HARTFORD — At 14, Ezra Tane, a freshman at Hartford High School, is already deeply involved with school activities.
He plays soccer and basketball and is a representative on the Student Council. In middle school at Hartford, he helped to organize the Marathon Dance, which raised money for local charities, and was part of Hope Happens Here, a student athlete-led organization that focuses on mental health education. His ultimate ambition, he says with assurance, is to become president of the United States.
In the meantime, Ezra, who lives in Quechee with his family, is educating himself on local and state government, and how the sausage gets made.
In August, he joined the Vermont State Youth Council, or VSYC, a 28-seat organization for students ages 11 to 18, that brings the perspective of young Vermonters on a number of issues to the state Legislature.
Ezra, whose family moved from Long Island, N.Y., to Vermont during the COVID-19 pandemic, discovered he was interested in government and policy during his last year of middle school. It helped, he said, to come to a small state where it is easier to jump into local and state government.
“Seeing all the good things you can do in Vermont, it’s much easier to thrive,” he said.
After several years of planning, the council came into being in 2022, when the state Legislature passed H.293, co-sponsored by then-Rep. Diane Lanpher, D-Vergennes, and Rep. Mike Mrowicki, D-Putney. Gov. Phil Scott signed it into law in May 2022.
“It’s just really significant that we have an institution like this in Vermont for youth to have their voice heard, and an avenue for policymakers to reach out and hear from young people,” said Brianne Smith, youth engagement coordinator for the nonprofit organization Vermont Afterschool in South Burlington, which arranges the council meetings and other engagements.
The law requires legislators and the governor, or someone from his office, to meet at least once a year to hear a report from the Council.
“The process that happens before that is heartening in that youth from across the state meet regularly and process what they see in their lives. That becomes what they recommend legislators would do well to pay attention to,” Mrowicki said, citing such vital issues as housing, transportation and access to mental health services.
Members serve a three-year term, and meet virtually twice a month; occasionally they will meet in person. The council, which aims to include two students from each of Vermont’s 14 counties, comprises committees that make recommendations on such issues as youth mental health, climate change, equity and anti-racism, youth voices and education.
Council members are paid a stipend: $50 for every virtual meeting, and $150 for an in-person meeting.
Janet Potter, the student assistance provider at the Hartford Middle School, encouraged Ezra to apply for a seat on the council because of his interest in social justice and politics. Ezra was accepted in July and began his term in August.
Potter said in an email that she encourages “youth to apply to committees, councils and to generally get involved because they have so much to offer and their voices are so critical to help solve the problems we face as a community today — we just need to allow them the space, and listen to them.”
Molly Armbrust, a Hartford High graduate who served both on the VSYC’s Equity and Anti-Racism committee from 2022 to 2025, and the Hartford Committee on Racial Equity and Inclusion, said the VSYC is “another angle to effect change.”
The first term was marked, she said, by “a lot of figuring out what was happening. A lot of us have been engaged in equity work in more local contexts, so it was valuable to take a broader perspective, and look at state-level structures that we felt would be supportive to the goals that we were focusing on in a more local way.”
With the council’s first round of recommendations, “things did not necessarily move forward in a super clear way. But it takes many, many years to get things sort of integrated,” Ambrust said.
For the second round, the council looked at ideas and legislation that were already being taken up in Montpelier. “A lot of it was finding things that were already in the works or, in progress within the state at different stages of the process, and kind of putting our support behind that,” Armbrust said.
Brianne Smith, of Vermont Afterschool, has watched the council’s evolution. “Each committee creates recommendations that they would love for Vermont to consider, and…they’ve presented those to the governor and the House and Senate government operations committees. They’ve also talked to their own representatives, and have built strong relationships with them,” Smith said.
Ezra, who sits on the education committee, said that he’s particularly interested in seeing that student assistance programs, which aid young people with issues arising from drug and alcohol use, depression and challenging home lives, become available in all Vermont schools.
A dearth of such programs is “deeply affecting the mental health of youth,” he said. Currently, only 44 of Vermont’s 305 public elementary, middle and high schools have either a part-time or full-time SAP, according to the Association of Student Assistance Professionals in Waterbury, Vt.
Ezra is also concerned about the teacher-to-student classroom ratio when smaller schools close and are folded into larger supervisory unions.
The council has been a rare opportunity to meet students from across the state. “I come from a school with a decent amount of kids and someone else might come from a school with not a lot of kids. They can give their input on what it looks like for them and I can talk about what it looks like for me,” Ezra said.
He has found the lawmakers that he’s met receptive to hearing the council’s recommendations. “The adults might not get everything, but the youth who are down there are actively looking and seeing what goes wrong, and what goes right,” he said.