the essex
February 15, 2018 • The Essex Reporter • 1
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Consultants share town center draft By COLIN FLANDERS “The past cannot be the future.” That short tagline from the new Essex Town Center master plan seems to encompass all work going into the ambitious revamp. It’s recognition that although the area remains a vital pocket of growth for Essex’s future, economic forces over the last quarter-century are much different than those today — and the same will be said decades from now. A year in the making, the plan is still in draft form, and it will be at least another year until Essex decision-makers consider any of the recommendations for adoption. But residents and planning commissioners reviewed a draft of the document last Thursday. Four community input initiatives guided the consultants in their crafting of the plan: a steering committee, focus group, community survey and an October open house. Consultants Mark Kane, of Burlington-based SE Group, and Shannon Murray, of Front Porch Community Planning and Design, said their chief goal is to both establish a vision for the ETC’s growth and determine what policies and regulations will help achieve it. But that first required understanding how develop-
ment has evolved since the current town center plan’s adoption in 1991. Turns out, not much. Kane said overall growth has remained somewhat flat, with the bulk of development occurring in and around I-289, a far cry from the full build-out envisioned in the current plan.
- Final plan expected by month's end - Draft shows build-out concept projecting up to 800 new housing units - Consultants plan to recommend up six new zoning districts, focused on a mix of residential and mixed-use “Whatever is happening externally to Essex has not resulted in a lot of fundamental changes,” Kane said. To be fair, a lot has changed since 1991. The circumferential highway is now a punchline, and economic pressures have challenged the viability of traditional growth. Look no further than Peter Edelmann’s plan to revitalize the Essex Outlets to see the response: a density-driven See ETC, page 2
Petitions urge Essex High to change GPA system PHOTO BY NEEL TANDAN
Class-goers take part in a "simple style" tai chi routine at the Essex Senior Center last week. The class is tailored to those who have difficulty standing and is free to the public.
Seniors harness their chi By NEEL TANDAN
F
or the ideal form in tai chi, one should imagine sitting on the tail of a dragon – core engaged, spine elongated and pelvis forward. This was the advice of instructor Billie Hall while teaching a free seated tai chi class at the Essex Senior Center last week. Seated tai chi is an offshoot of a tai chi for arthritis program, allowing those with impairments that make standing difficult to still reap the benefits of the practice. “This is a combination of both physical and mental,” Hall told the class. “Even though you’re seated, you’re going to get some exercise.” Hall likened the subtle physical shifts in tai chi to stepping off a curb or walking. “We have to shift our weight when we walk. We don't think about it,” she said. “The purpose of the class is to make you mindful of where you are in space and time. Where your feet are. Where your weight is.” There wasn’t a shred of workout clothing in the room, with the attendees donning Vermont winter wear instead – corduroys, jeans, knitted sweaters and turtlenecks. Participants sat on green folding chairs beneath the fluorescent lights, curtains half drawn.
Each movement was slow and deliberate; the air seemed as though it had taken on extra weight as it was pushed and pulled with open hands in front of the eight class-goers. “Pretend you’re in a phone booth. The box is only so big,” Hall said, who teaches sun-style tai chi, with shorter, less strenuous movements and a slower tempo than other forms. "Honor your body. You know where you are today. You know how your body feels today,” she said. During each movement, there was a silence and a calm. You could hear the buzz of the lights, the ticking of the clock and the slow inhalations and exhalations throughout the room. Hall has been practicing tai chi for four years and began teaching two years ago after earning her certificate. She leads both a sitting and standing version of the class on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the Covenant Community Church and the Essex Senior Center. Hall said many of the people in her sitting class go on to the standing class after regaining strength and balance. “People say ‘You’re not going to gain any strength seated,’ Hall said. “Oh, you come and try it and we’ll see.” See TAI CHI, page 3
By COLIN FLANDERS A pair of online petitions calling on Essex High School to modify its grading scale say the current system has long disadvantaged students when applying for college and scholarships. The petitions aim to address how EHS converts numerical grades to a grade point average. Currently, an EHS student with an 85 percent average earns a 2.4 GPA, while the same student at Champlain Valley Union earns a 3.0. Similar differences can be found up and down the grading scale when compared to schools around the county. “This is unfair and hurts Essex students when they apply to college, try to get jobs or apply for scholarships. Our hard work deserves to be recognized,” reads a petition started by an EHS student, which has garnered over 175 signatures. That petition appeared after a similarlythemed petition started by parent Erynne Ross.
The petitions are the latest development in a long debate over all facets of EHS grading. In 2016, The Reporter detailed discontent with the district’s passing grade of 70 — 10 points higher than seven other county public schools — and faculty previously led a failed effort to convince the school to reexamine its scale in 2009. EHS principal Rob Reardon acknowledged the historical frustration and said the petitions come at a useful time, given the requirement for Vermont schools to move to a proficiency-based system by 2020. That transition is about two years from completion and will include a discussion on whether to keep the traditional 100 scale or shift to a new system altogether, perhaps a 1 to 4 scale or letter-based, Reardon said. As part of the transition, Reardon said he and fellow EHS administrators plan to propose a grading system to the school board this spring, one that’s more See GPA, page 2
One hundred years later, Essex native recalls a life of 'hard work' By COLIN FLANDERS Grace Naylor still remembers plopping chokecherries in a pail under the summer sun, back before she was old enough to help much in the garden except tug at the weeds. It was hard work, but the five cents she’d earn from her grandfather made it all worth it. And she still remembers the early morning trips down Route 15, shoes sinking in the sand during the mile-and-a-half commute to school at the Four Corners, back when cows dotted the countryside and traffic was little more than a trickle. Naylor and her siblings raced to the porch to watch a rare car rumble past, kicking up dirt in its wake. Naylor turns 100 in two days, and time has changed her hometown. The main roadway now sends a reliable rush of cars pass by her family’s old farm where Simon’s Store now sits, and similar buildings have since
sprouted where other families used to tend the land. Naylor has changed, too. Her vision is fading, and arthritis grips her joints to the point she can no longer partake in once-cherished hobbies: tending her envied gardens or crafting braided rugs that cover her household and many others. But she still lights up when jaunting back to her early childhood, back when she and her sister Delvine caught fish in a trout brook nestled behind their house near Indian Brook, where they lived a year until it burnt down. Back when they used to fry fish over a campfire, playing house, pretending they were parents to their younger siblings until their mother died and they could no longer pretend. Naylor was 13 at the time and too young to quit school, so she finished out the eighth grade and then took over household duties,
buying a book to learn her way around the kitchen, cooking for the whole family and impressing company with her homemade cakes and pies and donuts — especially donuts. Her father, meanwhile, worked shifts at the brickyard and tended a dozen cows in the mornings and evenings. Some nights, Naylor walked down to Christmas plays or parties at the Essex Classical Institute. It was a fine trip, save the covered bridge at Brown’s River, where she always feared a skunk lurked in the shadows (luckily, one never did.) Other days, she finished all the work and then tracked down her eight younger siblings to play ball in the yard or slide down the snow-covered hills. Naylor married her husband, Harold, at age 16. Soon after, the couple purchased her father’s farm, which they’d grow to over 300 acres after another purchase. Later, See NAYLOR, page 2
PHOTO BY COLIN FLANDERS
Grace Naylor, an Essex native, turns 100 on Saturday.