My name is Elizabeth Burrows, and I want the State to hear about the effects of insulated decisions on the lives of individual people and communities, not just a cluster of voters in more populous areas.

I have been a resident of Windsor County for ten years, though I have deep family ties to Windsor and its environs going back many generations. While intimate knowledge of the area drew us here, my husband, Justin, and I specifically chose to move to a town with a very small school where we could be confident our growing boys would be truly known. We found “our” spot near my mother in Brownsville, at the end of a long and notoriously treacherous driveway.

For the past eight years, I have served on the local Board of Education and Supervisory Union Board, and on the four-town Act 46 706(b) study committee as we navigated our town of West Windsor through the arduous Act 46 implementation. The result was the newly-merged Mount Ascutney School District, of which I was the interim board’s inaugural chair, and which I chair once again this year.

Through testimony at the State House over Act 46, writing letters to my local legislators and others in support of issues I care about, and in working with Representative Zachariah Ralph on a bill pertaining to implicit bias in education, I realized that the battle for equity and in favor of cooperation was being fought at the State House as much as it is at home. I want to make sure that our Windsor-1 towns are actively represented in decisions by keeping you informed, seeking out your thoughts, and actively participating on your behalf.

In addition to serving on the School Board, since living here I have also worked to get implicit bias training into our school systems, participated in our local Reading-West Windsor Aging in Place group, been a pastoral care volunteer, and advocated for accessible trails. I make no bones about the fact that I want to help bring the ends of the community closer together; I believe they each benefit profoundly from the other. 

I am a big-picture thinker, but I am also a little-picture participant; both perspectives are important to me. I am thorough, do the homework necessary to make informed decisions, and I get a lot out of providing agency for others. Justin and I chose, and choose, Vermont as the state where we most wanted to raise our children. We teach them the value in prioritizing community, celebrating difference, listening to others, and sticking up for each other. Running to represent Windsor-1 is those qualities made manifest.