Vermont State Colleges Trustees approve consolidation, campuses to stay open vermontbiz.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from vermontbiz.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Vermont’s state colleges poised to adopt unification plan for survival’s sake
Modified: 2/21/2021 9:15:01 PM
Trustees of the Vermont State Colleges are poised to endorse a plan Monday in which all three of the system’s four-year schools would eventually merge into one “Vermont State University.”
The consolidation of Northern Vermont University, Castleton University, and Vermont Technical College under one common accreditation is part of a sweeping plan to make good on the system’s promise to transform itself in exchange for extra help from the state.
“It will be more student-focused, it will serve the state better, and it will get us to a place where we’re on a sounder financial footing,” state colleges Chancellor Sophie Zdatny said Friday.
Johnson voters will elect two selectboard members on Town Meeting Day, and both of them will be newcomers, since incumbents Kyle Nuse and Doug Molde opted not to run again.
The Vermont House has worked productively in the last two weeks. We approved the annual budget adjustment bill (H.138), a mid-year technical adjustment to keep the stateâs fiscal year 2021 budget in balance.
H.138 passed with strong support and included investments to support the Legislatureâs continuing response to the coronavirus pandemic. Much of the adjustment was a result of reallocating unused Coronavirus Relief Funds, which were supposed to expire at the end of last year but were extended by the $900 billion relief bill passed by Congress last December.
COVID relief money was redirected to assistance for the hard-hit hospitality industry, for emergency food, hotel-housing for the homeless, and rental assistance, for Vermont State Colleges system support and for completion of broadband expansion projects.
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by Bill Schubart Change is relentless. Humanity’s efforts to understand, accommodate, and survive it are invariably buffeted by the headwinds stirred up by those whose privilege may be curtailed by that change.
Reversing environmental degradation caused by the extraction and burning of fossil fuels is, understandably, opposed by those who may, in time, lose their jobs or the profits they earn from it.
Efforts to reduce the extremes of poverty and wealth through taxation are opposed by those whose wealth will be taxed.
And efforts to reinvent the post-secondary educational system to ensure its survival are questioned by those whose jobs may be at risk (or ensured) by that reinvention.