The Deeper Dig

Data from 21 billion Facebook friendships shows that when you know more high-income people, your income is more likely to rise over time, according to an analysis from Opportunity Insights, a nonprofit based out of Harvard University. The data puts numbers to something that’s pretty intuitive: Social connections, even just acquaintances, can pass along job openings and other opportunities. 

The study found that certain regions were far more likely to foster those types of connections than others. Vermont has a relatively high degree of “economic connectedness” compared to other states. 

But those friendships are still relatively rare. People are far more likely to be friends with others within a similar social class. There’s two main causes for this, according to researchers: Within groups, people tend to draw toward others like them. But the built environment — schools, stores, local zoning — also plays a big role. 

In this episode, data reporter Erin Petenko looks for community ties that connect Vermonters across class. She interviews Jana Smart and Emily Maclure of the Craftsbury General Store; Brian Lowe, executive director of the Vermont Council on Rural Development; 

Belan Antensaye, a board member of the Vermont Professionals of Color Network; and Cheryl Morse, a social geographer at the University of Vermont.

Next week, Vermont voters could write abortion protections into the state constitution. But 50 years ago, Vermont was a state where most people went elsewhere to end a pregnancy. 

The Vermont Supreme Court had legalized abortion in 1972, with its decision in Beecham v. Leahy. But while elective abortion was allowed, it remained elusive: The University of Vermont’s hospital, which came from a Catholic tradition, said it wouldn’t offer the procedure. Vermont hospitals did fewer than 20 abortions per year, and more than 1,000 patients traveled out-of-state annually to terminate a pregnancy. 

So in just three months, in the short window between the Beecham judgment and the Roe decision, hundreds of people in the Burlington area — activists, faith leaders, hippies, bankers, lawyers — organized and created the Vermont Women’s Health Center. It was the first women-run health center of its kind in the United States. 

The Health Center also created a unique apprenticeship program that enabled women to become physician assistants and to provide abortions. It trained UVM medical students and OB-GYN residents at a time when it was rare for medical schools to train students in abortion. It was written about in major medical journals. It survived a ballot referendum, a fire and an onslaught of out-of-state protesters. 

The Women’s Health Center operated as a worker’s collective for years, and this episode includes just some of the women who worked and trained there over its nearly-thirty-year run. Rachel Atkins, Sue Burton, Berta Geller, Cate Nicholas and Janet, all physician assistants, discuss their work at the Health Center, and reflect on this post-Roe era. Allie Stickney, former CEO of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, describes the first call she answered on a pre-Roe abortion hotline.

For the past two years, Reps. Katherine Sims, D-Craftsbury, and Vicki Strong, R-Albany, have served alongside each other in the Vermont House, jointly representing seven towns in the Northeast Kingdom. 

But this year, due to redistricting, Sims and Strong are competing for a single seat. It is the only race in the state where an incumbent is guaranteed to lose. 

Along stretches of Route 14 in Craftsbury, nearly every driveway sports a campaign lawn sign, alternately supporting each candidate: Sims, Strong, Sims, Strong. Past election results suggest this could be a tight race, won by just a handful of votes. 

“I don't want to wake up the day after and wish that I had talked to one more voter,” Sims said. “And so I'm trying to do everything that I can.” 

Sims was first elected in 2020, after campaigning almost entirely online due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This year, she’s been knocking on voters’ doors for hours at a time, three to four days a week. With help from Democratic volunteers, her campaign has knocked on more than a thousand doors, she said.

Strong, who described herself as “very much a homebody,” said she’s focused much of her campaigning at community events, such as farmers markets and town parades. Her husband is a local pastor, and their last name is well-known in the local community. 

“I hope they’ll look at my 12 years representing them and say, you know, Vicki’s been faithful,” Strong said. “She answers my emails, she cares. She’s not, like, a political activist. She’s really there to represent me in Montpelier. I hope they’ll look at that and vote for me.”

Over the summer, and into the first few months of the school year, school districts across the state scrambled to fill not just teaching positions, but also support staff roles, such as custodians, bus drivers and paraprofessionals. 

Earlier this week, two Vermont schools — U-32 in East Montpelier and Spaulding High School in Barre — canceled classes due to staffing shortages, amid a spate of absences from Covid-19 and other illness. 

Teachers and administrators cite a range of reasons why educators have left the field: pandemic burnout, political clashes over curricula and Covid response, uncertainty about pensions and the potential for higher wages in other fields. Anecdotally, many of these departures are early retirements. 

In the years preceding the Covid-19 pandemic, about 360 to 370 Vermont teachers retired each year, according to data from the state treasurer’s office. In the 2020 fiscal year, that number spiked, to more than 460 retirements. It remained high, above 400, in 2021, the most recent year of available data. 

In this week’s podcast, two former Vermont teachers describe their decisions to take other jobs. Don Tinney, president of the Vermont-NEA, explains why staffing needs don’t always sync up with enrollment numbers. And James Nagle, chair of the education department at St. Michael’s College, describes how the pandemic impacted teacher training.

At first, the Shapovalov family thought they’d be able to avoid the worst of the fighting. Their village, Skelky, along the Dnipro River in Ukraine, was close to a large nuclear power plant. They didn’t think the invading Russian army would dare to shoot anywhere nearby.

