Lives are being transformed in the building trades space at Northwest Career & Technical Center in St. Albans where Ross Lavoie and Steve Allard spend two hours every day teaching carpentry and more to 90 students. 

“These students are learning with their hands and with their brains,” Lavoie said. 

“The more ways you learn something by touching it, doing it, seeing it, feeling it, that’s how you’re really going to drive those points home, as opposed to sitting in a traditional classroom,” he said.

The students mainly come from three high schools: St. Albans’ own public high school, Bellows Free Academy; Missisquoi Valley Union Middle/High School in Swanton; and Bellows Free Academy Fairfax. Students also come from Project Soar Elementary/High School, an alternative school in St. Albans Bay.

Lavoie and Allard both graduated from the program where they now teach. But Lavoie said today’s students face social and economic challenges he did not have to face in high school, such as substance abuse and poverty.

Lavoie said he teaches accountability to students who have never been asked to be accountable. “They have to tell us where they are, dress appropriate,” he said. He talks with them about the importance of driving sober. 

Lavoie also tried to teach his students to become better citizens by getting involved in their communities, and he takes his students into the community to do work for nonprofit organizations.

“Our goal is to work for people that can use our help and our free labor the most, and make their money go further,” he said.

So, his students have built housing, remodeled the local soup kitchen, worked on projects at Hard’ack, the local nonprofit ski hill, and worked on blighted homes in the city of St. Albans, he said. 

Steve Wunsch, who taught both Lavoie and Allard when they were in high school, has come out of retirement to help them teach today’s future carpenters. The Covid-19 pandemic made a lot of parents and students reevaluate college educations, he said.

Lavoie said his graduates are in great demand.

Juniors and seniors can sign up for a co-op work-based learning program that lets them work on job sites part time, or even nearly full time, during the school day, provided they have met their academic requirements. 

“They already have a career before they graduate, and they’ve been getting paid to do that,” Lavoie said.

Vermont’s most promising jobs

Students are drawn to the carpentry program because they realize there is good money to be made in the building trades, Lavoie said. 

Carpentry is one of Vermont’s most promising jobs, according to the McClure Foundation and the Vermont Department of Labor — defined by them as jobs that pay more than the median Vermont wage of $22.50 an hour and have the greatest number of openings. 

To draw attention to the opportunities, the organizations are spotlighting the four occupations with the greatest number of projected openings through 2030: bookkeepers, carpenters, nurses and teachers. 

VTDigger’s Promising Jobs series is taking up the torch to look more closely at how people are getting into those four careers. Today, we look at carpentry. Yesterday, we covered teaching. And coming up, we’ll dive into bookkeeping and nursing. 

“In Vermont, there is a career and education pathway for you,” said Tom Cheney, executive director of Advance Vermont, a nonprofit that aims to connect Vermonters with careers in the state. There are promising jobs that are trained for through apprenticeship. “It doesn’t just require college,” he said.

Advance Vermont posts Vermont’s most promising jobs on its website, where people can find out about 500 careers in Vermont and can see what training they need to land a job in one of those careers. 

Through 2030, Vermont can expect 4,460 openings for carpenters, the report estimates. Over the course of their careers, carpenters can expect to make a median wage of $23 an hour, more than $47,000 a year.

The carpentry profession is a good fit for people who like to work with “your hands or with machines to make, fix or build things,” according to a brochure from the McClure Foundation.

A limited supply of carpenters

High school career centers are one avenue for learning carpentry. 

Mary Ann Sheahan, who runs the Vermont Talent Pipeline for the Vermont Business Roundtable, worked with general contractors to identify a credential of value in the trades that is now being taught at every career technical education center in Vermont. It is called the National Center for Construction Education and Research core credential. 

“It’s the first skill set for anybody who works in construction,” Sheahan said. “It includes things like basic safety, construction math, hand tools, power tools, blueprint reading.”

At some career centers, even though the programs are much smaller than the one in St. Albans, there is still plenty of room for interested students. In Rutland and Springfield, for instance, there are still a few openings for next fall’s classes.

But other programs, such as those at the Center for Technology in Essex, are oversubscribed. At the Cold Hollow Career Center in Enosburg Falls, there’s plenty of student interest in carpentry classes, but for several weeks, Nate Demar, director of the center, struggled to find someone to teach them next fall.

“We lost our amazing Construction Teacher because he can make a lot more money in the private sector,” Demar wrote in an email. By last week, Demar reported that he had finally found someone to teach the six students who have applied to enroll next fall.

If a candidate has a bachelor’s degree or the equivalent and no teaching experience, the starting salary for a carpentry teacher at Cold Hollow  is $45,000 a year, and if a candidate is certified to teach the national curriculum and has 20 years in the field, it is $64,000, Demar said.

Lavoie said it is hard to draw carpenters to teaching because they make so much more 

working in construction. “We have some students, even some students almost right out of this program, making what we make in a year,” he said.

But money is not everything, said Lavoie, who appreciates the school hours and summer vacation, which allows him to be home with his young children. 

The shortage of carpentry teachers restricts the supply of carpenters in Vermont, to the point where Ryan Ahern has to bring them in from out of state.

“We can’t find commercial framers to build large projects,” said Ahern, director of field operations at ReArch Company, a contractor in South Burlington. “We’re bringing people up from Boston to do this work.”

Other paths to carpentry

Someone who graduates from a career technical education center with a core construction credential could get hired by a contractor, but would not have all the skills to work as a carpenter, Sheahan said. 

So Vermont Talent Pipeline approached contractors to ask how people coming into the field with this credential could get more skills so they could become independent carpenters. 

Together, they put together an 18-month apprenticeship program; Sheahan said that experience boosts the average wage by about 50%. 

And, apprenticeships are one way that employers can attract employees.

Ahern hosts apprentices at his business through a program that recruits and trains carpenters over 18 months. The program teams up incoming apprentices with foremen and skilled carpenters in the field with pay starting at $19 an hour. 

“They start with basic tool skills, like keeping all the fingers on their hands,” Ahern joked. “They’re learning plan-reading. They’re learning framing. They’re learning some finish carpentry.”

Associated Builders and Contractors sponsors the apprenticeship program, which is taught by ReSOURCE Vermont. Young people starting out in the trades get Wednesday afternoons off to go to class at ReSOURCE Vermont, and a mentor on the job checks that they can actually do what they are supposed to be learning. Over 18 months, the apprentice graduates from laborer to carpenter’s helper to carpenter.

Here’s the pitch, Sheahan said: “We’re going to hire you even if you have just basic skills and we’re going to teach you how to become a carpenter over the course of 18 months. It could be that you’re starting at $20 an hour and when you’re finished, you’re going to be $30 an hour.”

A quicker route is the Construction 101 class at ReSOURCE. The six-week construction program is designed to get students jobs when they finish. 

Students spend four weeks in the woodshop, gaining credentials for working with power and hand tools. Then there’s a job fair, and the last two weeks are spent working with employers who came to the job fair. 

