VPR News

A group of school districts filed a legal appeal Thursday challenging Act 46, the state’s school district consolidation law.

Santa Claus has already visited Johnson, Vermont. You may have missed this news, but scores of his followers did not, braving single digit temperatures and work weary parents on the first Friday night of December to meet the man himself. Some children even hand-delivered their lists so he wouldn’t forget.

Brattleboro writer Ann Braden became known to many Vermonters when she started the advocacy group GunSenseVT in 2013. Meanwhile, Braden, a former teacher, was raising two small children and writing. And now her debut novel has been published to rave reviews.

Dr. David Toll was a physician who practiced medicine in St. Johnsbury for decades and connected with patients from across the Northeast Kingdom and northern New Hampshire. He saw patients from childhood into middle age and worked until he himself was 90. And over this weekend, he died. He was 93 years old.

One barrier to entry for blind people into science and technology fields4 is the challenge they may face drawing, doing the drafting required for engineering, or even doing mathematics that require graphing. In 2011, with support from the National Federation of the Blind, a UVM student and two UVM engineering professors started a company that makes drawing tablets that create raised lines that blind people can touch. And - critically! - they also figured out a way to make an effective eraser.

A recent case shows that when undocumented immigrants encounter local law enforcement, they may still run the risk of being turned over to federal immigration authorities. This happened despite a fair and impartial policing policy that discourages authorities from doing so.

According to the American Chiropractic Association, “back pain is the single leading cause of disability” worldwide. And like many, I’d “thrown out my back” before and knew back pain could be bad. But at the end of October, I became a real part of the statistic.

The Vermont State Colleges System wants a big boost in state funding. Currently, state funding makes up 17 percent of the system's budget, but leaders of the colleges want that to increase to 30 percent over the next few years, amounting to $25 million more in funds.

Like the Christmas story itself, it’s a mystery to me, how every year I buy and schlep a six foot tall balsam fir into my home and spend hours decorating it, while my British partner sits on the sofa drinking tea and egging me on.

Vermont State Police have been reviewing their use-of-force policy after several recent shootings involving police officers, and now the agency is looking for a consultant to review that policy.

A school in Newfane is fighting to keep its yurts, which the local Act 250 commission wants removed . Now a legal battle is brewing between Vermont’s landmark land use law and the ability of a small independent school to survive.

When Ken Schatz took charge of the Department for Children and Families four years ago, DCF was still under intense scrutiny after the deaths of two young children under the department's supervision. We're checking in with Commissioner Schatz to talk about what's changed since then. And we'll talk about homelessness, the opioid crisis and the future of the state's only juvenile detention facility.

I don’t exactly have a Vermont accent. My first language is German, and even though I started learning English in fifth grade, the accent sticks. It’s not a big deal; I can usually communicate just fine, to the extent that we humans can communicate with words and language – but that’s another story.

There are a matter of hours left to sign up for 2019 health insurance coverage on the state-run exchange during open enrollment, but a state official says residents could still complete their application next week if needed.

Some new information has just been released from an ongoing study following nearly 6,000 Vermonters who graduated from high school in 2012. There's some good news for Vermont in terms of college attainment, and some bad news – or ways the state could focus its energy.