Today on Vermont this week, expecting families in Lamoille County will have to travel farther to give birth.

Local, safe, patient centered care for birthing should not be something that rural families have to fight for.

It should just be a given.

Also, will independent schools make the grade?

As Vermont presses forward with education reform and the fight over Amazon in Essex.

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.

And thank you for joining us for Vermont this week.

It's Friday, June 27th.

I'm Cat Viglienzoni in for Mitch Wertlieb.

I'm joined by Vermont Public Lola Duffort, Aaron Calvin from the Stowe Reporter News and citizen and Lexi Krupp also from Vermont Public.

Thank you all for being here.

We start with an issue affecting growing families in the Lamoille County area.

This week, Copley Hospital announced that November 1st will be the closing date for its birthing center, which serves 150 to 200 families a year.

And Aaron, what kind of ripple effect is this news having on the people in the community there?

Well, ever since the, possible closure of the birthing center was announced by, staff at Copley and concerned members of the community in December, people have put together this movement called Save the Copley Birthing Center.

And those activists came together.

They, held rallies.

They sent letters to the board of trustees of the hospital.

They posted on social media.

They came together to really try to figure out if they could work with the hospital and the board of trustees to save a birthing center that, you know, is, frankly, really well, beloved, because it has a unique midwifery centric system of care.

Anybody you talk to, basically, who has given birth at the birthing center has nothing but great things to say about it.

And now they're reeling.

I talked to one birth coach and doula who told me, that this will almost assuredly result in, labor emergencies, longer distances for people to travel to get their care, that the hospital has said they will continue to, to provide pre and post natal care.

But you know, you're missing a big hole there with, you know, with the actual births.

How far is it to the next like birthing area?

I mean, the interesting thing about the birthing center is people sought out as services from as far away in Montpellier.

It has, you know, people who live in places like crafts, barre and Greensboro and, you know, the southern, Northeast Kingdom, they all went to Catholic.

So it kind of depends on where you are, but it could be anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour or more.

And Lexie, your article said that Copley said it was losing more than $15,000 per birth.

Why would why is that basically all labor and delivery units, especially in rural areas, lose money.

And that's just because they're not reimbursed.

Well, so insurance companies just don't pay that much, especially for like a vaginal birth, like, is is pretty common at Copley.

They do mostly low risk pregnancies.

Yeah.

So it's none of these hospitals are labor and delivery just is not a moneymaker.

And that's why a lot of, there's a concern that that this will not be the only hospital that goes down this road.

Yeah.

You know, Copley, arguably is is they made money last year.

They've also been, profitable this year as well.

And there are some hospitals where that is not the case.

You know, Gifford lost around $10 million last year.

North Country, which also has a small, birthing center, you know, is is in a pretty rough, rough shape.

So, so there's, there is this concern that this is the first of, of, you know, maybe other closures that we're going to see.

And it was cheaper, though, to give birth at Copley than say like UVM Medical Center.

Yeah.

I mean, as Erin said, you know, Copley like Gifford has this midwifery model of care.

Most of the, attendance at births are midwives.

And so that's cheaper than having, an OB, right?

An, a medical doctor.

And and generally they there's more low intervention births, at, at birthing centers.

So, yeah, it's a cheaper place to get care.

When you look at the, prices for outpatient and inpatient, care at different hospitals, Copley ranks pretty low.

They did have a, increase this year in, in, how much?

You know, their prices, but, yeah, they're they are a pretty cheap hospital.

Certainly.

And the board has said I think they said that they charge $7,000 for a vaginal birth at Copley, and it, VMC that's around $17,000.

So, yeah, it's generally a cheaper place to give birth.

One, I think what's been remarkable about this whole process from December, when the possible closure was announced to last week when the closure was confirmed and the board of trustees voted for it, was the really the lack of transparency, from the hospital on the board around this whole process.

You had a community that came together, you know, asking them to work with them, or at least, you know, involve them in the process, hold a public forum, do something to make it feel like this decision wasn't just being made without their consent or their input.

And at every turn, the hospital refused to, to grant that, you know, the board of trustees voted for it.

And we know that it wasn't a unanimous vote, but we don't know how each trustee voted.

And, you know, one activist or one mother that, you know, told me that the whole process has just left her feeling totally deflated and defeated.

But like you said, this will not be the first birthing center in the state.

Likely, considered for closure.

So, right now, they're they're turning their sights elsewhere to see what they can do to help other birthing centers around the state and other hospitals.

Yeah.

To what extent do you guys think that these sorts of conversations in other hospitals can be accelerated by what's happening at the federal level, right, where we're seeing a lot of pressure from congressional Republicans to cut Medicaid in Trump's big, beautiful bill.