“At the end of the sixth week, ideally, you’re talking contracts,” said Maggie Robinson, program coordinator at the ReSOURCE Burlington site, running construction and weatherization programs. 

Ry-An White, who lives in Shelburne, took the class. He is now building basement doors and hatches, putting up drywall and reframing damaged sections of homes for the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity weatherization program. 

He started at $18 an hour. Now, after less than a year on the job, he makes $21.75 an hour. 

Someday, he hopes to be able to build his own home. 

Advice to young people

Ahern, at ReArch, said demand is high for people who are interested in getting into carpentry. “If you’re ambitious and you’re looking to get into this business, it’s an awesome time,” he said.

He offers some advice for high school students considering carpentry.

“You gotta like the physical aspect of it,” Ahern said. “There’s a certain hardship (to) this business, especially in Vermont, with the cold, and you have to actually like physical work.”

Ahern advises students interested to start out with internships while they are still in high school.

“I’d advise against going to work with the uncle down the street,” he said. “If I was 18 years old, I would spend six months with two or three of the best (employers) around, and then take a pick.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Promising Jobs: Tech centers and apprenticeships teach carpentry skills and more.

Students of color at Peoples Academy and Peoples Academy Middle Level in Morristown have endured longstanding racist harassment and bullying, parents say. 

A group of families has been in touch with district officials in the past weeks over multiple incidents at the school, according to parents and administrators. But the allegations were made public at a Wednesday meeting of the Lamoille South Unified Union school board, where a parent said her children have experienced “profound systemic racism” at the schools. 

“Our BIPOC community of students are missing not days, not just weeks, but (sometimes) collectively over a month of school, due to anxiety, fear, and a feeling of (being) unsafe in the building,” said Cassie Baronette, the mother of three students of color at Peoples Academy and Peoples Academy Middle Level. 

Baronette declined to speak in detail about specific incidents, citing her children’s privacy, but said they had been targeted by “overt and horrifying racism.”

It’s not clear exactly how many families have experienced similar incidents. In correspondence shared with VTDigger, Lamoille South Superintendent Ryan Heraty mentioned meeting with at least six families to discuss concerns about racist incidents. 

Baronette declined to be interviewed on the record. VTDigger spoke with three other people who said their children or relatives have had similar experiences at the school, either during the current school year or in the past. 

“It’s been very bad,” said Carol Rogers, whose child attends sixth grade at Peoples Academy Middle Level. 

Her son has experienced verbal abuse, racial slurs, and even physical violence at the school and on the bus, Rogers said. He has missed months’ worth of academic material, Rogers said, because he often dreads going to class in the morning. 

“I’ve heard about it in other states, but I really never thought that it would be this bad in Vermont,” Rogers said. 

Amy Gates, whose daughter graduated from Peoples Academy four years ago, echoed those concerns. Her daughter also experienced racism at the school, she said, but she acknowledged she did not know the specific details.

“Four years later, she still can’t talk about some of the things that happened there,” Gates told school board members last week.  

At the board meeting, parents asked for more targeted district policies — and more robust enforcement — to prevent racist abuse at school. 

“Racial harm is being reinforced and perpetuated by our administration, because there is no clear separate policy for dealing with this specific type of abuse,” Baronette told school board members. “Your bullying, hazing and harassment policy does not adequately address this.”

Peoples Academy serves students in grades 9-12, and is physically connected to Peoples Academy Middle Level, which operates grades 5-8.

In an interview, Heraty, the Lamoille South superintendent, acknowledged “that there are situations that are happening in our district, specifically at that one school — Peoples Academy Middle Level — that aren’t OK, that we need to be talking about openly,” he said. 

The district has organized equity initiatives since 2020, when officials commissioned a report on the experiences of students of color, LGBTQ+ students, and students with disabilities.

That report, released in 2021, drove home the fact that some students in the district felt “a lack of safety, both social-emotional safety and physical safety.” Racist harassment often went unnoticed or was chalked up to “misunderstandings,” the report read, leaving students of color feeling they had little recourse to respond.

“It is increasingly clear that there is direct harm being caused to students with historically marginalized identities while attending schools in (the district),” the report said. 

In the wake of that report, the district formed an “equity subcommittee” that meets monthly. This year, Heraty said, the committee has focused on hazing, harassment and bullying in middle school. 

But changing the school’s policies is easier said than done, he said. In Vermont, school policies on harassment and bullying are usually, if not always, based closely on model policies released by the Vermont School Boards Association.

Those policies are “written by attorneys very carefully to adhere to the legislation that was approved by the state,” Heraty said. “So I think for us to change or revise those policies is very difficult.”

At the meeting Wednesday, the chair of the Lamoille South school board, David Bickford, thanked parents for bringing the concerns to the district. 

The board would discuss the district’s equity initiatives “to see if the kinds of safeguards that you’re asking about and asking for are incorporated in them,” he said. “And we will review them in light of this conversation.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: At Peoples Academy, allegations of ‘systemic’ racist bullying.

One morning this winter at the Expeditionary School at Black River, tenth grader Zach Taylor was trying to solve a computer problem.

Ahead of an upcoming open house for parents at the Ludlow school, students in a physical science course were programming small beeping computers called Arduinos to perform simple functions. Taylor, a Mount Holly tenth grader, had instructed his Arduino to function as a thermometer. But the device had presented him with a challenge.

“What I’m trying to do right now is change it because right now it’s in Celsius,” Taylor said. “I’m trying to” — he paused as the device suddenly emitted a high screeching sound — “get it to Fahrenheit.”

That class — a group of roughly a dozen students engaged in creative, self-directed projects — embodies the hallmarks of the Expeditionary School, an unusual, grades 7-12 independent program in Ludlow.

The roughly 15-student school, which operates in the now-shuttered Black River High School building, offers a unique program: Each student creates a “Personalized Learning Map” and can choose to take courses such as electronic music production, yoga or computer science. Since opening in 2020, the school has prized hands-on, self-directed learning and works closely with students’ families; in some cases, students’ relatives volunteer at the school in lieu of tuition.

But the new institution is in a difficult spot.

The school has spent the better part of two years in a thus far unsuccessful bid for state approval. Without that approval, the school cannot accept public tuition money, cutting it off from a key funding source.

Now, the school is staring down a new hurdle: a moratorium on all new private school approvals, effective July 1, written into the state Legislature’s budget bill. 

Gov. Phil Scott vetoed that bill last month. But if lawmakers succeed in overriding that veto — or if a new budget contains the same language — the moratorium could force the school to close its doors.

“That’s a question that, as a board, we have to discuss,” said Gary Blodgett, the chair of the school’s board of trustees, in an interview.

‘Full local control’

Like much of rural Vermont, Ludlow, a resort town in the shadow of Okemo Mountain, has faced years of slow declines in school enrollment and rising educational costs.

Following the passage of Act 46 in 2015, the state of Vermont offered incentives — and penalties — to convince small rural school districts to merge with their neighbors. After Ludlow joined a new unified district with the neighboring town of Mount Holly, the public Black River High School shut its doors in 2020.

