Five years later
Flood funds
Pandemic ushered in some legislative changes that are still with us
Proposed law would give farms financial help after bad weather events
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March 27, 2025
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Weekly news coverage for Charlotte and Hinesburg
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Champlain Valley grapples with AI
Spring in their steps
BRIANA BRADY STAFF WRITER
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The gravel trail just behind the ballfields in Charlotte was the starting point for March’s Charlotte Walks event. See story, page 2.
Sharing a home in Hinesburg BRIANA BRADY STAFF WRITER
Jaida Glessner and Len Duffy make good neighbors. Last week, sitting at Parkside Café in Hinesburg, the two joked back and forth about the cat Duffy had inadvertently procured for her. “I got her a cat,” Duffy said.
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“Well, I didn’t buy her a cat. I was given a cat.” “For the mouse problem,” Glessner cut in, laughing. “And then the cat bonded with me.” “I’m very happy not to have the cat,” he added. Glessner and Duffy met when they were matched through HomeShare Vermont, a nonprofit that’s
been operating since 1981 and offers a shared solution to the dual challenges of an aging population and a dearth of housing stock in the state. The program pairs people together for housing: a host, who See HOME on page 13
Stan Williams, an instructional coach with Champlain Valley Union High School, started a presentation at last week’s board meeting by asking school officials and board members a question: “Over the course of today, what interactions have you had with AI?” Williams and three other staff members have started working on the district’s approach to artificial intelligence. According to Williams, the group first formed a few years ago in an unofficial capacity. He was sharing office space with Charlie McFadyen, one of the school’s digital learner leaders, when ChatGPT was released, and the two began talking about how generative AI might affect teaching and what the opportunities might be. They were soon joined by librarian Katie Mack and media integrationist Gary Lambert, both of whose positions involve helping students navigate technology. The tone of their presentation to the board was cautious but surprisingly hopeful about the potential changes to education wrought by AI. While there’s understandable concern about generative AI’s ability to reproduce traditional schoolwork like essays, Williams
and the rest of the group also said it’s becoming essential to educate children in how to use it as a tool. The district’s actions have backed this perspective: last week, the group opened access to the Google AI platform Gemini to high school students. “You talk to your phone. You get an auto-correction on your paper. We’ve been using AI for a long time, but just without this generative piece,” Williams said. The growing presence of artificial intelligence in our everyday lives was affirmed in the responses to Williams’ initial question. School board chair Meghan Metzler talked about how her phone, in its most recent update, had started summarizing her texts and emails. Cassandra Townshend, a board director from Hinesburg who works at the University of Vermont, mentioned how she had used AI to pull themes out of interviews she had done with community partners that day. Williams noted that no one in the district is an AI expert. They are learning alongside everyone else. Necessarily, a certain amount of exploration and tinkering with different platforms has informed the initial guidelines the group has put together for faculty and staff concerning artificial intelligence. See AI on page 12
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