The top reported proficiency rate is 92% in Science. The lowest is 65% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Rumney Memorial School
Rumney Memorial School sits on Shady Rill Road in Middlesex, Vermont, serving prekindergarten through sixth grade as part of the Washington Central Unified Union School District. It is a small community elementary school by any measure, with total enrollment fitting comfortably in a single building. The student body is predominantly white, with a modest share of students from other racial and ethnic backgrounds. About two-fifths of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The school is not a charter or magnet school. Data on individualized education programs and English learner status was not available, so those portions of the student support picture remain unclear from what we have.
Academically, Rumney Memorial's state assessment results from the most recent school year tell a mixed but generally encouraging story across the tested grades. In English language arts, proficiency was strong in the upper elementary grades, with most students meeting or exceeding the state standard in fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. Third grade ELA was more middling but still had a majority of tested students proficient. In mathematics, the pattern was more uneven. Third grade landed in the middle range, fourth grade was a clear soft spot with fewer than a third of tested students reaching proficiency, and then fifth and sixth grades were strong, with the large majority of students proficient. Science, tested only in fifth grade, was a bright spot, with nearly all tested students proficient.
A parent reading these results should keep the small class sizes in mind. Each tested grade had only a handful of students, so a single child's performance moves the proficiency rate substantially. The fourth grade math result stands out as the one area where a parent may want to look into this further with the school, asking how instruction and support are structured for that cohort and whether the dip reflects a one-year group effect or a broader instructional gap. The upper grades, by contrast, show real strength across subjects.
Because Rumney Memorial serves only prekindergarten through sixth grade, there is no graduation rate to report, and the school does not have a high school cohort. This is expected for a school with this grade span and does not reflect a missing piece of the school's own record. Chronic absenteeism data was also not available, and no discipline, staffing, or course-access information was provided, so those dimensions of the school environment are not represented here.
The housing market around Middlesex sits somewhat above the Vermont state benchmark and modestly above the national benchmark for typical home values. Rents in the area are moderate relative to income. With current mortgage rates, the estimated monthly cost of ownership runs higher than local rents, which may make renting a relatively accessible entry point for families moving into the district. The price-to-income ratio is elevated, meaning buying a home here requires a solid household income relative to the local market.
We looked for a locale brief describing Middlesex and a district brief covering recent changes in Washington Central Unified Union, but neither was available in the data provided, so we left those out rather than guess. The neighbor comparison set, which positions this school relative to districts in Washington County, did not produce applicable proficiency, graduation, or attendance comparisons at the school level because the cohort was too small or the relevant values were missing. This means we cannot place Rumney Memorial's results against its county peers in a structured way from the available data.
What the picture does show is a small, community-rooted elementary school with uneven but often strong academic results in the upper grades, a particular dip in fourth grade math, and a setting where housing costs run a bit above the state average. Families considering this school would benefit from asking about math support in the early-to-mid elementary grades, how the small cohort sizes shape instruction and peer interaction, and what the transition looks like as students move on from sixth grade into the next stage of the district's pipeline.
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