By that time, however, a group of community members had come up with a different plan: to open a private, or independent, school in the Black River High School building.

The idea was to create a school “whose independent status will allow full local control,” its board of trustees wrote to the Chester Telegraph in April 2020 — one “whose vision and mission arise directly from our community, from its character and needs,” where students would have “true freedom to learn based on their passions.”

The Expeditionary School opened in the fall of 2020 with 15 students and one full-time employee, the head of school. In July 2021, the school applied for state approval.

Administrators said they were told that the whole process — which includes a site visit, recommendation from the Agency of Education, review by a State Board of Education subcommittee and final decision from the state board itself — could take six to eight months.

Instead, agency staffers did not visit the school until March 2022, and a report summarizing that visit was not released until August, a delay education officials attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic.

That highly critical report outlined a series of problems: student documentation was missing, the school did not require “formal lesson plans,” staff did not coordinate with students’ home districts to provide special education, and the school lacked key policies around mandatory emergencies and school safety.

What’s more, according to the report, the school had not been audited, and administrators’ bid for a line of credit from a local bank had been rejected.

“The Independent School review team cannot recommend initial approval, at this time, for the Expeditionary School at Black River due to identified deficiencies in the school’s program,” the agency wrote. “The review team also questions whether ESBR has the financial capacity to remain viable.”

‘This approval system is flawed’

But, in a December response clearly laced with frustration, Expeditionary School leaders rebutted those claims. The school had corrected many of the deficiencies, but the Agency of Education was simply wrong about others, administrators said. State officials had not clearly communicated the approval requirements, were difficult to reach and often failed to reply to emails, Expeditionary School leaders said.

And the entire process — by that time, nearly a year and a half in — had dragged on much longer than the expected six to eight months.

“I believe this approval system is flawed,” Blodgett, the school’s board chair, wrote to the State Board of Education in December. “We are a beginning school, just in our third year, with lots to learn. Although we took issue with some of the visiting team’s findings, we did learn from the report, which finally reached our hands, and have made many adjustments.”

Ted Fisher, a spokesperson for the Agency of Education, said that Covid-19 had created a backlog in the independent school approval process.

“Both the Board and the Agency are working hard to address this backlog as quickly as possible and have made significant progress in recent months,” Fisher said. “The AOE is executing the State Board’s review process as it is articulated in state law and state board rule and working as expeditiously as possible to clear the backlog.”

But from one perspective, it’s clear why the situation would be frustrating. Amid the push to consolidate small school districts, pressure from the state’s education agency ultimately drove Ludlow to close its public school. Now, that same educational bureaucracy seems to be standing in the way of the town’s efforts to replace it with a sustainable private school.

In December, the state Board of Education ultimately voted to deny the Expeditionary School’s bid for approval. The school submitted a new application in April.

By that time, however, the Vermont Legislature was mulling strict new requirements on independent schools. One key provision was written into the state’s budget bill: a moratorium on all new independent school approvals, effective July 1.

If that language ultimately takes effect, it could leave the Expeditionary School with too little time to be approved.

A hard deadline

Expeditionary School administrators and parents say the school is an invaluable asset to its community and its students, many of whom have struggled in traditional education settings.

The Expeditionary School “saved our son, as a learner, but more so as a person,” Becky Wynne, the parent of Expeditionary School students, wrote to Board members last month.

“ESBR has been able to provide my daughter with the support she has needed to push past her anxieties, to be more present and engaged with her learning and to grow in her sense of community,” Christine Reid, another parent, wrote in a separate letter to the board. 

But the school’s approval still appears to be a long shot. It’s unclear whether the usual steps — a recommendation from Agency of Education staff, review by a subcommittee, and then a decision from the Board of Education — could happen in time.

“The Agency is still in the process of reviewing the application and gathering additional information from ESBR,” Fisher, the Agency of Education spokesperson, said in an email. “We hope to be able to provide a recommendation this month. It is premature to say if the Agency will recommend approval, and the decision to approve is ultimately the State Board’s.”

Even if the Agency does issue a recommendation in time, an approval would require 11th-hour action from the state Board of Education, which has ultimate authority over private school approvals.

“I just don’t see the requisite things that need to happen happening before July 1,” said Jennifer Samuelson, the chair of the state Board of Education, which has ultimate authority over private school approvals.

“I mean, I will consider anything that’s ready for the board to consider it,” she added. “But I haven’t seen anything.”

The last week

This past week was the Expeditionary School’s last week of class, and students and teachers were busy with final projects and an end-of-the-year play. One student was expected to graduate on Saturday, the school’s fourth ever.

Administrators said they did not know what would happen if the moratorium took effect before the Expeditionary School could be approved. Amid the uncertainty, the head of school recently accepted another position elsewhere.

Since its inception, the school has relied mostly on donations and fundraisers to operate. On Town Meeting Day, voters approved an unusual ballot article to give $75,000 in public “bridge funding” to the school. Ironically, trustees said, the school is receiving public money from the state of New Hampshire for a student’s tuition — even as it is ineligible for Vermont funds.

But it’s not clear if the school can sustain itself through fundraising for another year.

The board “just works and works and works to try to raise the money to do this,” Blodgett, the board chair, said. “And people have lives. They see the importance of this, but they have lives too.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: In Ludlow, a new school faces an existential threat.

Strolling through rows of his trees on a gray, rainy day in June, Greg Burtt couldn’t help but smile when he pictured a typical autumn day at his apple orchard in Cabot.

In his picture-perfect imagination, he envisioned a sunny day. He described how hundreds of cars park in his fields and stretch down his road on any given fall weekend. Along with his family and a handful of staff, Burtt will fry roughly 600 dozen cider doughnuts in a single day. Families will stay for hours picking their own apples and munching on fresh fruit, doughnuts and cider. Kids can slide down a playground’s yellow curly slide or run through the small corn maze as many times as they’d like. A pumpkin patch and 15 acres of fruit trees are surrounded by hazy blue mountains.

“You know, it’s surprising how it doesn’t feel crowded in the orchard. I think there’s just so much space,” he said. “But you can just hear chatter and families hanging out together having a good time.”

Things may look different this fall at Burtt’s Apple Orchard. On the night of May 17, temperatures plunged into the 20s in Vermont, and a deep freeze set in across the entire Northeast, decimating fruit crops in a region known for its yearly bounty.

More than three weeks later, it is unclear how much aid the federal government will provide to farmers who suffered devastating losses in the once-in-a-generation weather event.

“A frost in May is not unheard of, but this one was significant enough because it was so cold,” Vermont’s Secretary of Agriculture Anson Tebbetts told VTDigger this week. “And the particular timing — the apples were in bloom, the blueberries were in bloom, very tender vines for the grapes — everything was really vulnerable.”

Much of the damage was immediately visible. On the morning of May 18, farmers could split open their apple buds and find brown inside, a sure sign of death for the young fruit. But weeks later, a fuller picture of the frost’s impact is coming into focus.

