Original Research by School Decision on Windham Elementary School
Windham Elementary School sits on Windham Hill Road in the village center of Windham, Vermont, a small, rural hilltop town in Windham County. The school served prekindergarten through sixth grade and was the only school in the Windham School District. The town itself is a quiet, isolated settlement of vernacular Greek Revival homes, a church, and barns clustered along a rural road that still has unpaved sections. Civic life and the school share the same village stretch, with the Windham Meeting House, Town Library, and Town Office all within immediate reach. There is no separate campus, no public transit, and very little commercial activity. The town is overwhelmingly residential and agricultural, with wooded hillsides and open meadows defining daily life.
The most important thing a parent needs to know is that Windham Elementary School is no longer operating. Publicly reported accounts describe the school closing in December 2023 after the school board voted to temporarily shut its doors when no fully licensed educators remained. Students were transferred to Townshend Elementary for the remainder of that school year. The following year, voters in the district approved a ballot measure to tuition out the district's elementary-age students to nearby schools, and the Windham School District became non-operational. The budget for the 2024-2025 fiscal year included tuition payments for students attending schools outside the district. This means there is no longer a local operating public elementary school in Windham. Any family living in town will need to plan for their children to attend school elsewhere, with tuition arrangements handled through the district.
When the school was open, it was very small, with a total enrollment in the mid-teens spread across seven grade levels. Some grades had only a single student. The student body was entirely white, and a substantial share of students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch. Data on individualized education programs and English learner status was not reported, so the school's special-population profile cannot be characterized from available information.
State assessment results for the most recent reported year are entirely suppressed across math, English language arts, and science. This is consistent with Vermont's small-school privacy rules, which withhold results when the number of tested students is too small to report. The suppression here almost certainly reflects the school's tiny enrollment rather than any judgment about performance. With grade-level cohorts of one or two students, any proficiency figure would be unreliable and potentially identifiable. A parent looking for academic outcomes will not find them in the public data. The school's proficiency index could not be computed for comparison against other Windham County districts, and its graduation rate does not apply because the school did not serve high school grades. Chronic absenteeism data was also not available.
The housing market in Windham's zip code sits below the Vermont state benchmark and roughly in line with national figures, with the typical home value in a moderate range for the region. The price-to-income ratio suggests that housing here is somewhat more accessible than in many parts of the state, though current mortgage rates add pressure to monthly carrying costs. Rental market data was not available. Windham is not experiencing growth or development. The town reached its population peak well over a century ago and has declined since, stabilizing at a modest level. Publicly reported planning documents note that while development pressure has increased in the surrounding region over recent decades, Windham itself remains largely unaffected, retaining its mid-nineteenth century agrarian character. No major employers were identified in available sources. The town shares regional infrastructure such as the Londonderry Transfer Station and relies on nearby Route 11 for access to surrounding communities.
For a parent considering Windham as a place to live, the educational picture has fundamentally changed. The local elementary school that once anchored the village is closed, and the district now tuitions students out. The town offers a deeply rural, historically preserved setting with limited services and no walkable commercial district. Families would need to investigate which nearby schools accept tuitioned students and what transportation arrangements look like before committing to the area.
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