VPR News

Rumors had been flying for months, but now it’s official. Green Mountain College is closing its doors at the end of this semester.

Rutland filmmaker David Giancola’s latest movie premieres Friday at the Paramount Theatre. Axcellerator is a sci-fi-action comedy with lots of special effects, plenty of familiar backdrops and even a local celebrity or two.

Many students, faculty and people living near Green Mountain College say they are saddened but not necessarily shocked by the news that the 185-year-old school will close in May.

In his budget address, Gov. Phil Scott outlined his key spending initiatives for the coming year. This includes a proposal to finance a long-term plan to clean up Lake Champlain - and the state's other major lakes and streams - with existing revenues. We're taking a closer look at the Governor's budget priorities.

It's hard to believe, but listeners have been transfixed by the Eye on the Sky weather forecasts on VPR for more than 37 years. It was December 1981 when the partnership between the station and the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium began. Senior Meteorologist Mark Breen shares a behind-the-scenes look at the Eye on the Sky operation.

Gov. Phil Scott used his budget address Thursday to call for the first proposed tax increases of his tenure, but simultaneously backed a plan to dramatically lower the estate tax paid by wealthy Vermonters.

Emily Bernard has stories to tell. Some are hers and some were passed down by family members, but all of them connect in a deeply personal way to her sense of being as a black woman in America. The essays are collected in a new book called "Black Is the Body: Stories From My Grandmother's Time, My Mother's Time, and Mine."

Gov. Phil Scott delivered his budget address Thursday afternoon at the Vermont Statehouse.

A few days ago, my child came home from school dismayed that two kids from her class had made fun of her doing the floss.

The Vermont Supreme Court says the state has to repay a wind developer all or part of a $100,000 fee required for environmental review of a project in Swanton that is now on hold. The developers had paid the fee, but asked for the money back after an adverse ruling from the state Public Utility Commission.

January's Brave Little State looks at the pros and cons of heating with wood . About 38 percent of Vermont homes burn wood for some kind of heat. Almost a fifth of all households rely on wood as their primary way of staying warm. But when Vermonters who heat with wood face the choice of heating their home or putting food on the table, it often falls to donation-based and volunteer-staffed wood banks to offer enough wood to help out.

The other day I came across a pamphlet published by the Ford Motor Company in 1954 with little essays describing tours you could take on the roads of New England — Ford’s way of getting people out driving their cars.

Last year Governor Phil Scott vetoed a paid family leave bill. This year, Scott and New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu have unveiled a voluntary plan that would involve state employees from both states. The Legislature has also made the issue a priority for this term.

Elected officials will need to nearly double the state’s contribution to higher education if they want to ensure Vermont students have access to an affordable college education, according to the chancellor of the Vermont State Colleges System.

Whenever I drive the interstate after a heavy snowfall, I scan roadside maples and oaks for perched raptors, grimly hunched and staring at the highway — a redtail or a Cooper’s hawk, perhaps; or maybe an immature bald eagle, as brown as dirt and big as a grocery bag.