely not net neutral. Zachary Tomanelli, a consumer protection advocate for the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, cited a Federal Reserve study that indicated rounding could cost consumers $6 million annually nationwide. That’s because businesses price goods in ways that tend to lead to rounding up.
He called the cost modest and said he generally supported the bill.
Despite H.837 not making it past the crossover deadlines, there’s still hope that pennies might make it into Vermont’s currency cemetery. Rep. Michael Marcotte, R-Coventry, the commerce committee’s chair, said his committee could stick the rounding legislation in the Senate’s economic development bill.
That said, you might not want to ditch your pennies quite yet.
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In the know
Here are some numbers for you: Between 2012 and 2022, Vermont’s primary care workforce declined by 13%. In that same time period, the specialist workforce grew by 23%. That’s according to testimony Jessa Barnard, with the Vermont Medical Society, gave to lawmakers in the House Health Care Committee Tuesday. She said the numbers are reflective of a trend in medicine nationwide, attributed to the fact that primary care docs often make less but pay the same high cost for medical school as their peers in more specialized roles.
In Vermont, Barnard said that this widening gap is leading to a particularly acute shortage. According to a report her organization put out in 2022, the state needs 115 primary care providers to meet the national benchmark for our population size. That figure includes OBGYNs, pediatricians and family medicine docs. By 2030, as our state’s population grows even older, the Vermont Medical Society expects the state to need 370 more primary care physicians to meet the national benchmark.
— Olivia Gieger
Sen. Alison Clarkson, D-Windsor, spoke with members of the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee Tuesday afternoon about S.327, an economic development bill that supports a number of public resources for business owners across the state.
The bill has had a tough go of it so far.
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Clarkson handed out copies of what she referred to as “the actual bill,” which meant the package voted out by her own Senate Economic Development Committee before being “pretty much fully gutted” on its way through the Senate Appropriations Committee.
In a tight budget year, she said, this bill’s focus was on “supporting what works really well” for Vermont businesses. For Clarkson, that means continuing to invest in the initiatives like the Vermont Economic Growth Incentive program, a set of grants to help businesses expand in the state, which is scheduled to end in January. The Senate, she pointed out, has voted to extend the program for several years in a row, most recently through S.327.
“I am charging the House with doing the same thing,” she said.
Clarkson is also in favor of deepening the state’s relationships with outside investors by funding state delegates abroad. Vermont, she argued, should have more well-placed representation in areas like Québec — which this bill would provide for — and in the future Taiwan, which recently pledged to invest heavily in U.S. tech industries.
“We need somebody whose hand is up saying ‘yes, over here!’” Clarkson said.
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House commerce members met informally with a delegation from Taipei later Tuesday.
— Theo Wells-Spackman
On the move
The Senate advanced a bill Tuesday that would allow parents in Essex County to pay tuition to send pre-K students to New Hampshire schools.
In Vermont’s most rural county, families struggle to access pre-K programs, at least on this side of the border.
But S.214, legislation originally proposed by Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D-Chittenden Southeast, would allow for a handful of families near the New Hampshire border in Essex County to tuition their pre-K-aged children to New Hampshire schools, Sen. Steve Heffernan, R-Addison, said on the Senate floor.
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Kindergarten through grade 12 are already able to tuition to New Hampshire schools.
The Senate will need to vote on the bill once more before sending it to the House.
Vermont and the federal government faced off Monday over the state’s first-in-the nation law aimed at forcing polluters to pay for the effects of climate change with the Trump administration warning it would spur “the type of chaos that the Constitution is designed to prevent.”
The hearing before Judge Mary Kay Lanthier of the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont comes as the administration has unleashed a broad assault on state-based climate efforts, including suing to invalidate the Vermont law establishing a “climate superfund” to recoup money from the oil and gas industry.
The Biden appointee did not tip her hand, pressing attorneys for the state and the federal government over whether the state is within its rights or stepping on federal authority. The administration is challenging a similar law in New York, and a ruling against Vermont would likely jeopardize that law and chill efforts in other states to adopt climate superfunds.
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Vermont argued the law — “a modest action” — was passed by state lawmakers in 2024 to help raise money to deal with climate change.
RUTLAND, Vt. (WCAX) – Attorneys defended Vermont’s landmark climate superfund law on Monday, as it faces a lawsuit filed by the Trump administration.
Vermont lawmakers passed the Climate Superfund Act in 2024 after devastating flooding in 2023 and other extreme weather events.
The law requires certain large fossil fuel companies to help cover the costs of climate-related damage linked to their emissions between 1995 and 2024.
It is being challenged by the federal government, along with the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and attorneys general from 24 Republican-led states.
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They argue Vermont is overstepping and that climate policy should be handled at the federal level.
Attorneys for Vermont and environmental groups asked a federal judge in Rutland to dismiss those challenges, arguing the state has the right to hold companies accountable.
“It was an intense and technical day of legal arguments over whether the Climate Superfund Act passes muster under federal law, and whether it is appropriate under our Constitution and other doctrines, and is going to survive this series of lawsuits that have been filed against it,” said Christophe Courchesne of the Vermont Law and Graduate School.
Vermont was the first state to pass a law like this. New York followed, and more than 10 other states are considering similar measures.
This case could help decide whether those laws move forward.
