Sweeping education reform efforts underway in Montpelier have school officials bracing for impact.

Plus, Ice plans to increase surveillance work in Vermont and big changes this year to the state's Medicare Advantage market.

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 Wertlieb.

Thanks so much for joining us.

I'm Mitch Wertlieb.

It's Friday, October 10th and with us on the panel today we have Lola Duffort from Vermont Public.

Alison Novak from Seven Days and Shaun Robinson from VTDigger.

Thank you all so much for being here today at the top of the show.

Today we're going to take kind of a deep dive into education.

And, everybody is sort of waiting to see, after all the big changes to education in Vermont with act 73, what's going to happen?

Alison Novak I want to start with you, because there's been some reporting, this week that you've done about maybe some pressure on some rural school districts, about closing some small schools.

This has to do with a, Republican state senator named Scott back, who is sort of advising, officials in Cabot and Danville, I believe, to say, hey, you know, you ought to think about maybe taking a vote on closing your high school.

Why was he suggesting that to them?

So, yeah, Senator Scott Back, who represents Caledonia County and who is also a teacher, a longtime teacher at Saint Johnsbury Academy.

He has been very kind of key in the kind of education reform discussions over the last year or two.

He's also a membe of the redistricting committee that is meeting right now to kind of discuss different maps for school district lines.

So he approach to school board, school board chairs, one in Danville and one in Cabot.

And he basically said to them, hey, you know, when the legislature reconvenes next year, there is a potential that school districts that have to close a school will be required to choose three public schools to send their children to their students to if they close.

So if you want to get ahead of that, you might want to consider voting to close your small high schools.

Now, Danville and Cabot both have very tiny high schools, under 80 kids under.

I think Cabot has about 40 kids.

And so this is these are discussions that have been going on for a long time around school closures.

And, you know, there's a lot of kind of angst about that already in the community.

And so I think that both school board chairs told me that they felt like kind of the conjecture by Scott back that something might be coming down the pike they felt like they needed to take seriously, since he's kind of a big player in the legislature, but none of them were able to confirm with anyone else that this change might be coming.

And so it kind of left them trying to figure out what to do.

Loyola, you've been reporting on this as well.

What's the reaction been in these communities?

Are they rushing now to to have these votes?

So Cabot has decided to kind of shelve this for now to take a wait and see approach.

But in Danville, there is a petition that has been brought forward by a local parent and signed by, you know, enough, local citizens to force a vote on the question of whether or not to close.

Danville's High School, as soon as the end of the school year.

And, you know, the other kind of element to this, right, the reason why it got back was saying you should vote to close now, is in order to potentially preserve the option o if you close, going to choice.

Right.

We have school choice towns in Vermont where families are given a vouchers to go, where they want.

Right.

So if you're Danville.

Right.

A lot of people want to go to Saint Johnsbury because it's, you know, the big fancy school on the hill.

But also, it's the closest school, right?

Proximity.

Sure.

Proximity.

And so if Danville closes, and they are forced to go to, another public school that's actually further away than the closest sort of private alternative.

And so, you know, the message was, if you want to preserve this option, then you should vote to close now.

Given that, Scott Beck is a teacher at Saint Johnsbury, you know, that has, prompted some outcry, right.

From, the supporters of these kind of local public schools who say that this is basically just an attempt to kind of create pressure, which will then just send more kids to Saint Johnsbury.

Right?

Now, Scott Beck has said, look, I gave this advice in good faith, such a measure that would get rid of choice in the future.

Was included in, the bill that has become law and was only removed at the very last minute.

And that's true in part because of Scott back and in part because of Scott Beck.

Right.

And so, I think he's both likely correct when he says this language will come up again.

I think he if it did, he would also likely be instrumental in removing it.

Right.

But he can also point to it as a likely or a potential threat.

In this conversation with local school board members, and so, you know, thi has raised a really emotional, and complicated debate in these two school districts for two reasons.

One, there's this kind of long standing public private feud, and then there's also the fact that closing a school is really emotional and difficult by itself.

And these are small schools we're talking about here, right?

Allison?

I mean, I mean, Danville is Danville is about 80 students in the high school.

