Vermont has been in a public health crisis for years - a crisis caused by stagnant wages, the erosion of the social safety net, and a steady decline in public investment in children. We can’t go back to business as usual- it’s time to shore up the foundation of our state for today’s children and generations to come. 

Voices for Vermont’s Children stands with Black activists calling for justice in Vermont and across the United States. We condemn state violence, which disproportionately claims Black lives, and demand accountability; both for individual police officers and for the institutions that foment and foster racism.

The governor and legislature have an opportunity to partner with our schools and communities to do more than simply reform and instead reimagine and transform so that we can truly, as the Governor stated, “emerge from this crisis on a path toward having one of the best education systems in the country.”

To claim the unprecedented nature of this situation - which in many ways it is - gives us a chance to create new responses. But there are also layers of precedent and relevant context so embedded in our reality that much of what is happening and will happen has already been written. Our systems, pre-pandemic, never worked well for everyone; they still don’t - and the number of people for whom they aren’t working has begun to exponentially grow.

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the census—and the funding it dictates—couldn’t come at a more important time. But in 2010, The undercount of Vermont’s children in the census resulted in a loss of $2,300 per child per year in federal funding, more than any other state. In addition to funding for schools, hospitals, and roads, more than 300 federal programs use census data to determine how federal funds are allocated to state and local governments. We cannot afford to lose out this time.

Yesterday, Voices sent out a policy memorandum to the Governor and Senate and House Leadership. We believe the challenge before us is two-fold: to take immediate, effective action to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable people, followed by a redesign of our broken safety net. Here are our recommendations.

Our Annual Advocacy Conference: Just Systems and Thriving Communities, for Every Child and Youth, held earlier this month at the Capitol Plaza in Montpelier, was packed with breakout sessions, plenary talks, and advocacy workshops, and brought together over 80 presenters and attendees to think about what positive change looks like on a state-wide level. What follows is just a glimpse at some of the wonderful work that took place on that day.