Along with colleagues at the state Agency of Agriculture, staff with the University of Vermont Extension surveyed fruit tree farmers across the state. Nineteen apple orchards responded, accounting for roughly half of the state’s acreage. “For the vast majority of respondents, estimated crop loss was 95% or greater,” Tebbetts told VTDigger.

In apples alone, the financial losses accounted for in the survey are upward of $3.6 million. For cider, the survey documents another $1.2 million in losses. Add in other types of fruits — grapes, blueberries and stone fruits — and the total crop losses among respondents are an estimated $5.8 million.

Assuming that the farms that haven’t responded to the survey fared similarly, Tebbetts said, losses across the state could surpass $10 million.

“I think there was a lot of frustration that there was really nothing anyone could do about it,” Tebbetts said. “You know, Vermont does not have that infrastructure of possibly protecting crops from frost. … It’s really heartbreaking.”

It’s a blow so devastating that Tebbetts has drafted a letter — which he is now circulating among state officials across New England and the Northeast, gathering signatures — to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, pleading for a federal disaster declaration and financial aid to the region’s farmers.

Worrying about the unknown

Three weeks after the frost, Burtt walked through his rows of trees, inspecting their branches. Some varieties seemed to persevere. He plucked a Pixie Crunch fruitlet off a branch, and broke it open to reveal a hopeful green interior. 

Others varieties seemed almost frozen in time, their blossoms — now papery and brown — holding on to the branch, refusing to bear fruit. As he walked through the rows of anomalies, he shook his head, muttering that the trees were “doing weird things.”

Burtt hopes he’ll see 25 to 40% of his usual crop, and knows he’s lucky compared to fellow orchardists whose crops were wiped out completely. But there are still so many unknown factors: Will this year’s apples have damaged cores, rendering their flavor bitter? Will their growth be stunted, making for tiny, undesirable fruits?

“The first couple days afterward, it was really nerve-wracking. You go through periods of being mad, and then just being distraught,” Burtt said. “You realize how much of what you do is out of your control, which is, in a lot of ways, humbling, I guess.”

Still, his mind wanders. It’s human nature. One swath of his orchard fared significantly better than the other, and he developed his theories of why: He gestured to the mountains and mimed airflows and cold bursts and shelter provided by surrounding trees.

“I’m sitting here saying, ‘What did I do different to this orchard than that orchard? Could I have done something to get fruit on my whole orchard?’” he said. “Probably there’s nothing I could have done. You still sit there and you wonder if you could have done something better.”

For some, crop insurance may help cover their losses. But crop insurance is not mandatory, and many farmers forgo it in order to save the premium. Others, like Burtt, opt for what he called the “bare minimum” coverage level.

Burtt is insured through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency. An agent has already taken a preliminary assessment and will come back in the fall to conduct a final assessment of how his crop fared.

But Burtt has no idea what kind of payout he will ultimately receive. Never having experienced a natural disaster like this since he began selling apples in 2009, Burtt has never had to file a crop insurance claim before.

‘We don’t have a piggy bank’

John Roberts, a former dairy farmer who now serves as the Vermont state executive director for USDA’s Farm Service Agency, told VTDigger that he wants to be cautious not to raise farmers’ hopes too high that the government will come to the rescue.

“If they had insurance, great. If this event encourages them to get insurance in the future, great,” Roberts said. “If we can get a (disaster) declaration, I don’t know the extent to which relief would be granted to the farmers. I have no way of knowing that.”

Asked about un- or under-insured farmers for whom May’s frost may be the final financial blow, forcing them to shutter, Roberts exhaled and said, “Goodness. Well, I would not be surprised.”

“Certainly, my message would be not to look them in the eye and say, ‘Well, tough beans. These are the breaks,’” Roberts said. “No. I work for an administration that does try its hardest to keep farmers on their farms.”

He pointed to low-interest loans serviced through the Farm Service Agency. He conceded that a loan can’t help every struggling farmer — particularly those already “mortgaged to the hilt” — but, “If you’ve got somebody who wants to keep going, I know that our staff will bend over backwards to do what they can to help them.”

“Unfortunately, we don’t have a piggy bank sitting with cash in it, and these are the harsh realities of life,” he said, before correcting himself. “Of farming, maybe not life, because farming is so unique.”

In his letter to Vilsack, Tebbetts painted a relatively grim picture for producers ravaged by the freeze, saying the region is at “a critical crossroad with our growers.”

“Right now, growers are assessing their ability to stay in this industry,” Tebbetts wrote. “Unfortunately, many orchards, produce operations, and vineyards are either uninsured or under-insured and insurance claims are unlikely to cover the total business loss from crop damage and reduced revenue from value-added products. Without aid we will see devastating blows to local economies because of downsizing and closing businesses.”

Vitally, crop insurance covers only crops — meaning, no value-added products made using the crops. That means crop insurance won’t cover vineyards’ lost income for the wine they can’t produce and sell with the grapes they now don’t have. They can only claim the losses on the grapes themselves.

Or for Burtt, he can’t claim any income lost on his annual fresh cider and doughnuts. He’s begun calling orchards significantly larger than his own, hoping to purchase some of their apples wholesale, and make his cider and doughnuts using their apples. But when he calls, even they don’t know what to expect of their crop come fall.

‘You have to do all the same work’

All the while, Burtt has to keep working hard, knowing all the meanwhile that his crop is sure to be scant.

“You still know you have to do all the same work. You’ve got to mow the grass, you’ve got to protect the trees from different diseases and bugs, you already did all the work on pruning,” Burtt said. “You’re like, ‘OK, all this work I’m doing is for a year-and-a-half from now when I might get paid.’”

Burtt just hopes that people will still come out to support his orchard — even if he has to press his cider with apples from elsewhere. His primary-school-age children are brainstorming new endeavors to support the family business. Their recommendation: a french fry stand.

“I’m just hoping that people still come out even though we won’t have as many apples,” Burtt said. “Crop insurance, that’s great. But as long as people still want to come out and support the farms, that’s huge.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont leaders pursue federal disaster aid after orchardists face ‘heartbreaking’ losses in May freeze.

Say “Beetlejuice” three times, and you summon the man himself. 

But in East Corinth, where production on the movie Beetlejuice 2 has begun, locals are hesitant to say the word, bound to secrecy by non-disclosure agreements.

“It all kind of happens quietly,” Rick Cawley, chair of the Corinth selectboard, said of the film. “I’ve only heard about it on a need-to-know basis.”

In the late ’80s, a film crew descended on East Corinth to shoot the original Beetlejuice. The resulting cult classic depicted Barbara and Allen Maitland (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin), who die in a car crash and are left to inhabit their home as ghosts. The Deetz family — including Lydia, a goth teen played by Winona Ryder — buys the home, and the Maitlands attempt to haunt them out of the property. Along the way, the ghostly husband and wife solicit the not-so-helpful help of Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton), ultimately finding peace with their erstwhile enemies the Deetzes.

