In June last year, Winooski’s first-ever equity director quietly left her position. The job has gone unfilled since. And now city councilors want to drop funding for an equity director in the upcoming fiscal year’s budget, putting a “pause” on a role meant to address racial disparities.
Last Friday, the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy met with Xusana Davis, Vermont’s executive director of racial equity, on how racial equity themes play into energy policy as they work through the Affordable Heat Act.
The ACT 1 Ethnic and Social Equity Standards working group met online on Monday to discuss social justice issues in education policy, including a lengthy debate over what terms to use to describe non-European Americans.
A House lawmaker this week introduced a bill to protect the “academic freedom of public educators” who teach their personal beliefs regarding gender, race and other controversial topics in Vermont’s schools.
The first meeting of the Vermont Climate Council of 2023 erupted with frustrated members of the BIPOC community accusing the council of racial tokenism.
Around a third of Vermont’s towns have adopted declarations condemning discrimination and committing themselves to welcoming all people, and Bethel was one of the first.
I recently investigated what “work” was proposed to be done by Vermont’s new IDEAL program, funded with $220,000 to increase the work of diversity, equity and inclusion committees around the state. The chief work appears solely to be to inculcate woke ideology in the minds of more people.
“We would like to remind the school board trustees you are elected into your positions to represent the voice of Milton residents, parents and taxpayers. Therefore you work for us, not the superintendent or the administration,” DeLong said.
Town leaders can get more tools to welcome newer Vermonters through a statewide program launched last month by Gov. Phil Scott and the state Office of Racial Equity.
Existing DEI groups already provide a track record in Vermont, and the question of what constitutes “action” and “leadership” for the IDEAL program has not been clearly defined — stated goals are lofty, yet short on details.
A Milton parents’ group has circulated a citizens’ petition asking the Milton School Board to reject a proposed District Equity Policy. At issue is the crucial difference in meaning between ‘equality’ and ‘equity.’
The governor at his weekly news conference promoted “IDEAL Vermont,” a new diversity program designed to foster racial equity at the local level throughout the state.