I'm just we have, hospital administrators kind of talked about trying to brace for that.

Well, company is actually in the middle of, attempting to consider a merger with our local federally Qualified Health Center and Memorial Health Partners, who are in major financial distress.

And, you know, if these Medicaid cups cuts come to pass, that's just going to become even more dire.

Yeah.

I mean, there's so much in flux right now with that.

There was I mean, just this week, you know, changes and you know, what might be in there, what might not.

So I think it's really, you know, obviously hard to plan for, but but all of this really was taking place before, you know, the, the tax bill, came into being.

So, I think yes, certainly it changes at the federal level, expedites some of these concerns.

But but for the last several months, we've, you know, heard about the fact that Vermont needs to consolidate its, its health care system and to have fewer, fewer services.

And I think when hospitals make that decision, you're going to see, cuts like this that, you know, impact pretty basic.

Basic care that that is just not very profitable.

Well, it's kind of what the Secretary of Human Services, Jenny Samuelson, said in her letter supporting Copley's decision that essentially rural Vermonters have become to us, in a certain sense spoiled by the, you know, access they have to health care.

And it's time to to get more realistic about what can be afforded.

I would just add one thing to that, the, just to like, paint the stakes here, the the emergency department providers, 11 of them at the hospital said, you know, we're not trained in deliveries.

And, and, they worry about adverse outcomes and mortality should it fall on, on them to care for these patients.

So it's these are, like, real, harms that, you know, like, there is a lot of concern that, yeah, people are still going to be born at Copley, whether there's a birthing center there or not.

And I saw one quote in your article, Lexie, where the, Copley midwife said that one more county might become a birth desert, which kind of stood out to me that, I mean, there's no other place to there's no other place to have a for for childbirth in Lamoille County.

It it is, you know, and and I think, there's also concern that people are going to be a lot less comfortable, both providers and patients with doing home births because there's no safe place to transfer.

Right.

And that's, that's not at least 45 minutes away.

So, yeah, you are really taking this service out of this community.

And that's been seen, you know, in New Hampshire, there's been a lot of closures of freestanding birthing centers and, labor and delivery units across the country.

We've seen a lot of closures, and it's really bad for, maternal health.

I want to sorry.

Go ahead.

To what extent can it also, like, raise prices?

Right.

Because if you can't give birth at Copley, where it cost $7,000 and you have to give birth at UVM, where it costs $17,000, right?

That costs your insurance more, which then raises rates for everyone.

I think the idea or the state's idea, is that now Copley Hospital is going to be in a better financial position, and that means that they could have potentially lower prices, elsewhere.

So I, I think that's sort of like the indirect way that this will save the system money because because the hospital has been losing money on this.

Right?

So now now the hospital can afford to perhaps have cheaper prices, but I, I don't know, do you have anything else to, to weigh in any.

I mean yeah, the controversial Oliver Wyman report, commissioned by the legislature last year, recommended or earmarked, the copy birthing center for either closure or growth.

So there was only two directions to go.

And this is the direction they went.

I wanted to get to the topic of education now and draw and Lola here.

Independent schools.

They might face an uncertain future as Vermont looks ahead to some massive reform of the education system.

Lola, did you get a sense of how many schools, that are independent could actually lose their public funding?

A lot.

I don't know how many.

That's a question I have into the agency of education right now.

And I'm expecting them to put together a list rather quickly, because July 1st is when a lot of these.

So next week, next week is when a lot of these independent schools would become ineligible for public funding.

And it's interesting because, you know, independent schools have been such, a flashpoint in discussions, over education reform.

And people were really concerned, in the public education advocacy space that, reform would be really good for private schools and really bad for public schools.

Mostly because of the posture the Senate took, during most of negotiations.

But the bill that actually ended up passing both chambers and that is going to be signed into law probably Tuesday, actually is pretty bad for potentially most independent schools in terms of their access to public funds.

And that's because there are two really important tests now in the law.

And one is that if you are an independent school that is physically located in, a public school district that operates for all grades and so think most urban centers.

So if you're Hartford, if you're Burlington, if you're South Burlington, if you're a Rutland City, if you're Barre, right, if you're a private school in any of those, and this is, not therapeutic.

Right.

So if you're specialized, special education, private school, that's a separate conversation.

But if you are just a private school, and you are in these kinds of location, religious schools count in that as well.

Yes.

So if you're a religious school that is located in most likely an urban center, right where you have school districts operating, the full scale of K-12, you are no longer going to be eligible for public funds.

And that's a lot of schools.

And out of state private schools, which have long been a really huge bone of contention.

Right.

I mean, you had Vermonters that were sending their kids to out of state prep schools, in New Hampshire, but also as far away as Sweden and getting to use vouchers, that's no longer allowed.

