The top reported proficiency rate is 51% in English language arts. The lowest is 33% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Bristol Elementary School
Bristol Elementary School sits on Mountain Street in the village of Bristol, a small Addison County town at the western foot of the Green Mountains. The New Haven River runs through the town center, and Main Street holds a compact commercial strip of antiques shops, eateries, and Vermont-made product stores. A town green with a gazebo, a natural playground, and a long-running tradition of summer band concerts forms the civic heart of the community. Bristol is the second-largest community in the county, and it serves as home to both this elementary school and Mount Abraham Union Middle/High School, the secondary school in the Mt. Abraham Unified School District. That district spans five towns: Bristol, Lincoln, Monkton, New Haven, and Starksboro.
The school serves prekindergarten through sixth grade. Its prekindergarten enrollment is unusually large relative to the other grades, which gives the building a distinctly early-childhood character while still reaching up into the upper elementary years. The student body is predominantly white, with small Hispanic and multiracial populations and a handful of Black students. Just over a third of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The school does not report IEP or English-learner counts, so those figures are absent here rather than absent in practice. A parent may want to ask the school directly about special education and language support to understand what is available.
On Vermont's Comprehensive Assessment Program, Bristol Elementary shows a split pattern. In English language arts, proficiency climbs from the early grades into the upper grades, with roughly half of fourth, fifth, and sixth graders reaching proficiency. Third grade sits lower but still approaches the midpoint. This is a reasonably solid ELA profile for a small rural elementary school. In math, the lower grades are weaker. Third and fourth grade proficiency is modest, and a parent may want to look into this further with the school. By fifth and especially sixth grade, math proficiency rises to a level approaching half of tested students, suggesting growth as children move through the upper grades. Science is tested only in fifth grade, where proficiency lands near the middle of the range seen across subjects here.
Because this is an elementary school, there is no graduation rate. There is also no chronic absenteeism figure in the data provided. The neighbor comparison set, which positions this school relative to districts in Addison County, could not produce a proficiency index or other comparative metrics because the comparable cohort was too small. That absence reflects the rural county's limited number of districts rather than anything about the school itself.
Housing in Bristol runs above both the state and national benchmarks for typical home values. The price-to-income ratio sits near five times median household income, which means buying a home here requires a substantial income relative to the broader national picture. Rents were not available in the data. Bristol's population has been stable to slightly declining, and no major new housing developments were identified. The town's growth pattern is slow and flat rather than expanding, which keeps the village character intact but also limits how much the housing stock turns over. Families looking to move into the district may find a tight market with limited new inventory.
The town's commercial base consists mainly of small Main Street retail and local service businesses. The school district itself and the Patricia A. Hannaford Career Center, which serves area high school students and adult learners, are among the largest institutional employers. No library or public transit system was identified in the available sources, though the town green and Memorial Park, with its wooded trails and waterfall on Baldwin Creek, provide civic and recreational gathering points. Bartlett Falls on the New Haven River is a popular swimming spot a short drive from the village center. The district brief turned up no major recent changes of lasting impact, so families considering the school are looking at a stable institutional setting rather than one in flux.
Bristol Elementary is a small, community-anchored village school in a stable rural Vermont town. Its ELA results are its strongest academic signal, with upper-grade math showing encouraging upward movement. The weaker early-grade math is the area most worth asking about. For a family drawn to village life, a walkable green, river access, and a close-knit community, this is a school embedded in its town rather than set apart from it.
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