Like many journalists, I tend to see societies through their “beats.” I divide social and economic drivers into specific areas of interest:
· Public Education: private vs. constitutionally mandated public schooling, mandatory civics curriculum, testing, childcare, life-long learning.
· Shelter: housing, homelessness, co-housing
· Food systems: industrial vs. regenerative local agriculture, distribution systems, nutrition education
· Transportation: public (van, bus, rail, air) vs. private (car, personal jets)
· Environmental degradation: soils, waterways, air quality, chemical and fossil fuel regulation.
· Healthcare physiological/mental, nonprofit (mission) or business (profit), primary care or hospital care, community nurses and care coordinators, trauma counseling.
· Criminal Justice: policing, the court system, restorative justice, corrections, diversion, education, healthcare, and reentry counseling.
· State-government efficacy (executive, legislative and judicial); leadership, lawmaking, judicial function, nonprofit-governance engagement
I’ve organized my New Year’s wish list along these lines and will share my hopes for each in the New Year.
Public education:
a. We will not use our constitutionally mandated public-education system to fund private, religious, or home schooling.
b. Discard the costly labels of school hierarchy (pre-K, nursery, kindergarten, grade school, junior high, high, college, post grad etc.) and recast public education as a continuum of life-long learning, beginning at six months, after a paid family leave for parents. “Day-care providers” would become early-essential-education professionals and learning would begin at six months, a critical period in child development.
c. School location will be a function of the student’s age. In a child’s first twelve years, they will be schooled close to home in their communities, utilizing our many community schools which are a source of community adhesion. From twelve on they may continue in regional district schools. In college and post-grad… as far away from home as possible.
d. The job of parents is to nurture and raise independent, resilient young people to carry democracy forward, not to create dependency.
Housing:
a. As precursor to mental and physical health and to the criminal justice system, government plays role in supporting, regulating, and co-funding commercial housing markets. If left to function solely as a business -- like healthcare -- it will only maximize profits. Contrary to popular opinion, “market need” is not always a driver of beneficial investment. Private equity is buying up countless rental units and vacancies as long-term investments.
b. We will regulate housing development based on expressed consumer needs. Most young people no longer believe they will ever be able to afford to own a home and, if asked, many are comfortable with co-housing, so perhaps a cluster of 800-square-foot living units with shared amenities like a gym, library, communal kitchen and guest rooms. Elderly co-housing is increasingly popular in the U.S. and in Europe. We will ask different socio-economic groups how they choose to live.
c. Environmental factors being critical, we will take into account the natural environment and preclude construction in flood plains, wildlife migration routes, and prime agricultural areas. The UVM Leahy Center has pioneered research on optimizing housing construction locations in Vermont based on riparian systems.
Food systems:
a. Quality: we know that seasonal, regenerative farmsteads will produce better quality food without pesticides than large industrial operations.
b. Seasonality and distribution: we know that fruits and vegetables are seasonal and that providing year-round availability adds costs and requires fossil fuels for transport.
c. Nutrition and health: We know that good nutrition is a function of grown food rather than ultraprocessed foods produced by industrial giants. Nutrition education must be taught in our schools.
Transportation:
a. As a rural state, Vermonters rely on cars to travel. EVs and hybrids are slowly replacing fossil-fueled cars. Of Vermont’s 420,000 passenger cars, almost 25,000 (6%) are EVs or hybrids. We will encourage more.
b. Continue public and private investment in public transportation. Intercity vans and buses reduce regular commutation traffic, as do work-from-home options and shorter in-office workweeks.
c. Along our existing rail routes, we will introduce single-car, self-driving rail service. Sadly, we tore up an extensive rail network that existed in the first half of the 20th century when everyone bought cars… a giant leap backwards.
d. We will charge $2,000 landing and take-off fees at our major airports for private jets.
e. Further facilitate and expand ride-sharing options.
The Environment:
a. We will absolutely ban glyphosate (RoundUp), atrazine, chlorpyrifos, dicamba, paraquat, and all dangerous herbicides and pesticides known causes of Parkinson’s, cancer, and other diseases.
b. Add the cost of all plastic packaging to consumer products and groceries and seek truly-recyclable alternatives.
c. Recycle all tires, which when buried are a major source of microplastics.
d. End agricultural subsidies for industrial farms.
e. Expand low-income assistance for super-insulating homes and converting from fossil-fuel heat to heat pump, and electric and other renewable forms of heating and cooling.
f. Expand the boundaries between manure or artificial fertilizer spread near riverine drainage areas.
Healthcare:
a. We will hold nonprofit hospital boards legally accountable for their success or failure to deliver on population health. Nonprofits are legally accountable for mission and fiscal sustainability but not for profit and growth. “Population health,” the defined mission for nonprofit healthcare, is defined as quality, access and affordability.
b. Primary care is 6.5% of total healthcare cost. We will ensure that it becomes at least three times that. We will move healthcare investments upstream to community-based primary care facilities where it is much more cost-efficient as are all preventive measures. We will implement Town Health Coordinators.
c. Expand access to mental-health and addiction support services such as those provided by Howard Center and Brattleboro Retreat. It’s not enough for the Vermont legislature to name them as “designated providers” and then not fund them adequately.
d. Expand trauma-informed counselling in community primary-care centers to mitigate the downstream expense of treating adverse childhood experiences.
e. Support the regulatory and guidance efforts of the Vermont Legislature, the Green Mountain Care Board (GMCB), the VT Dept. of Health (DOH), and Vermont Healthcare 911 (of which I am a board member).
Criminal Justice:
a. Vermont’s prison population is 1650 as of November 2025, of which some 650 are detainees awaiting trial. With too few competent judges, the Vermont judicial system is inadequate to handle current arraignments. We add more competent judges. A third of Vermont judges have retired since the end of the pandemic.
b. For nonviolent crimes and crimes of property we will expand community-based restorative justice resources, court diversion, corrections education and reentry counseling programs.
c. Support the effectiveness of our police by supplementing their interdiction teams with mental health and addiction professionals.
d. Finally we acknowledge that our upstream socio-economic failures can be measured in our emergency rooms and in our prison cells.
State government:
a. Executive branch: Elect those who understand leadership as service beyond the accumulation of power and authority… those who manage current crises, but also foresee and forestall emerging crises such as those outlined above.
b. Legislative branch: Redesign to better harvest the civic commitment of those serving. A smaller unicameral legislature will allow expenses to shift from process costs to support systems. Merge and expand Legislative Counsel and Joint Fiscal into a single research and legislative drafting body and expand it to include diverse Vermont thinkers serving in an honorary capacity who can propose solutions.
c. Expand and diversify the judiciary to manage the current caseload in a timely manner, bearing in mind the constitutional right of citizens to a “speedy trial by their peers.”
Finally, I would underline that all “beats” are interdependent. Lack of education, food, or housing impact healthcare and criminal justice. We must all work on all these issues together, and it will take real leadership at all levels to do so. The Vermont we want and can afford is within our grasp if we are bold enough to make change.
Bill Schubart is a writer from Hinesburg and this piece first appeared on his Substack page. READ IN APP
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