Education

The international Poker Power organization teaches women and girls poker-playing strategies that aim to strengthen risk assessment, decision making and financial literacy. Lark McCarron started the first-ever high school Poker Power club.

For Vermont Edition's first installment in the our series School Stories, we'll take a look at school redistricting and consolidation.

As part of Act 73, this year's sweeping education reform law, lawmakers enacted much stricter rules about where families can go with publicly funded tuition vouchers. Deborah Bucknam, a Walden-based attorney, is now laying the groundwork for a legal challenge.

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.

Vermont schools got more than $31 million in Covid relief money. Those funds ran out as districts faced unprecedented tax increases, and now it's a challenge to keep summer programs going.

For nearly two decades, the retired middle school teacher has been on a singular quest: to find, photograph, and inventory every school in Vermont that ever was — at least, if a record exists of it.

The smallest district in Vermont has fewer than 200 students, and the largest just over 4,000. Act 73 envisions radical change: districts with between 4,000 to 8,000 students, although the law allows some flexibility.

The money was earmarked for adult education centers, migrant education, teacher training, mental health supports, after-school programming and English language learner services.

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 latest news leaves over $18 million in congressionally-approved federal funding for Vermont school districts still in limbo.