It's part of a larger K-12 school.

But within the high school itself, it's yeah, it's about 80 students.

And Cabarrus a lot smaller than that, I think.

Under 50.

Yeah.

I mean, this is something that that Governor Phil Scott has been talking about for years, this need to you know, he thinks smaller schools should close, but it's it seems like the way that this has happened is what's rankling some people and I noted in your story about that that vote in Danvill with the petition went around, I guess December 6th, is a scheduled vote for that, right on whether to close the school.

But apparently some of the people that signed on to the petition to have that vote then wanted their names taken off that petition.

Is that right?

Yeah.

That's right.

So, you know, the school board announced on Tuesday we've received this petition.

It is, you know, there are enough signatures that we have to warn this vote.

So we're going to do that.

And then, I got an email from someone saying, hey, you should call the town clerk.

And I called them on Thursday, and, the town clerk was, you know, said that, there are still enough signatures on there that it is for now.

Still good to go.

But, over a dozen people had, written in to ask that their names be removed.

And they were saying, you know, they'd been misinformed or, you know.

Yeah.

Given false information.

And, you know, that clearly kind of stems from this backlash that, is, you know, falling on Scott back where you have, other people in the legislature or other education officials saying, you know, what he's saying is conjecture.

And, you know, schools should not be acting on that because we don't know what's going to happen because we don't know what's going to happen.

And so I think it's also worth noting that the person who actually started that petition in Danville is a parent in Danville who also happens to be a Saint Johnsbury Academy teacher, teaches social studies with Scott back.

And so I think there's also a little skepticism there.

This is someone who has a child in the Danville School, but who is apparently in eighth grade, who would then be going to Saint Johnsbury Academy if they voted to close the school.

So there's there's a little bit of feeling that there's some shady business going on, I think, within the community.

How did the optics of it doesn't look that's great.

Yeah.

Is that fair to say?

I would say, yeah.

I think it's the optics.

You know, I spoke to that local parent and he was like, yeah, I work at Sanjay.

I didn't do this for Saint Johnsbury Academy.

I would let you know he was open.

He was like, yes, I would like my child or I can't remember if he said child children, but I do want them to go to Saint Johnsbury Academy.

That is our plan, and I want that opportunity for the rest of, you know, Danville, if they want that, you know, he was he was like, I didn't do this for Saint Johnsbury.

But my experience as a teacher there has shown me all of the things that they have to offer.

You know, it's and again, it's ten times the size of Danville, right?

I guess to be fair to Scott back in, in so he says this is advice, right.

And what he's trying to say is I want parents to be able to have the choice to send their kids to a private school if it comes to that.

Is that what he's saying?

Yeah.

He's that's essentially what he is saying.

Yeah.

And, you know, I think part of the whole education reform conversation has been the part of the reason we're talking about consolidation of school districts is because, you know, there is the thought that especially at the high school level, smaller high schools do not offer as much opportunity for students as larger high schools in in things like extracurriculars, AP classes, sports, you know, all sorts of things.

And so I think there is some, you know, kind of reflection that communities are going to have to be doing one way or another about whether having such a small high school actually does make sense.

So I don't think that I think there is that still remains an issue.

It's going to be really interesting to see what happens in Danville, at least on December 6th.

But again, you were saying cabinet.

They've decided not to do anything at this point, right?

Yes.

All right.

Thank you so much for that update.

I want to move on to another school story now.

Lola De, for you have been reporting on this.

This is kind of this is really interesting individualized education programs.

This has to do with school tuition, maybe kind of give us some background on what IEPs are and what, the state of Vermont is sort of lacking when it comes to that.

Yeah.

So this story was actually going back to the, you know, topic of independent schools and this longstanding public private debate.

You know, I was curious about this narrative that's out there that, the private schools, including Saint Johnsbury, who participate in the state's voucher program.

Right.

Because we have choice communities that they get to pic and choose the kids that they, that they accept.

Right.

And that's particularly relevant in, the Danville context, right?

Where, you know, there was a teacher that came up, during the school board meeting, Danville teacher who was like, look, if we close the school and we go to vouchers like Saint J doesn't have to take your kids legally, right?