Exterior shots in the movie were filmed in the rural Orange County town of about 1,500 residents. A now-shuttered general store, a white Masonic lodge, and a prop covered bridge all featured in the Tim Burton gothic comedy. 

The sequel will feature original cast members Ryder, Keaton and Catherine O’Hara, as well as new additions Justin Theroux, Jenna Ortega and Willem Defoe. Burton will again direct. Primarily filmed in England, the production will shoot in Corinth later this summer, according to Cawley.

On foot, this reporter trekked through the hills of Corinth, hunting for details about the new movie. But locals, roped into the production themselves, stayed mum. (A publicist for Warner Brothers declined to comment.) 

After a few knocks on the locked door of the East Corinth Congregational Church, a space the production has been using for storage, the Rev. KellyAnn Donahue poked her head out. She said she couldn’t talk about the film.

Some residents quietly pointed to the community-supported ski hill Northeast Slopes, suggesting a volunteer there may have some involvement in the new production. The barn-red covered bridge, built for the first Beetlejuice, even found a home at the ski area, where it houses part of hill’s T-bar. But the volunteer, muzzled by a legal “pinky swear,” politely declined to talk. 

No amount of shoe-leather reporting in 90-degree weather seemed enough to overcome the Hollywood gag order. Atop a green hillside on the way into town, the production team this week toiled away under the boiling sun, erecting what appeared to be a house — the house, in fact, of Beetlejuice fame. But “no trespassing” signs blocked the way up the hill, past the crew’s shiny cars with Massachusetts plates. 

Remnants of the original Beetlejuice reveal themselves in East Corinth, even if answers to a reporter’s inquiries do not. A still from the film — a car bursting through the side of a covered bridge — is tacked to a stop sign on Chicken Farm Road. A poster outside Corinth’s white Masonic lodge, transformed in the movie to Miss Shannon’s School for Girls, shows another frame. 

Beetlejuice tourists descend on Corinth from as far away as California to see the sights, according to Jennifer Spanier, library director at the town’s Blake Memorial Library. Superfans find their way into the library, looking for more lore. 

“I’ll be like, ‘I bet they’re a Beetlejuice person,’ because maybe they’re dressed a little goth, or they just look like they aren’t from here,” Spanier said. 

She, too, has been sworn to secrecy due to peripheral involvement in the sequel. 

“It’s called ‘Operation Blue Hawaii’ or something like that,” Spanier said of the production’s covert dealings. “It’s a code name.”

Finally, after all that marching up and down East Corinth’s humble main street, the story seemed destined to break open: a truck, idling outside the library, with a director’s clapboard stenciled to the door. The crew!

This intrepid gumshoe sidled up to the driver’s side window, gesturing inquisitively at the man eating french fries inside. He lowered the window. 

Sixteen years in the business, and the man had encountered few places as … quiet … as East Corinth. 

“This is like no man’s land,” he said. He’d parked beside the library to get some Wi-Fi — cell signal being finicky at best. “There’s nothing to do around here. At all.”

The man, from Massachusetts, declined to provide his name, explaining that he’d signed an NDA, and his union contract prevented him from talking to the press. But under the cloak of anonymity, he spoke with candor — not about the film, but about the sleepy hamlet it had brought him to.

“Unfortunately, it’s Corinth. That’s how you say it, right?” he said, emphasizing the second syllable. “There’s only one store in town.” 

Asked how he imagines the town will handle the hubbub when shooting finally begins, he chuckled. 

“It’ll be a circus.”

Rick Cawley, chair of the Corinth selectboard, recalled the first Beetlejuice back in the 80s.

“Everybody was interested to say the least,” he remembered of the East Corinth shoot. The production crew erected a faux house and manufactured a barn-red covered bridge. 

Early in the original film, Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis fall through the bridge, dying and becoming the film’s central ghosts in the process. 

Strange as it may sound for a famous Tim Burton production to appear in the roughly 1,500 person Orange County town, Cawley said Beetlejuice wasn’t a total surprise. The frequently photographed East Corinth village epitomizes quaint Vermont town with its white-steepled church and Holsteins on the hillside. Plus, The Survivors, a 1983 comedy featuring Robin Williams and Walter Matthau, filmed in Corinth a few years prior, Cawley said. That production even enlisted the help of his husky-mix, though the dog didn’t feature in the final film.  

When Beetlejuice came to town, it was “just a little blip,” Cawley said, though the film struck a chord with a certain population in town. “A generation younger than me were kind of enthralled because it was this quirky, cool movie.”

More recently, Cawley got a call from a location scout for Warner Brothers, inquiring about shooting the sequel. The production has since gotten Corinth’s road crew, fire chief and constable involved in pre-production, assisting with traffic control and prop building. 

“We like getting on the map,” he said. “It’s kind of cool.”

In small towns, periods of time are marked ‘before’ and ‘after’ big events. In Corinth, one of those events was the filming of Beetlejuice, Amy Peberdy, a town resident, said. 

“Now all we have is, ‘Remember the Covid years,’ ” she joked. 

Peberdy moved to town the year after production on Beetlejuice wrapped. Locals had stories of famous actors walking into their kitchens to change into their costumes, she said. “It was that kind of production.”

Over the years, Beetlejuice-specific tours have come through town, Peberdy said, and posters around town labeled the various sights from the movie.

“People would go up to the signs and ‘Ahh,’ ” she recalled, “like they were some kind of religious relic.”

Recently, Peberdy has spotted action on the hilltop where the Beetlejuice house stood: big equipment, earth moving. She expects a forthcoming call for extras, though shooting has not begun. 

In the Tim Burton-directed film, Barbara and Allen Maitland (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin), die in a car accident, and are left to inhabit their home as ghosts. The Deetz family — including Lydia, a goth teen played by Winona Ryder — buys the home, and the Maitlands attempt to haunt them out of the property. Along the way, they solicit the not-so-helpful help of Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton), ultimately finding peace with their erstwhile enemies the Deetzes.

Shot in characteristic Burton style, the movie is spooky-but-whimsical, often featuring gothic special effects that appear consciously low-budget. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Like a ghost cloaked in NDAs, Beetlejuice 2 quietly begins production in East Corinth.

A Vermont state representative’s home was vandalized with paint soon after hundreds of people were required to move out of motels on Thursday.

“Isn’t it nice to have a home” was written in red capital letters on the garage door of Democrat Martin LaLonde’s house in South Burlington, according to Police Chief Shawn Burke.

LaLonde reported the graffiti around 9 a.m. on Friday, Burke said, and police are investigating. The letters could be seen through an apparent fresh coat of white paint later in the morning.

Republican Gov. Phil Scott and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate declined to extend a pandemic-era program that used federal cash, which has since run dry, to expand the number of unhoused people who could stay in the state’s hotels and motels.

The program’s end — and the waves of evictions anticipated this summer, starting with some 800 people on Thursday — has divided Democrats, with some in the party’s left wing calling for more funding to stave off a predicted surge in homelessness. Advocates and service providers have also decried the decision, noting that shelters are already full, leaving those exiting the motels with limited options. A total of about 2,800 are expected to leave motels in the coming months.

