Better boat
Batter up
Shelburne firefighters receive funds to upgrade watercraft
CVU baseball looks for redemption, other teams look to rebuild
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Volume 54 Number 19
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Parents invited to weigh in on school phone rules
Pantry packing
BRIANA BRADY STAFF WRITER
A group composed largely of parents sat in the library at Champlain Valley Union High School the week before April break to discuss a topic currently on the table in both the Vermont legislature and the Champlain Valley School District: their children’s phones. Over the past few months, both the legislature and the school board have been discussing imposing a bell-to-bell phone policy in the district and across the state, meaning that from arrival to dismissal, children would be barred from using their personal electronic devices. At the beginning of the school year, superintendent Adam Bunting put together a working group to investigate what shape such a policy might take and research the impact of similar policies in other schools. In March, the school board’s policy committee
presented a draft policy to the board and is now collecting feedback from the community. The panel inclued two students, senior Mira Novak and sophomore Marina Hallisey; Nick Canaday, an English teacher at the high school; TJ Mead, a house director at CVU; Erika Lea, a board member from Shelburne and the chair of the policy committee; Steve Hale, a pediatrician; and Angela Arsenault, the representative sponsoring the phone policy bill in the legislature who only recently stepped down from her position on the Champlain Valley School Board. In general, the perspectives from both the panel and the audience two weeks ago were in favor of the bell-to-bell policy. However, the policy and its proponents have received pushback from board members, parents and students in recent months. See PHONE on page 12
Emerald ash borer damage prompts more tree diversity BRIANA BRADY STAFF WRITER
PHOTO BY BRIANA BRADY
Susan Grimes helps manage the tiny pantry stationed outside Upscale Resale on Route 7 in Shelburne.
Greg Ranallo, an arborist and the owner of Teachers Tree Service, walked along the sidewalk in front of the Shaw’s on Route 7 in South Burlington last week, stopping to point at a tree where the bark was stripped off, revealing a swirling pattern on the wood beneath. “This is from the larvae feeding on the
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wood,” he said. The pattern in the wood was one of the signs that tipped him and others off that emerald ash borer had infested the tree. Because of the insect, Ranallo said, that tree, and the rest of the ash trees lining that part of the street were now dead, despite appearing healthy a year ago. According to RanalSee TREES on page 15