Editorial: Three school budgets must pass

In a legislative column in today’s issue, Sen. Ruth Hardy and Rep. Peter Conlon write a telling piece shedding more light on this year’s contentious school budgets, and urging residents of three area school districts — Mount Abe, Otter Valley and Slate Valley Union — to pass their budgets on the upcoming votes.

Could this year’s “tough” legislative session have been less bitter, more productive, and had a better outcome with a different dynamic between the Legislature and the governor’s office?

It’s no small deal to create something from nothing. It’s even more incredulous when what’s created is top-notch.

If others aren’t going to protest America’s support of Israel through its billions in cash and tens of thousands of bombs that have reduced wide swaths of Gaza to rubble, campus protests have a role to play — and at the very least have succeeded in making … (read more)

It’s not often that residents of any town can gladly approach a significant bond issue knowing all parties involved have excelled at crafting a $16.99 million library renovation project down to a very manageable $4.4 million payment for taxpayers to retir … (read more)

Residents of the Slate Valley Unified Union School District, which serves Orwell and the northwestern part of Rutland County, face tough sledding in getting its school budget passed on a third attempt next Thursday, May 9.

As voters within MAUSD learned this past week, defeating such budgets have real consequences: The school district sent out 17 RIF (reduction in force) notices to teachers, many within the school’s art department in preparation for what administrators call … (read more)

Wherever you were in the path of the total eclipse this past Monday at quarter past three in the afternoon, the world seemingly stood still for a moment or two, and the vibe was noticeably different.

In last week’s Addison Independent, reporter John Flowers wrote two insightful stories revealing student behavioral problems within the Addison Central School District, most of which occurred in the elementary schools, with Mary Hogan Elementary School in … (read more)

Two things are clear in the recent Vermont Supreme Court ruling that suspended the law license of Addison County State’s Attorney Eva Vekos: first, that Vekos failed to properly respond to a lawful request for information about her fitness to fulfill her … (read more)

I’d be remiss if I didn’t shout from the rooftops that the Addison Independent was named best-of-the-best among New England’s largest weekly newspapers.

Last week and this are crucial weeks in the state’s legislative session; it’s when bills either cross over from the House to the Senate or vice-versa — or die.

Just as Ukraine is at a crossroads in its war with Russia, so too is today’s Republican Party as a political crossroads between supporting America’s fight for freedom and against autocracy or siding with authoritarians like Russia’s Putin. The choice is t … (read more)

Vermont’s U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch, with a handful of other Democratic senators, are right to urge President Joe Biden to use the Foreign Assistance Act to stop providing offensive weapons to Israel in its war with Hamas.

As about a third of the state’s school districts, including three of the four school districts serving Addison County, were defeated in Town Meeting votes this Tuesday, voters naturally turn to two questions: Short-term, what are the next steps to propose … (read more)