The top reported proficiency rate is 76% in English language arts. The lowest is 57% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Camels Hump Middle School
Camels Hump Middle School sits in Richmond, Vermont, a small town in Chittenden County where the Winooski River exits the Green Mountain foothills. The school serves grades five through eight and shares a campus at the village edge with Richmond Elementary. Together they sit just outside the compact historic downtown, which clusters along Bridge Street with its brick commercial row, the sixteen-sided Round Church, the town library, and Volunteers Green. The town operates under a Selectboard and town manager, and its civic life centers on familiar small-town traditions: a July Fourth parade, a farmers market, and events at the Round Church and the riverside park. Interstate 89 crosses the town via Exit 11, and U.S. Route 2 runs through as well, giving residents a straight shot toward Burlington and the broader county.
Richmond evolved from a farming community into a transportation hub and is now primarily residential. Its population grew sharply after the Interstate opened, and growth has continued at a slower pace into recent decades. The town has also faced serious and recurring flooding along the Winooski, with major events in the past several years damaging low-lying areas. Publicly reported sources note that these floods have affected some of the same vulnerable zones repeatedly, which may bear on future development decisions. The nearest major hospital is the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington. Specific large private employers were not identified in available sources; the town government and the schools themselves are among the local public-sector employers.
The school draws from a predominantly white student body, with a small Hispanic population and a small share of students identifying as two or more races. A modest portion of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Data on English learners and special education populations was not available. The enrollment is moderate for a Vermont middle school, with grade-level cohorts that narrow somewhat from fifth grade to seventh before ticking back up in eighth.
Academic results from the most recent state assessments paint a mixed but largely encouraging picture. English language arts is the school's clear strength. Sixth and eighth graders posted strong proficiency rates, and seventh grade was solid as well. Fifth grade ELA was the weakest of the four but still showed more than half of tested students reaching proficiency. Math follows a more uneven pattern. Fifth grade math proficiency was low, and a parent may want to look into this further with the school, as it stands apart from the stronger sixth- and seventh-grade results. Eighth-grade math dipped from the seventh-grade peak but remained in a moderate range. Science results, available for fifth and eighth grades, landed in a middling band, with the older cohort outperforming the younger one.
Because this is a middle school serving grades five through eight, there is no graduation rate to report, and that metric does not apply here. Participation rates were not provided in the available data, and multi-year trend information was not available, so it is not possible to say whether these results represent improvement, decline, or stability over time. Civil-rights data, staffing details, and course-access information were also absent, so those dimensions could not be assessed. The comparison set used for positioning the school relative to districts in Chittenden County could not produce proficiency or attendance comparisons due to insufficient cohort data, so the school's standing among its county peers could not be determined from the available figures.
The housing market in the school's zip code is expensive relative to both state and national benchmarks, with the typical home value well above the Vermont median and the national median. Mortgage costs at current rates are substantial, and the price-to-income ratio is elevated. Rental data was not available. For families considering the area, the housing cost is a real factor alongside the school's academic profile.
The Mount Mansfield Unified Union School District governs Camels Hump and its partner schools across Bolton, Jericho, Richmond, Underhill, and Huntington. Available searches turned up no major recent district-level changes, budget controversies, or facility decisions meeting a lasting-impact threshold. The district's formation and the addition of Huntington predate the recent window.
What the picture suggests is a school where literacy outcomes are a genuine strength across the middle grades, where math performance is strong in the upper middle grades but has a clear soft spot in fifth grade, and where the surrounding community offers a distinct small-town Vermont setting with real access to the county's larger employment and service center. Families for whom a village environment, a moderate-sized middle school, and solid ELA outcomes matter may find this a good fit, with the caveat that the fifth-grade math result is worth asking about directly.
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