And so I was curious about this question of whether or not, these schools are picking and choosing their kids.

And so I requested enrollment figures originally on low income kids and kids on special education plans, which include individualized education programs.

I wasn't able to use the, low income kid dat because what the state gave me was not usable, which is an entirely separate problem.

And story about that one of the future.

Yeah, sure.

But, but so I looked at the special education data and it showed that, you know, in general, yes, public schools are taking more kids on special education plans, right?

17% was the average, when it comes to the historic academies, which are sort of these big, private high schools that usually are kind of considered to be the de facto public schools in their region, even though they're private.

So that includes Saint Jay, Linden Institute, Burton, Burton, Thetford, they're numbers looked similar to public schools.

Okay.

But we're on average a little bit lower.

And the reason that average was lower was because of Saint Johnsbury.

Right.

So three of those schools actually had numbers that looked very similar to the public average.

But Saint Jay's was about half right.

Now we're looking at a graphic right now showing Saint Jay six about 6% little over that.

Whereas that's not I'm sorry, close to 9%.

Yeah.

Where is that for an academy.

To about 21%.

Exactly.

And so, you know, this data is just a snapshot.

It does not prove anything, but it certainly suggests that a some private schools are indeed acting sort of as good public citizens.

Right.

And said for the academy very notably has open enrollment policies in place.

Right.

Binding open enrollment policies that say if you come from Thetford and you're publicly tuition, we will take you.

But, you know, Saint Johnsbury Academy does not.

And their numbers for that year certainly suggested some exclusivity.

Now, I want to emphasize Saint Johnsbury said we take all kids, right?

When I asked them about their admission procedures, they insisted they take all kids unless they're violent or chronically absent.

But, you know, when I pointed out to them that their own website says, hey, we would like your full school record before we consider you for admission.

They then said, well, maybe that's actually inaccurate.

And then, scrubbed that from their website.

And so if they wanted that message to be going out there to their local community, that they are indeed open to all, they were not making that evident.

You know, on their own admissions page.

Just to be clear here, we're talking about kids, maybe with some special needs, maybe kids who have been diagnosed with autism, things of that nature.

Yeah.

Individual education, programs or IEPs are every student who qualifies for special education is required by law to have an IEP.

And there could be a variety of different, you know, disabilities categories that they fit into, whether it be autism or, you know, other academic, disabilities and things like that.

Does it cost more, for schools to, to meet the needs of those kids?

It does.

But actually, in the private school context, if your kid is publicly tuition.

Right.

The public school a like reimburses normal tuition, right?

The voucher but also will pay for the special education services.

Okay.

So it is, not necessarily, like a financial hardship on the private school fact in some cases it can be lucrative, as you clarified.

I mean, even going back to the Danville context, if they went to school choice and a lot of students were choosing Saint Johnsbury Academy, that could put a drain o that school district's budget.

I mean, we still the whole tuition, the whole, foundation formula, the funding system is going to be changed.

But I think there is also concern that tuition sometimes then creates less money in a school district for elementary aged kids because a lot of money is going to those, those independent schools.

Yeah.

It's really interesting.

Is this related to a law in 2022 that was passed that Vermont has to follow?

And is that going to change?

I'm not sure.

What are you referring to?

Do you.

Yeah, I you might be referring to the fact that in 2022, there was so actually, for a really long time, private schools in Vermont who participated in our voucher system, said we we do not want any sort of obligations that we should take special education students.

So that was that was it?

Yeah.

And in 2022, there was this kind of grand bargain where they said fine, will agree to take them.

You know, we will not deny a child because they're on a special education plan.

But the kind of compromise there was that they could still maintain their own enrollment criteria.

Right.

And so the big open question is whether or not, if you can maintain your own enrollment criteria, that is really going to mean, you know, an equity of access for kids who might say, have a learning disability, right?

Such interesting, comple issues dealing with education.

And of course, as you said, there are still the redistricting talks going on.

We're going to see what happens with act 73 once the legislature sure gets back.

But thank you both for updating us on that.

For now.

