Original Research by School Decision on Bellows Falls Union High School District #27
Bellows Falls Union High School District #27 is a single-school district serving the upper high school grades in Windham County, Vermont. The district operates Bellows Falls Union High School, which draws from several communities across the southern part of the county. The housing data points to a district spread across Rockingham, Chester, Grafton, Westminster, and Putney, with home values that vary widely from one town to the next. Grafton sits at the higher end of that range, while parts of Rockingham are more affordable. Taken together, the district's weighted home values run below both the Vermont and national benchmarks, and the price-to-income ratio suggests a relatively accessible housing market compared with much of the state. Year-over-year movement has been mixed, with some towns seeing modest gains and Grafton experiencing a sharper decline.
The school itself is small for a four-year high school, with a grade distribution that is fairly even across the four years. The student body is predominantly white, with small numbers of students identifying as Hispanic, multiracial, Black, and Asian. We looked for free-or-reduced-price lunch data, individualized education program rates, and English learner counts, but those figures were not available in the data provided. Without them, it is hard to characterize the economic profile of the student body or the level of specialized support services in detail, and a parent may want to ask the school directly about those dimensions.
Academic performance data was largely unavailable. State assessment results were not reported in the data we received, and no multi-year trend information was present. The district's four-year graduation rate also was not available in the comparison set, which means we cannot position Bellows Falls against its Windham County peers on either proficiency or graduation outcomes. These gaps may reflect how the state reports district-level data for union high school districts, or they may stem from reporting cycles. Either way, a family evaluating academic results should request current proficiency and graduation figures directly from the school or the Vermont Agency of Education.
What we can place among Windham County's districts is chronic absenteeism and per-pupil spending. The district's chronic absenteeism rate sits above the midpoint among Windham County's districts, meaning a larger share of students miss school regularly than at the typical county district. This is worth paying attention to, since chronic absenteeism tends to correlate with lower academic engagement, and a parent may want to look into this further with the school to understand what drives it and what interventions are in place. On the spending side, the district lands in the middle range but lower half of county districts for per-pupil current expenditure, which gives a general sense of resource levels without telling the full story of how funds are allocated.
We looked for a locale brief and a district brief with parent-relevant context and recent changes, but neither was provided, so we left those out rather than guess. Program offerings, course access details, staffing ratios, discipline data, and civil-rights indicators were also absent. Without information on Advanced Placement, dual-enrollment, career pathways, or extracurricular offerings, we cannot speak to the breadth of academic pathways available. A parent considering this school would benefit from asking about those programs directly, particularly given the small size of the student body, which can shape what a school is able to offer.
What the available picture suggests is a small, rural Vermont high school district serving a mostly white student population across several southern Windham County towns, with housing that is relatively affordable for the region, per-pupil spending in the middle of its county peer group, and a chronic absenteeism rate that is elevated compared with neighboring districts. The missing academic data limits what can be said about outcomes, so families should treat the school itself as the primary source for current performance and program information.
See more original research from School Decision →