And so and then you have the second part test where if you are, a private school, but fewer than 25% of your students have been, publicly funded this year, I believe, then you are no longer eligible.

Right.

And that was intended as another proxy for the question of, is this private school really kind of filling a need?

Right.

Is there no other public alternative around, with the idea being that people say, you know, private schools are stealing away, right?

Kids and and school dollars.

Right.

And so the idea, you know, if I can oversimplify the idea in this bill is that if there is a public alternative, we should not be spending public money to send kids to private school.

They can go to they can go to a public school, or they can go to a private school and pay, you know, their families can pay for that.

And so, yeah, a lot of schools are about to become ineligible for public funding.

I'm actually really surprised that I haven't seen schools completely up in arms about that.

I've, you know, started doing outreach.

Do you think it kind of slid under the radar with how fast this all came together?

I suspect that it did, especially because for, you know, most of the session, the concern was really on the other side that, private schools would get some sort of sweetheart deal.

And even, you know, when kind of the final deal was put together, a lot of opponents of the bill kind of continue to use that rhetoric that this was great for private schools and bad for public schools, even though by the time it actually crossed the finish line, there had been a pretty profound reversal in policy.

And so it's it's really interesting.

And I, I have to note the, the irony that we have a Republican governor and a secretary of education that, you know, many people were worried would herald the privatization.

I was wondering if that was one of the reasons why people didn't see this coming necessarily.

Yeah, I think so.

I mean, you know, you had Americans for prosperity at the beginning of this session saying, all hail Phil Scott.

He's going to unleash education, freedom.

And instead, the bill he's about to sign is going to, I mean, would in any other year, like public education advocates would have, you know, held a parade for how, what a big win this is in terms of if if you want to curtail public funding to private schools.

Now, I do want to note that some private schools, notably those who, operate CTE centers.

So that's London Institute and Saint Jay, there's some language in the bill that could change in future iterations, but the default language could be very generous.

And there's some anxiety, about sending districts about what that language means for them.

And some provisions were stripped out of the bill that would have made it really hard to go to choice if, schools closed, if districts closed schools right.

In the next coming years.

And basically just reverted to current law.

But in terms of like what is changing, right?

What this bill does in terms of changing president law, it's really hard to look at it, not see this as, as a pretty significant win, actually, on the public education side, the Commission on the Future of Public Education recently had some kind of drama of its own, some resignations.

You know, can you quickly sum up what happened there?

Yeah.

I mean, so Democrats last year, which feels like ten years ago, you know, when all of the budgets were failing and everyone was all up in arms, about 14%, they created this commission on the Future of Public Education, said, we're going to give this special commission 18 months to come up with a grand plan, 18 months to come up with a grand plan, but also six months to come up with, like a short term.

Here's some cost containment plan.

The commission never came up with a short term plan.

They said, that's too hard.

We want to focus on the 18 months.

And at the same time as they did this, the November elections happened.

And I think most people remember what happened, sweeping gains for Republicans.

That really changed the conversation.

In Montpelier, we had a legislative session in which Democratic leaders were like, okay, we'll do what Phil Scott says, basically, you know, we're going to we're going to do education reform this year, which basically made completely irrelevant to the commission that they had created just, you know, six months prior.

And, the bill that's just been signed into law does continue to give the commission on future, the future of education, you know, like some duties and kind of steering reforms.

Because this is going to be a multi-year process, but it's much kind of constricted.

Wow.

I don't know why that was so hard to say.

And so, we have seen the chair of that commission since resign.

Another member, who is, there on behalf of the School Boards Association, also resigned and kind of slammed the legislature for, sidelined, sidelining the commission.

I'm sorry.

That was a little burp.

Is this, like.

It sounds like it was just they they basically said, what am I here for?

What am I here for, exactly?

And I mean, I think that's a fair question.

But remains to be seen but remains to be seen.

And, you know, the commission continues to exist, and we'll see if it, does end up playing, a, a significant role.

But I think what we've seen in the last legislative session clearly indicates that, lawmakers feel like they need to take ownership of reform and also that they need to make reform happen quickly.

Right.

And that perhaps, you know, extended, extended processes with all of the stakeholders and, you know, hand-wringing and deliberation, over long periods of time just was not going to cut it in this political environment.

Well, that's exactly what we saw in the Royal County.

We had two superintendents in our two school districts live well north in the Royal South, come out and slam this bill because they felt like it was rushed.

They felt like it didn't involve enough stakeholders, like teachers and educators, who are actually gonna have to deal with the fallout from this, Laurel County Senator Rich Westman had some very strong language about how it appears, depending on how they slice up the these new mega districts that they're planning, that, you know, taxes and property taxes on a town like Morristown, with a school that, consistently comes in under the statewide average for budget and over the statewide average for test scores is going to be punished with higher property taxes.