I want to move on to a story about, Ice, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, planning to increase surveillance.

Sean Robinson, in the state of Vermont.

But let's pull back the curtain first and give a little background here.

There's a facility in Williston where a lot of data mining happens.

I mean, explain to us what they do ther and what Ice is planning to do to increase their surveillance work.

Sure.

So I think it is helpful to pull back and explain kind of the broader picture a little bit, because I think a lot of folks have no idea that some of this work is going on right in our backyards here in the state.

In Williston specifically, Ice has two centers, two offices in Williston, right near kind of the bi commercial heart of Williston, where all the shops are.

Folks are probably really familiar with that.

And these are actually centers that do national level intelligence work for Ice.

So one of them, I'll start with one, then the other.

So the first one is called the ICE's, law enforcement support Center.

And that houses kind of a whole handful of things.

It's ICE's primary point of contact with law enforcement across the country.

And they also house a tip line there.

So if folks call, ic and they have a tip, you know, that they want them to investigate often the phone picks up in Williston.

They're so that's one of the facilities.

The other one, this is the one that was in the headlines this week.

It's called the National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center.

And sort of you can hear from the name like this is a facility that Ice uses to, you know, do research online and kind of target, you know, to use their word, target folks who they're interested in pursuing, likely for immigration enforcement purposes.

Well, okay, so that sounds like big work, federal level type stuff.

What are they trying to do now or saying they're going to do to increase their surveillance, just to do with, tracking social media sites, right?

Things like that.

Yeah.

That's right.

So we've obviously seen a dramatic increase in ISIS operations across the country, right?

This year since Trump cam into office for a second time.

We've also seen that in Vermont, right.

We've seen an increase in enforcement.

We seen an increas in, detentions of farm workers and other folks around the state.

So what they've said and to your point, we should be clear that this is a kind of an initial request for information is the term the government uses.

So they're not formally moving ahead with this work quite yet, but they're putting out kind of feelers about it, for lack of a better phrase.

And the plan is to hire a dozen or so contracted workers.

So not necessarily Ice employees, but maybe a private company who would contract with Ice to, work out of the office in Williston and scour social media platforms, use other sites on the web, use federal databases, use public databases, use corporate databases to gather leads on folks who Ice is interested in for one reason or another.

And then they would pass that information on to ICE's enforcement and removal operations, office or division.

And those are the, you know, the officers who are actually going out into the field and detaining someone and maybe initiating the deportation process.

So the fear is, if you were, say, putting up a post on Instagram or somethin and somebody was able to track that and use that to find somebody that they thought was in the country undocumented, that could happen inadvertently through through something that somebody posted on social media.

Sure.

I mean, I right?

I think one of the big concern is that we've heard this week from folks responding to this is, you know, who is going to get swept u in this increased surveillance or this potential increase in surveillance.

Right.

And we've seen for sure cases over the last how long has it been?

Eight, nine months.

Right.

Of folks who are U.S.

citizens getting detained, you know, in some cases even getting deported out of the country.

Right.

So we have seen that happening.

And I think it's a fair, you know, thing to wonder about in this case.

I would ask you if this was legal, but I know you're not a lawyer and I also know that it almost the question is almost moot at this point.

I mean, certainly the reaction has been there were planned protests over this, right?

People are don't seem happy about it here in Vermont.

Yeah, you're right, and I'm not a lawyer.

And, even though I do read a lot of la in the state House for my job, but, you know, I, I think that, it's like we said before, it's it's legitimate to question the kind of law enforcement purpose of this.

Right.

And there's a lot of folks who are doing that.

Yeah.

And again, to be clear, this is being talked about now, they haven't actually started this process yet.

Right?

Yes.

So the from the federal records that were made public last week that I reported on and a number of other reporters as well reported on, this kind of expansion is the best term I can think of right now.

Is slated to start next year.

I'm blanking on which month, but it's 2026.

And, you know, to be clear, this criminal targeting work.

And when I say criminal, right, that's the word that Ice is using here.

And we've we've certainly seen cases where folks who, you know, have not been accused of a crime have still been targeted by Ice this year.

Right.

But this, targeting work.