South Burlington police officers conducted a canvass of the neighborhood searching for “ambient video,” Burke said, which would be reviewed for further leads.

LaLonde did not respond to messages sent by phone and email on Friday.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont state rep’s home vandalized after first round of motel program evictions.

This story by Lisa Scagliotti first appeared in the Waterbury Roundabout on May 25.

A little over a year after learning that its school district was using restraint and seclusion with students at an alarming rate, the Harwood Unified Union School District School Board has adopted a new policy that officially bans most uses of the practices starting with the 2023-24 school year in the fall.  

The move means that the school district will now have stricter guidelines in place than state policy allows when it comes to employees and contracted staff who need to manage challenging student behaviors.

The issue has been a top priority this school year after the district’s use of the practices was found to be particularly high among schools in Vermont. Former board member and Brookside Primary School special education teacher Brian Dalla Mura brought the matter to the attention of the board and administration in spring 2022. Dalla Mura, who now works in another school district, pointed to statistics showing reported incidents at what was then Thatcher Brook Primary School in Waterbury in the 2017-18 school year. He found that 281 reports were made based on data collected by the federal Office of Civil Rights.

The 2017 figures are the most recent available and they show 11 Vermont schools with more than 50 restraints, only four of which had greater than 100. Fayston Elementary had 105 restraints and Thatcher Brook was the only one with more than 200, Dalla Mura found. The Harwood district’s total across all schools for that year was 451, he said.  

According to the state definitions, physical restraint means using physical force “to prevent an imminent and substantial risk of bodily harm to the student or others.” The Harwood district’s new policy applies to prone and supine restraints. Prone physical restraint means holding a student face down on their stomach using physical force in order to control the student’s movement. Supine restraint means holding a student on their back using physical force for the same purpose. The techniques can be dangerous and even lethal as they impact the child’s ability to breathe.

Seclusion refers to confining a student “alone in a room or area from which the student is prevented or reasonably believes he or she will be prevented from leaving,” according to the state definition. Doctors, psychologists and advocates say the experience can be traumatizing to a child. This does not include a “time-out” situation where a student is not left alone and is under adult supervision, according to the state rules.

The issue came to light as the district’s administration was in transition. Brigid Nease was in the final weeks of her tenure as superintendent and current Superintendent Mike Leichliter was preparing to start in his new role on July 1. Leichliter moved to Vermont from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he worked as a superintendent in a system that bans the practices entirely. Vermont is among a minority of states that still allows the tactics to be used with children as young as preschoolers. 

When the current school year opened last August, Harwood staff and contractors who work as support staff for special education were prohibited from using the restraining techniques and from using closed rooms for seclusion.

Administrators on May 24 shared statistics with the school board saying there have been 39 incidences of restraint — none using prone or supine methods — so far this year compared with 129 by this time last school year. Five restraints in the 2021-22 school year were prone restraints, Leichliter added. Also this year, there have been no seclusions compared with 30 last year, officials said.  

School administrators this year have worked on modifying district protocols, they’ve added in new trainings, and a school board committee began drafting a new policy to address the issue. 

A parallel process began in Montpelier this year led by Waterbury state Rep. Theresa Wood, D-Waterbury, with the introduction of a bill that would look to ban prone and supine restraints and seclusion statewide. Although state lawmakers took testimony, the legislation did not advance and remains pending for the legislature to take up in 2024. 

An exception permits some seclusion  

In April, the school board committee completed drafting a policy that calls for the elimination of prone and supine restraints. It also would prohibit seclusion with one exception being “in situations where physical restraint is contraindicated for a particular student.” That exception would only be in place until June 30, 2024, according to the new policy. 

Leichliter and other administrators assured the board that they believed the exception is unlikely to be used and that those circumstances are rare and have not occurred this year or in recent memory. 

That exception led several board members to not vote for the new policy on Wednesday. While the measure received nine votes in favor, Fayston representatives Mike Bishop and Danielle Dukette both voted no; Duxbury member Life LeGeros abstained. The chair typically does not vote; Waterbury board member Marlena Tucker-Fishman was absent.

All three who were not in the “yes” column thanked the policy committee and the administrators for their work on the policy but said they would have liked to see a full ban on seclusion. 

“I don’t think it makes any sense to let it go for another year,” Bishop said.

Dukette agreed, calling the new policy “a substantial step forward” that falls short of the input the board heard from the community on the issue. “The input from the community was quite extensive and very passionate. There are strong feelings against the use of seclusion,” she said. “They are now working effectively without it … I had to vote in support for what the community has spoken so strongly about. That’s my job on this.” 

Leichliter said the point was discussed at length at the policy committee level with administrators. “While the belief is that the district wants no instances of seclusion, the committee felt that if a parent felt that for reasons like personal physical trauma that seclusion was preferred as opposed to restraint, there should be a very specific procedure written that would consider this as an option with medical documentation,” he said. 

The new policy also requires that school staff follow state guidelines in using seclusion. Procedures on how to implement seclusion under this new approach are needed for next school year, he noted. 

LeGeros acknowledged the challenge the committee had in crafting a policy that charts new ground. “It is such a tough issue because there was just a lot of harm done by our district and probably resulting trauma from that. It’s awkward because most of us weren’t necessarily here or at this table during that time,” he said. “But when there’s a process that’s creating harm — especially disproportional to people who are from marginalized communities — you gotta stop the harm. I appreciate the leadership from [Leichliter] for stopping that as far as restraints go. Ultimately, the fact that we allow seclusion to last another year, there’s no secret that I’m disappointed in that.” 

Reached on May 25 after the vote, Wood echoed disappointment that seclusion was not fully banned for another year but she said she was happy to see the district take the first step in moving away from the tactics that are considered harmful and dangerous. “The school district has made great progress in the last year, and I look forward to continuing that progress for the safety of students and staff. I am hopeful that the bill I have introduced banning seclusion and restraint, H.409, will be adopted during the next legislative session,” Wood said. “Although the state has a policy on the use of restraint and seclusion, obviously there is no enforcement and very little data tracking on this issue. The impact on students is undeniable and so this needs to change on a statewide level.”

Dalla Mura, whose experience witnessing restraint and seclusion at Brookside prompted him to research the issue and call for change, said last week that he was happy to see the new policy adopted for the coming school year. “I look forward to the 2024-2025 school year when seclusion will also be banned in HUUSD schools,” he said. “Although the new policy gives me hope that fewer students will be subjected to inappropriate and dangerous restraint practices moving forward, my heart goes out to the students and families that were impacted by past practices.”

Warren board member Jonathan Young reflected on the issue just before the vote was taken, saying he didn’t think the school board and administration could have made such a significant change so quickly just several years ago when he joined the board. “It’s amazing and refreshing and hopeful to me that we’ve come so far so quickly,” he said. “We made good decisions. It makes me proud to be part of this board.”

