Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
At least in theory, the Windham Central Supervisory Union (WCSU) - composed of elementary school boards in Townshend, Brookline, Newfane, Windham, and Jamaica, and Leland & Gray Union High School - could smoothly implement Act 153, the latest legislation that directs disparate union school boards to merge into a single-board K-12 school district.
But given the ideological competition between local control and cost control, the process all but guarantees a bumpy road, even as school committee members and administrators take a warily optimistic view of the process.
The WCSU district towns are now working with the year-old Act 153, the law guiding the formation of Regional Education Districts (REDS), and now being wrangled statewide by school boards, superintendents, teachers, and the public.
The new law may directly affect the way education administration is conducted in the WCSU - but not until 2017.
If a proposed Windham County project to create hydroelectric operations on two existing federal flood control dams gains final approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), hydroelectric power development in southern Vermont may see a resurgence. After several years of meeting interim requirements, Plainfield-based Blue Heron Hydro LLC...
Two meetings regarding two proposed hydropower projects to generate electricity using existing dams in Townshend and Jamaica will take place on May 11 in the Maria Lawrence Room at the Vermont Agricultural Business Education Center in Brattleboro. The public is invited to attend the meetings at 11 a.m. and...
On Nov. 2, 2010, three months and 15 days before he was found frozen to death in his house on Round Hill Road in West Townshend, widely known musician and teacher David “Dave” Shapiro was also well-enough known to 260 Townshend voters who elected him a justice of the peace, along with a slate of six others, for a two-year term. And that office, in a roundabout way, was the main reason the 58-year-old Shapiro was found. There is no...
Two fire-displaced Brooks House residents seemed anything but troubled on Monday as they milled around the Gibson-Aiken Center on Main Street, their refuge for the time being. On Sunday, Deanna Garcia, who's lived at Brooks House for about five years, was glad to be back in her fourth-floor apartment after convalescing at Thompson House for six weeks, recovering from hip replacement surgery. She'd been home for only one night. When she first smelled smoke, she said she wasn't that bothered,
John Bramley, president and CEO of the Windham Foundation, will retire May 31 after three years at the helm. He will be succeeded by Robert Allen of Dorset, former president and CEO of the Vermont Country Store, as well as a board member of several businesses and nonprofits. Allen will come on board in early May, so there will be a bit of overlap. Enthusiastic, welcoming, and informal, Bramley, 61, was wearing a green Windham Foundation sweatshirt for our interview.
The Windham Foundation is organized as an operating foundation under the federal tax code, which declares that it spend at least 85 percent of its adjusted income - or its minimum investment return, whichever is less - directly for the active conduct of its exempt activities. Other kinds of foundations - corporate, private, independent, and community - live by other rules. The Windham Foundation's designation as an operating foundation means that the 48-year-old historic preservation, land management, and grant-making entity...
Robert Allen of Dorset, who for many years was the president and chief executive officer of the Vermont Country Store, will be the new interim president and CEO of the Windham Foundation. Allen will start in early May and will succeed John Bramley, the current foundation CEO and president since December 2007. Bramley is set to retire in late May. The selection of Allen came after a two-month search for a Vermont chief executive with high-end retail experience to continue...