But then you had other, nearby representatives who said Democrat and, you know, a new Republican who got flipped in the November election, coming out and saying, you know, this is not I don't agree with everything in this bill, and I'm not going to support, you know, at to see what I'm going to support when we get to the different checkbox they have in this bill.

But they, you know, so we have to take a step forward.

They felt they were feeling the pressure to do that to business news.

Now, the fierce fight over an Amazon distribution facility in Essex continues.

Last night, the town once again delayed making a decision on the proposal for this warehouse after three hours of public comment.

Lexi, what happens now then?

Well, to the next development review board meeting.

Yeah.

So this lot of strong feelings last night from from what I gathered.

I mean, they said at one point, you know, it would be chaos to hold the discussion about this in front of the public.

I mean, it sounds like it was pretty heated.

Well, there have been meetings since March that have been incredibly well attended.

They you know, this is the development review board in Essex.

And they've moved their location to the high school to accommodate more people.

Last night it was again in the town office.

But I would say that the it has been it has been heated throughout this process.

And it's interesting that, you know, it's it's taken a long time, and continues, you know, they're continuing to, sort of kick the can down the road, going to do review the traffic study.

Yeah.

There was a point in the meeting where, the, the board voted to go into a private deliberation session and they basically said, we don't want to be interrupted.

You know, we want to be able to have a conversation without, without being interrupted.

Someone I spoke with was like, well, you know, you could just turn zoom on mute and tell everyone in the room to be quiet, but, okay, you can do this in private.

Yeah.

And you know, they haven't announced their next meeting yet.

I think they do really feel like they want to make a decision.

And recently there's been a group of, little over 20 residents nearby who have said, we want to be called interested parties, but but not just be able to make a public comment.

In our, you know, two minute, restriction.

But to be able to have the same standing as Amazon as, as these representatives, basically to be able to make their case as to why, they don't think that the town should grant approval for this application.

That it's, you know, goes outside of the, the town planning and zoning.

And again, just to step back, this is, for an Amazon distribution warehouse that would be in the town of Essex, about the size of two football fields, employ several hundred people to, distribute to, you know, first get packages, repackage stuff and then distribute it, like a 70 mile radius.

So, a big concern is around all the traffic that would bring in so big, big semi trucks coming in, with all the stuff.

And then, the sort of fleet of, of smaller vans, sort of fanning out from, from the facility, so that, you know, and this is pretty it's not close to 89.

It's an a pretty, you know, rural area.

There's the question of, do we need a traffic light?

You know what what what do we need?

They did call for some traffic studies.

Yes.

There has been a traffic study.

And it's it's unclear whether they want to do a new one or review that one.

And, Yeah, you know what?

What would the impact of, of this specific proposal be on the traffic there?

Yeah, we'll have to see that.

I did want to get to one other kind of big business.

Note from the Wheat Gardener Supply, well known local company filing for bankruptcy.

It has six locations across three states Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts.

Large online presence as well.

Company did struggle post pandemic and said business will continue for you as usual right now for customers.

They're working to finalize a sale.

Gardens Alive Incorporated, which is a catalog business based in Indiana, expected to buy it.

They've submitted a $9 million bid, so I'll see where that one goes as well.

Did want to get to a couple notes here, that were, you know, of a lighter note as we end the discussion.

New roadside historic marker honors the same sex couple from the 1800s in Vermont, Jody Bryant and Sylvia Drake.

They lived and worked together in Weybridge, and they were accepted in rural Vermont as a married couple.

The dedication was last weekend, and this is one of 15 new historical markers the state's adding this year.

Also a trailblazer in the fight for marriage rights has died.

Stan Baker passing away suddenly Monday night.

He, his partner Peter and two other couples sued for marriage rights in 1997 after being denied marriage licenses.

In that case, known as Baker, Vermont made its way to the Vermont Supreme Court.

Beth Robinson, now a federal appeals court judge, represented them by lending his name to the case and becoming the face of movement in that way.

It was an act of courage, and it was an act of generosity.

got to benefit from from their courage and from stand, leadership in this movement.

We we've lost a giant.

They won in 1999 that paved the way for civil unions, which celebrate their 25th anniversary in Vermont on July 1st.

So that's next week.

I also built, part of a legal case for full marriage rights nationwide.

It was 79, and that does it for Vermont this week, thanks to our panel, Vermont Public Lola Duffort, Aaron Calvin from the Stowe Reporter, News and Citizen, and Lexi Krupp, also from Vermont Public.

And thank you all for watching.

And join us next week for a conversation with Vermont Attorney General, Charity Clark.

Take care.

And.