The top reported proficiency rate is 50% in English language arts. The lowest is 28% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on St. Johnsbury School
St. Johnsbury School sits on Western Avenue in the shire town of Caledonia County, serving pre-kindergarten through eighth grade as the public school option in Saint Johnsbury, Vermont. The town is the largest community in the Northeast Kingdom, a regional commercial hub shaped by its industrial past. Fairbanks Scales, Maple Grove Farms, and the Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital anchor the local economy. The downtown core along Main Street holds the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium, and the Caledonia Superior Court. Interstate 91 and Interstate 93 converge at the town's southern edge, making it an auto-oriented crossroads. The Lamoille Valley Rail Trail, built on former rail lines, is being developed into what is described publicly as the most extensive recreational trail network in New England. Commercial activity has seen some contraction, with the Green Mountain Mall losing its anchor store in 2021. The town's population has been relatively stable.
The school serves roughly 660 students across all grades, with a fairly even distribution from pre-K through eighth grade. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The student body is predominantly white, with small representation from other racial and ethnic groups. Data on English learners and students with individualized education programs was not available in the provided materials.
On Vermont's Comprehensive Assessment Program, English language arts results are the stronger part of the academic picture. Proficiency rises steadily from third grade through the middle grades, with seventh grade standing out as a high point and eighth grade holding firm above the midpoint. The trajectory suggests that students grow in literacy as they move through the building, and the upper-grade ELA results are a genuine strength.
Mathematics tells a more mixed story. Proficiency is lower in the early grades, with third and fourth grade results reflecting that a minority of tested students met the state bar. Results climb through the middle grades, with seventh grade reaching a level where nearly half of tested students were proficient. Eighth grade drops back from that peak. The pattern of stronger performance in seventh grade across both subjects is striking and may reflect a particularly strong cohort or instructional approach in that grade. A parent evaluating the school for a younger child may want to ask how the school supports math growth from the primary into the intermediate grades. Science results for fifth and eighth grade were suppressed in the state data, so no read on science proficiency is possible from what was provided.
No graduation rate applies here, because the school does not serve high school grades. In Saint Johnsbury, students transition after eighth grade to St. Johnsbury Academy, a private boarding and day school founded by the Fairbanks family. The town does not operate a public high school and instead pays tuition for students to attend the Academy, which functions as the community's de facto secondary school. This is a distinctive arrangement that shapes the K-through-eight experience at St. Johnsbury School: it is the last stop before a transition into an independent school environment.
The school sits in a housing market that is more affordable than the Vermont state benchmark and the national typical home value. The price-to-income ratio sits below what many households face in higher-cost parts of the state. No rental data was available for the area. Mortgage rates in the broader economic environment have been elevated, which affects affordability for families looking to buy.
We looked for district-level changes or strategic priorities through a search of publicly available materials and found little of lasting impact reported, so the narrative stays with what the school and town data can support. Information on staffing ratios, course access, discipline, attendance, and chronic absenteeism was not available in the provided data. The neighbor comparison set, drawn relative to districts in Caledonia County, could not produce a proficiency index, graduation comparison, or absenteeism comparison because the cohort was too small and the relevant values were missing. These gaps reflect the limited scope of reported data rather than any signal about the school itself.
What the picture supports is a school serving a working-community population in a town with deep civic roots and a clear pathway to secondary education through the Academy. ELA instruction appears to build momentum through the grades. Math is the area where a family would want to look closely at how the school moves children from early-grade foundations into middle-grade competence. The community offers cultural institutions, regional healthcare, and outdoor recreation infrastructure that few towns of this size can match, alongside the economic challenges that come with commercial contraction and a stable rather than growing population.
See more original research from School Decision →