Agency of Education

The school's executive director said the reputational damage done by the Agency of Education's probe had cost I.N.S.P.I.R.E. too many students to continue operating.

The Vermont Agency of Education said it was unaware that a recent hire, whose job included shooting video in schools, had previously been investigated and faced a civil lawsuit for secretly filming two teenage girls in a changing room.

A vote to revoke the school’s approval would likely shut it down. Therapeutic schools like I.N.S.P.I.R.E., while private, are wholly publicly funded.

The money, already greenlit by Congress, was expected to be released to schools Tuesday. But on Monday evening, the U.S. Department of Education told states the grants were under review.

The school submitted a lengthy rebuttal to the Council of Independent Schools last week.

Vermont’s reply is not quite as defiant as the response issued by New York, which bluntly refused to provide any certification. But the legal analysis included in Vermont’s letter to federal officials echoes what several blue states have used in their replies to the Trump administration’s directive.

With millions of dollars under threat, Vermont Education Secretary Zoie Saunders instructed the state’s superintendents on Friday evening to individually certify compliance with a new directive from the Trump administration purporting to ban “illegal D.E.I.” But by Monday evening, after concerted pushback, Saunders had reversed course.

A state official told lawmakers Wednesday they estimated school districts statewide had about $16.7 million in collective exposure.

The state began scrutinizing the school last spring, after former educators went to the state — and the press — with allegations that the school’s leaders had fired them for raising concerns internally about I.N.S.P.I.R.E.’s practices.

The effect of the Trump administration's cuts to The Department of Education is causing a lot of uncertainty among educators.