Board member Ashley Woods of Warren chaired the policy committee. “It was a huge learning experience for me — just the intensity of this issue and how important it is to this community,” Woods said, thanking a number of individuals involved in the process including the superintendent, Director of Student Services Jon Berliner, consultant Dyane Lewis Carrere who is an author and expert on childhood trauma and education, and Dalla Mura. “And all the people who have chimed in and made their feelings known … all the passionate parents who have struggles. We get it, this is a big deal. It’s a big policy change. Thanks to the whole board for riding this wave with us all.”

Board Vice Chair Kelley Hackett of Waterbury thanked the policy committee members, acknowledging the gravity of the subject matter. “I know that it was really, really just heart-wrenching at times … hearing things, and just going through the emotions,” she said. “I really appreciate the time and effort that you took.” 

A request to acknowledge past harm

At the start of last week’s meeting, Dalla Mura was the only individual to comment during the public comment period. He thanked those in the community who advocated for the revised restraint-seclusion policy and then asked the board to not move on without acknowledging the impacts of past actions under the old policy. 

“I hope that we’ll hear how the district plans to repair the harm and trauma that it’s inflicted on its students. I hope to hear a public apology to the victims of inappropriate restraint and seclusion, and I hope to hear the district take accountability,” he said. 

He pointed to inadequate oversight over the years from the state Agency of Education, Board of Education and Mental Health Department. “However, there’s no excuse for the harm that has been inflicted upon hundreds of individual students in the care of HUUSD over the past decade — thousands if you include witnesses,” he said. 

Dalla Mura said he believes restraint and student seclusion were implemented in an intentional way over the years in the school district. “Harwood chose to allow contracted service providers to hold young children face down on the floor. In fact, we paid millions of dollars to outside agencies to do this. Harwood also made a conscious decision to build and use a seclusion room to isolate students,” he noted. “These were conscious decisions, not accidents. Ignorance and good intentions are not an excuse for the harmful impacts.”

Banning prone restraints and seclusion is just the beginning of reversing harmful practices, Dalla Mura suggested. “Once you vote to approve this policy … the job of the board is not done,” he said, calling for the policy subcommittee to continue.

“We know that countless parents and staff were ignored and silenced when they raised concerns about how their students were being restrained and secluded. Please consider hearing testimony from additional experts about how you can prevent this from going undetected in the future. Please consider working on a complaint and investigation process,” he said. “This district desperately needs help with accountability. Don’t blame this on a statewide problem. We shouldn’t need a law to tell us what’s right. Harwood should do what’s right for the sake of doing what’s right.”

Looking ahead

The board as a group did not address the issue of the impacts of the past restraint and seclusion policy. Board members, however, did discuss the possible future role of the committee that drafted the new policy. Committee member Cindy Senning of Duxbury said she found the work the committee did in researching the issue valuable and suggested it would be beneficial for the group to follow through as the policy is implemented. She noted how the seclusion exception ends in a year and that the shift in protocols would impact the relationships the district has with the outside agencies who contract to provide behavioral support staff.

Others agreed. 

The superintendent noted that it’s the board’s prerogative whether to keep a committee active. “It’s up to the board to provide oversight,” he said.

Board Chair Kristen Rodgers of Moretown said that could be something the board discusses at a future meeting. “This could be part of a larger discussion in the fall,” Rodgers said. 

Leichliter and Berliner discussed steps ahead involving staff in all schools as the district looks for new strategies to put into practice with students. They said the shift will involve more training and learning for staff. 

Looking ahead to next year, staff training will continue in trauma-informed practices and social-emotional learning. Each school will have crisis teams, Leichliter noted, and one aim is to have school psychologists in the mix. One challenge is staffing, he added, noting that there currently are approximately six openings for special education staff in the district. A new districtwide position has been created for next year that will be filled by current Moretown Elementary Principal Mandy Couturier. 

Leichliter and Beliner said that they will continue to rely on experts in the field who they have come to know over the past year including Guy Stephens, founder of the nonprofit advocacy organization Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint, who has connected the district with resources. 

Educator and consultant Carrere was well-received on two visits this year, Leichliter said, once last fall for a districtwide training and again in January to work with staff at Brookside. “Teachers have asked for her again,” he said, noting that she will return in June. “We’re continuing that deeper dive with schoolwide strategies to help prevent situations that involve any type of restraint.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Harwood board adopts new policy to ban dangerous student restraints.

BURLINGTON — Employees of Ben & Jerry’s flagship store in Burlington took another step toward forming the ice cream chain’s first union on Tuesday.

A group of employees calling itself Scoopers United is seeking to join Workers United, an international union that has been involved in efforts to unionize Starbucks employees. A short press conference was held outside the Church Street scoop shop to announce the results of a key union vote.

State Rep. Kate Logan, P/D-Burlington, was invited by the employees to oversee a “card check,” an important step toward officially forming a union. Logan said 35 of 39 staff voted in favor of unionizing.

“We are ecstatic at this turnout,” said Rebeka Mendelsohn, one of the employee organizers. “We are incredibly proud of all the staff that came forward to do this and we really look forward to the bargaining contract.”

In April, store employees sent a letter to management declaring their intent to unionize. Later that month, employees celebrated the company’s commitment to fair negotiations.

Logan applauded Ben & Jerry’s for allowing time for Tuesday’s card check and recognizing the results.

“It’s a huge accomplishment and I wish that every employer in the United States would do this for our workers,” Logan said.

Mendelsohn said Scoopers United will next focus on which rights it hopes to bargain for. Though she has been involved in the union push since its inception, Mendelsohn said that she would be leaving for graduate school. She said she would be working to “get the new generation of co-organizers up and running.”

Trey Cook, a field organizer from the Vermont State Labor Council, said the council is excited by Tuesday’s results.

“I think Vermonters know now that workers deserve more and we’re about to see a big wave of unionization, not just on Church Street but across the state,” Cook said.

At the April 28 press conference, an employee representative from neighboring Church Street business Black Cap Coffee announced that employees there were inspired by the scoop shop efforts and hope to form a union of their own.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Ben & Jerry’s Burlington scoop shop unionization effort moves forward.

Gov. Phil Scott struck down two measures on Saturday that would expand voting rights in local communities. 

He vetoed H.509, a charter change approved by Burlington voters that would allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. And, for the second year in a row, he rejected a charter change that would allow 16- and 17-year-olds in Brattleboro to cast ballots in local elections. 

In doing so, the governor added two more bills — plus the budget — to legislators’ checklist to reconsider during their June veto session.

Thanks to Dillon’s Rule, municipalities must earn the blessing of state lawmakers in order to make such amendments to their charters, no matter how widespread their local support.

In explaining his veto of noncitizen voting in Burlington, Scott harked back to his vetoes of similar measures in Montpelier and Winooski in 2021, stating that, “this highly variable town-by-town approach to municipal election policy creates separate and unequal classes of legal residents potentially eligible to vote on local voting issues.”

