Chieftain defense costs top $10,000 thus far Hearings with three appellants have yet to be scheduled

By Shawn Cunningham
©2023 Telegraph Publishing LLC

The Green Mountain Unified School District thus far has spent $10,000 defending its decision to continue using the word Chieftain as a mascot name, and a hearing before the Agency of Education has yet to be held. Once the hearing gets under way, those costs are expected to grow. The spending figures come from invoices The Telegraph received through a Public Records Act request.

Back in May, the board of the GMUSD voted that the word Chieftain did not violate its own school branding policy, a policy that the state mandated schools to adopt. While a majority of the board believed that it did violate the policy, the wording of the question for the vote and a poor internet connection resulted in the opposite decision. 

The policy says, “school branding that directly or indirectly references or stereotypes the likeness, features, symbols, traditions, or other characteristics that are specific to either: (A) the race, creed, color, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender identity of any person or group of persons” or those associated with “the repression of others.”

Two board members contacted by The Telegraph say they had no knowledge of the legal strategy or the scale of the spending. The AOE has not yet set a date for hearing the appeal. A hearing – or hearings – would likely push that number higher.

The mascot has been an issue for a number of years. In October 2021, the board voted to stop using the logo that featured the silhouette of an apparently Native American man wearing a Plains Indian headdress. The board kept the Chieftain name but in January of this year, it adopted the model policy “Nondiscriminatory Mascots and School Branding” put out by the Vermont School Boards Association. During that meeting, the board voted 7 – 2 to “retire” the Chieftain name, but a month later it reversed itself by a vote of 6 -4.

In response, the board received complaints from a number of individuals as well as the NAACP and Gedakina, a Native American organization, and on April 11 it held a hearing to receive those complaints. Under the statute, the board had 45 days to say whether the Chieftain name violated the policy or not and to outline the basis for its decision.

On May 24, the GM board issued a decision saying that the name did not violate the policy and three private citizens  — Carrie Roy King, Deb Velto and Matthew Gorsky — appealed to the Secretary of Education as prescribed in the Act 152 which mandated nondiscriminatory branding in Vermont schools.

It wasn’t until July 10 that a remote meeting was held with the three appellants, attorney Mick Leddy representing the school board and AOE General Counsel Emily Simmons acting as the hearing officer. According to Gorsky and Velto, the parties agreed that appellants could have separate hearings  and time to present evidence and witnesses that they could not during the school board’s April 11 hearing.

But on Aug. 17, Simmons informed the appellants that the district would be seeking a different way to hear the appeal. Simmons gave Leddy one week to submit the request and one week for King, Velto and Gorsky to answer. The appellants do not have an attorney.

Leddy’s request was threefold:

• That the three appeals be consolidated into one proceeding,
• That the appeal not be a “contested case,” and
• That the appeal should be an “on the record review. “

While Leddy’s request was expressed in terms of saving time and AOE resources, they could present other advantages to GM’s case. For example, under Vermont’s administrative procedures, a contested case may be appealed to the Vermont Supreme Court, something GM would want to avoid. And an “on the record review” would only focus on testimony and procedures at the April 11 school board hearing. Instead, a  “de novo review” would allow the appellants to present to the hearing officer even more information, including witnesses.

All three appellants say that the Leddy’s requests go directly against the agreement that they arrived at with him during a July 10 video conference in which Simmons attended. In his response to the motion, Gorsky called changing the rules after they had been set “dirty pool.”

It appears that the AOE understood the agreement from the July meeting because in the same Aug. 17 email in which Simmons alerted King, Velto and Gorsky to Leddy’s procedural request, she also asked each appellant to provide at least three dates after Sept. 11 when they would each be available for two hours so they could have their hearings. She also said that one week prior to that date they would be required to disclose the names of witnesses they planned to call to testify.

On the same day that Leddy submitted the procedural request, he said in an email, that after the July 10 video conference, they contemplated having the appeal completed by the beginning of school in the fall. He then predicted that the decision would “come in October at the earliest” while calling for measures to streamline the process and make it more “efficient.”

In response to Leddy’s request, the three agreed to have their appeals heard together – although they pointed out that each had presented separate evidence. They also rejected his request for an “on the record review” and viewing the case as not a contested one.

King and Velto say that their appeal is especially important since it is the first action under Act 152. In King’s response to Leddy’s request she says that the the situation “demands nothing short of meticulous consideration … rushing is not an option.”

As of publication time, no date has been set for any hearings and, according to King, the AOE has not acknowledged the receipt of her response to Leddy’s request.