Current News

The Coalition for Equal Educational Opportunities Our Vermont legislators recently commissioned a state-of-the-art study to investigate how best to apportion funds to schools equitably. Unfortunately for the students of Vermont, it detailed serious inequities in school funding. What this study unveiled was an outdated distribution of funds to its districts. For twenty years the tax structure in Vermont has skewed away from fully supporting our most vulnerable students and families. Nearly 60% of Vermont schools have had their equalized students undercounted, some by more than 20%. This has led to higher tax rates and fewer resources for these schools. This has left lasting scars on our kids, and the deepest scars are in the poorest school districts.

by Christine McGowan When the water pump on Allard Lumber’s boiler went a few years back, Trevor Allard finally had the excuse he needed to begin building the Combined Heat and Power (CHP) system that he had been considering for years. “I couldn’t justify throwing out a good boiler,” said Allard, “but the CHP system promised efficiency, and therefore savings, that I wanted to invest in other parts of the mill.” One of Vermont’s oldest and largest family-owned sawmills, Allard Lumber in Brattleboro was founded by Cliff Allard, Trevor’s father, in 1974.

Vermont Business Magazine Green Lantern Solar and Vermont Academy are pleased to announce that Vermont Academy is now a participant in Vermont’s net metering program. Vermont Academy is located on 450 acres at the foothills of the Green Mountains in Saxtons River, Vermont, and is one of Vermont’s oldest private secondary schools.

Vermont Business Magazine iSun, Inc (NASDAQ: ISUN) a leading solar energy and clean mobility infrastructure innovator with 50 years of construction expertise for solar, electrical and data services, has announced that the Company will redeem all of its outstanding public Public Warrants to purchase shares of the company’s common stock, par value $0.0001 per share.

Vermont Business Magazine It has now been a year since the first case of COVID-19 was identified in Vermont and to date 16,371 total Vermonters have been diagnosed with it. Starting tomorrow, people age 16 and older with certain high-risk health conditions can make appointments for COVID-19 vaccine (Thursday, March 11 at 8:15 am.) As of Wednesday there have been over 130,000 Vermonters who have received at least one vaccine dose. The VDH is also reporting today that there are 80 new cases of COVID-19 and zero deaths, which remain at 211.

Vermont Business Magazine Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, hailed House passage Wednesday of the American Rescue Plan, which will bring much-needed financial relief to Vermonters and help to Vermont communities. The House passed the final version of the package that the Senate had passed on Saturday. Leahy said that through direct assistance to Vermonters, financial aid for the State of Vermont and local municipalities, and dozens of other programs, the package will direct more than $2.7 billion in formula funding and economic payments to the state and to individual Vermonters. The bill now goes to the desk of President Biden, who has said he will sign it.

​Vermont Business Magazine Park Burlington, a public-private partnership between Burlington Business Association and the Department of Public Works, has announced the release of a new interactive parking map covering downtown Burlington. The map was created by Lauren Grimley, Lee Peters, Jon Russell, and Michael Muzzy, as a capstone project at Burlington Code Academy.

Vermont Business Magazine It is said that honesty is the best policy. It's a sentiment shared by noted business strategist Renée Mauborgne, who maintains that a company must make an honest assessment of where it is as an organization and where it stands in the marketplace if it is to develop a road map that will lead to future success.

"I think a lot of organizations live an illusion about themselves," said Mauborgne, a professor of strategy at INSEAD, one of the world's top business schools, and co-author with W. Chan Kim of Blue Ocean Strategy, which has sold more than 4 million copies, and their latest book, Blue Ocean Shift.

Vermont Business Magazine Norwich University has been awarded a two-year $1.6 million grant from the National Security Agency and is the lead institution in the Evidencing Competency Oversight Project, supporting the National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity (NCAE-C) Program. The project consists of three simultaneous efforts defining experiential education in higher education cyber programs.

Vermont Business Magazine The COVID-19 vaccinations rollout continues ahead of schedule. On Monday, people 55 years and older with certain high-risk health conditions were able to make appointments. It was announced Tuesday that the State will be opening vaccinations up earlier for Phase 5b — Vermonters ages 16 and older with certain high-risk health conditions. This group will now be eligible starting this Thursday, March 11th (originally March 15th). Teachers, school staff, and public safety personnel are also now able to book appointments.

Vermont Business Magazine Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) released the following statement Wednesday in support of the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act that was reintroduced in the House of Representatives: “Reauthorizing VAWA is long overdue since the law expired in 2018. The bipartisan bill introduced in the House mirrors legislation we introduced in the last Congress. Unfortunately, that bill was blocked in the Senate last Congress and didn’t even receive a vote in committee"

Vermont Business Magazine If the thought of launching your new business during the pandemic has stopped you in your tracks, new data has revealed that success could be around the corner should you pursue your startup. And while Vermont has the lowest rate in the nation for startups, it also has the overall lowest failure rate. Vermont and Alaska have the lowest startup rates (6% and 7.1%), with an average number of 16.8 new businesses created per week in Vermont and 18.9 in Alaska. However, Vermont, alongside Iowa, is where a business has the highest chance of surviving its first five years.