Yeah, it's it's happening to some extent now, and I can't speak fully to that extent to what it is, but it's we definitely know for sure that there's plans to, to do it in a new way.

Starting next year.

Well, I appreciate the update.

And also explain to us what the center does in Williston to begin with.

I'm not sure a lot of people even knew what existed or what was happening.

Yeah, yeah.

I want to move on to a story, Lola, for about, Medicare Advantage plans, apparently in Vermont next year, they're just not going to be available.

I mean, in a brief way, can you explain what a Medicare Advantage plan is?

Yeah.

Medicare Advantage plans are private plans, that, kind of replace traditional Medicare and also typically give yo kind of supplemental coverage.

They are, usually attractive because they're much cheaper.

Right?

You can have some very high out-of-pocket costs when it comes to traditional Medicare.

They were aggressively, marketed to seniors for several years.

They were a really big kind of growth, market for insurance companies, who are paid directly by Medicare to provide these plans.

The problem is a lot of them have turned out to be unprofitable.

And so a lot of insurers are pulling back plan offerings or exiting unprofitable markets entirely from what happens to be one of those.

And so if you are, a senior that is shopping for Medicare right now, and open enrollment actually just no is about to start on the 15th.

Is about to start.

But if you are a senior that is shopping around for plans, right.

As an individual, this is separate from employer sponsored plans.

There in most of Vermont, there will not be a Medicare advantage options.

The only option will be traditional Medicare.

And you know, that's going to put a lot of seniors in a tough spot.

A lot of Medicare Advantage plans did not have great reputations.

Lots of consumer advocates had concerns about them.

However, they were a lot cheaper than traditional Medicare.

Right.

And so, a lot of seniors are looking at, potentially pretty scary health care landscape next year, will it be easier to enroll in traditional Medicare?

They will.

And you know, when I talk to advocates, kind of consumer advocate type people, you know, they're like, this is bad news and good news.

And again, it is, bad news because, like, now you don't have that kind of cheaper option.

It is good news.

If you were on a Medicare advantage plan that you found really wasn't working for you, because it's really hard to leave the Medicare Advantage market and go back to traditional, Medicare unless your insurer drops you, I assume.

Right.

So for those who found themselves in more, shall we say, predatory plans, this is good news, but a lot of people were in plans that they thought worked for them.

Right?

And now they're going to be upset.

Yeah.

And that won't be available for most of Vermont.

Yes.

I want to end on a couple of sports related stories.

Sean Robinson, Vermont Green FC, such a popular soccer, club.

They won the championshi this year, the women's season.

There will be a women's season next year, probably.

Right.

What can you tell us briefly about about that?

Yeah, there probably will be.

So, folks are probably familiar with Vermont Green from, like you said, winning their national championship this past summer.

They fielded a men's team, for their they planned a semi-pro league nationally.

They fielded a men's team for the last four summers.

And they've hold they've held I think three games that are sort of exhibition matches with a women's team.

They also sold out, all sold out every game.

A huge hit.

And they announced this week that, you know, they've kind of figured it out.

They've got enough resources now to put behind it to make this women's team a permanent fixture.

It's contingent, like you alluded to on a couple other teams in New England joining a new division as part of this broader the National Semi-Pro League.

They need two more teams.

But I, I talked to the club's co-founder this week and he said, you know, we wouldn't have announced it if we weren't confident that it was going to come out.

So yeah, we'll look forward to that next summer.

Maybe.

And Castleton have the first, women's team, I guess, in a long time.

Yeah.

That's right.

I learned a fun fact this week that Castleton, one of the first women's soccer programs in the country, a great soccer tradition here in Vermont.

And finally, Ilona Maher getting her own Barbie doll.

It's so awesome.

That's going to be great.

Other players, too, will get, Barbie dolls of their own rugby stars.

We're gonna have to leave it there for Vermont this week.

I want to thank our panel so much, Lola Duffort from Vermont Public, Alison Novak from Seven Days and Shaun Robinson from VTDigger.

I'm Mitch Wertlieb, thank you so much for tuning in.

Hope to see you next week on Vermont This Week.

Have a great week.

In the meantime.