But the tanks rolled in. They could hear explosions from the bomb shelter some nights. 

They spent nearly 40 days living under Russian occupation before they were able to escape. 

Now, they’re living in Derby, in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, just miles from the Canadian border. They were the first family to arrive at the “House of Mercy,” a former nursing home recently transformed into housing for more than 30 Ukrainian refugees. 

House of Mercy is a project of Agape Ministries, an Albany-based Christian nonprofit led by Scott and Theresa Cianciolo that works with developmentally disabled children and adults. This summer, the organization purchased the 10,000-square-foot shuttered nursing home in Derby from North Country Hospital. 

Many of the Ukrainian families who arrived throughout the month of August have children with disabilities. People with a range of skills — from plumbing to painting to physical therapy — have shown up at the house in recent weeks to volunteer their time, to support arriving families and help convert the building into accessible and comfortable housing. 

In this episode, Sasha, Dmytro, Oleksandra and Yakov Shapovalov describe their journey out of Russian occupation and their transition to life in Vermont. Theresa and Scott Cianciolo walk reporter Ethan Weinstein through the house in Derby, and discuss how a community quickly came together to build a place of refuge. 

The Vermont Agency of Transportation has an internal word for when a tractor trailer wedges itself on the windy mountain road between Stowe and Jeffersonville: a “stuckage.” 

And while they’re working on a handful of ways to prevent stuck trucks, it remains a persistent, vaguely goofy, problem. Earlier this summer, not too long after the Notch road reopened from its annual winter hibernation, two trucks got stuck in the Notch in less than two weeks. 

From 2009 to 2021, an average of 8.6 trucks have gotten stuck in the Notch each year, according to data from the Vermont Agency of Transportation. That number has decreased in recent years, with only five stuckages in 2021. 

The agency isn’t exactly sure what’s behind the trend, said Todd Sears, the agency’s deputy bureau chief of operations and safety. They have increased the number of warning signs on surrounding roads, and gotten some GPS services — specific to commercial truckers — to exclude the Notch on their programs. 

A stuckage can shut down the road for hours. It takes careful choreography to get a truck back down off the mountain.

Buzz Ferver is on a mission. The proprietor of Perfect Circle Farm in Berlin wants to find a persimmon that will grow well in central Vermont. So far, he’s planted more than 15,000 seeds. Last winter, just one plant survived. 

But Ferver is working on something bigger, too. He is cultivating a whole collection of perennial crops — mostly fruits and nuts — that can thrive in Vermont as the climate warms. He envisions a future where farming has shifted away from annual planting and fertilizing, to a method that keeps the soil more intact. 

“Climate change is in nobody’s favor, including trees. Because that kind of change, that's disaster — that's like meteor-hitting-the-planet kind of change,” Ferver said. “But because of climate change, I may have better luck growing plants here that historically wouldn't grow here.”

His work is also a sort of history project — and scavenger hunt. Ferver combs through historical records and Facebook groups to track down plants cultivated by previous generations of growers. 

In this week’s podcast, Ferver talks persimmons, pawpaws and pecans. Plus, Vern Grubinger, a vegetable and berry expert at the University of Vermont Extension, explains some of the challenges and promises of cultivating perennial crops.

Last week, Vermont shut down its Covid-19 testing sites. These sites operated for more than two years and accounted for most of the 3.6 million results recorded by the state Department of Health over the course of the pandemic. 

State officials have pointed to the increased use of antigen tests as one reason for this shift. As take-home testing has become more common, public health agencies have adjusted their tools for measuring the virus’s risk. But each of these metrics — whether scattered PCR tests, hospitalizations or wastewater sampling — offers an incomplete picture. 

With this change, Covid infrastructure that has been offered at no up-front cost to individuals is increasingly absorbed into the normal healthcare system. And Congress appears unlikely to re-up federal Covid funding, meaning individuals will likely have to pay for future tests, vaccines and treatment either through insurance or out-of-pocket. 

On this week’s podcast, VTDigger data reporter Erin Petenko and Dr. Trey Dobson, chief medical officer at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center, assess what the end of widespread PCR testing means at this stage of the pandemic, and what data sources they’re looking to now. 

A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling struck down state-level rules that barred public money from going to schools that teach religious beliefs. According to some legal scholars, that decision has unique consequences for Vermont — and could require the state to rethink how it funds K-12 education. 

The case, Carson v. Makin, started in Maine. Like Vermont, Maine uses a tuition system in towns that are too small to have their own public schools. Students in those towns get money from the state to be educated somewhere else: either a public school in another town, or a private school. 

Maine did not allow families to use this tuition money at religious schools, where faith was a significant part of the curriculum. Parents sued, arguing it violated their freedom of religion. Last week, justices sided with the parents and struck down Maine’s restriction as unconstitutional. 

That means Vermont’s system will likely also have to change. Yet Vermont has its own constitutional provisions addressing religious liberty — and now lawmakers have to find a way to navigate between the state and federal constitutions. 

On this week’s podcast, Peter D’Auria, who covers education for VTDigger, and Peter Teachout, a professor at Vermont Law School with expertise in constitutional law, discuss the ramifications of the ruling.