“I am happy to see legal residents who are non-citizens calling Vermont home and participating in the issues affecting their communities,” Scott said in his statement Saturday. “However, the fundamentals of voting should be universal and implemented statewide.” 

Both the Montpelier and Winooski measures made it into law with a veto override — suggesting Burlington’s charter change could follow the same path.  

Also on Saturday, Scott allowed H.508, which will expand ranked choice voting in Burlington local election, to take effect without his signature. Already in place for Burlington City Council elections, ranked choice voting will now also apply to mayoral, school board and ward officer races. 

In a statement, Scott expressed skepticism about the voting method but, citing the limited scope of the change, said he would still allow it to become law. “As we know, ranked choice voting went terribly wrong over a decade ago, resulting in Burlington abandoning the practice. Nevertheless, it appears the politics have changed in the City, for now, in favor of ranked choice voting,” Scott said, adding that he remains opposed to ranked choice voting at the statewide level. 

This year marks Brattleboro’s second attempt at amending its charter in order to lower its local voting age. Proponents of H.386 argue that the move would get Brattleboro’s teens engaged at a younger age, educating them on the civic responsibility of voting and empowering them with a voice in their local community.

Scott disagreed. In a Saturday statement, he repeated his argument from last year — that the bill exacerbates an inconsistency in state law when it comes to defining the age of adulthood. “For example, the Legislature has repeatedly raised the age of accountability to reduce the consequences when young adults commit criminal offenses,” Scott said. “They have argued this approach is justified because these offenders are not mature enough to contemplate the full range of risks and impacts of their actions.”

If this year’s floor votes are any indication, the Senate could be the ultimate decider in whether H.386 goes into effect — potentially setting Brattleboro voters up for a repeat of last year’s failed override attempt in the upper chamber.

A two-thirds majority of lawmakers present is required to override a gubernatorial veto. With all members present, such a move requires 100 yeas in the House, and 20 in the Senate.

The House voted 103-33 on the bill in April. But in the Senate, the floor votes were 16-8, followed by 18-10. When the latter vote was cast on May 9, two senators were absent: Sen. Dave Weeks, R-Rutland, and Sen. Irene Wrenner, D-Chittenden North. In order to override Scott’s veto come June, both would need to vote yes — or senators who previously voted against the bill would need to change their tune.

Should the override attempt fail in the Senate, Brattleboro’s charter change would face the same fate as it did last year, when the veto override attempt succeeded in the House but failed in the Senate.

Alicia Freese contributed reporting.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Phil Scott vetoes noncitizen voting in Burlington and voting for 16- and 17-year-olds in Brattleboro.

A hard frost crept through Vermont last week, damaging thousands of acres of growing produce. With overnight temperatures reaching as low as 25 degrees on the night of May 17, growers throughout the state woke up on Thursday morning to apple and berry blossoms that had turned black inside, conceding the possibility of future fruit.

On the morning after the frost, growers at Scott Farm Orchard in Dummerston surveyed the property, orchardist Erin Robinson said, sitting beside apple trees that were limp and glistening in the frost. 

“It is the most brutal feeling to love something so deeply and be so powerless to protect it,” Robinson wrote in an Instagram post.

“In my 25 years of working with fruit crops in Vermont, I have never seen frost or freeze damage this extensive,” Terence Bradshaw, associate professor at the University of Vermont Extension Fruit Program, said in a press release. “My team is systematically collecting damage data across the region to help inform next steps to respond to this event.”

According to Anson Tebbetts, secretary of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, the hard freeze could result in significant losses for growers who cultivate fruits, produce, berries and wine — and for the Vermonters who enjoy them come summer. 

“The losses caused by the late Spring frost is heartbreaking,” Tebbetts said in a press release. “The extent of the damage may not be known for several weeks but early indications are discouraging.”

Since the freeze, apple orchards and vineyards across the state have reported particularly grim circumstances, with ​​50% of primary buds reportedly lost in many Vermont vineyards, according to Kendra Knapik, president of the Vermont Grape and Wine Council.

Scott Adams, a co-owner of Adams Apple Orchard and Farm Market in Williston, said his farm was among the orchards severely damaged during the freeze. 

“I think we might have taken a pretty significant hit on the apple crop here, based on how cold it got,” Adams said. “But we’ll know better in a week or a week and a half, since there are different elevations in the orchard (with fruitlets) in higher places that may have survived.”

Outsourcing produce from other farms could prove to be difficult, Adams said, since other vendors, including Green Mountain Orchards, a farm in Putney from which Adams’ farm has obtained additional produce in the past, also experienced dire losses from the freeze. 

“If they were impacted, that means we’re impacted,” Adams said. 

Despite the significant damage to much of the produce throughout the state, farmers at Adams Apple Orchard and Green Mountain Orchards remain optimistic that there will be enough blueberries to offer to pick-your-own customers.

“Nothing appears to be dead on the blueberry bushes,” Adams said. “I think the blueberries survived … (although) you can’t really count on a crop until it’s in storage.”

While it is unclear whether Vermont growers will be eligible for financial relief assistance, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency provides federal crop protection for weather-related losses in certain circumstances. The Vermont Agency of Agriculture has begun reaching out to local growers to collect information on the damage, urging Vermont farmers to document and report their losses to their local Farm Service office in case aid becomes available.

For many farms, though, the losses caused by the freeze could be more than federal aid may be able to account for.

“(Crop insurance) is a pretty complicated entity to deal with,” Robinson said. “At this point we’ll take what we can get, but it by no means touches what is needed.”

At farms across the state, the effect of the freeze ripples out past the edges of the frozen fruitlets into the lives of the workers and consumers who depend on them. 

“I grieve for the fruit and try to keep the perspective that my trees are still living, that there will be harvests to come,” Robinson said. “But there’s also fear now — Mother Nature is something that’s out of our control with climate disruption, and for the men who come here to work to support their families back home, this will have a huge impact on them, and not just my farm.”

Of the eight seasonal farmworkers who travel to Scott Farm from Jamaica annually to work during the growing season, Robinson said four will lose their jobs this year because of the financial pressures the farm is facing after the frost. Some of the workers, she said, have been working at Scott farm for more than 30 years.   

Fredson Brissett, a farmworker from Trelawny Parish in Jamaica who has worked at Scott Farm for 25 years, said that after the frost, he sent photos of the blackened apple blossoms to some fellow Jamaican farmworkers who had yet to arrive at Scott Farm, and who this year, may not be able to at all.

“Plenty of us, including myself, depend on this overseas job to balance our budget back home,” Brissett said. “It’s gonna be a big setback for those who don’t have a chance to make it this year. Especially if they don’t find anywhere else to go.”

Brissett said he fears what could happen if frosts like this one become a more regular occurrence. He said he hopes farmworkers can collaborate to share strategies for preventing crop damage in the future to “save their crops and themselves.”

“For those who haven’t experienced this before as growers, and knowing this could happen again, I believe all growers should come together,” he said. “It’s gonna take a lot.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Hard frost threatens crops and the farmworkers who tend them across Vermont.