Vermont school safety

The hardest thing to do on this page is compare districts. Vermont runs 106 school districts across 305 schools, and that shape decides what you can learn here. Look up a single school and you will usually find something — 190 Vermont schools have a published safety score. Look up a district and you usually will not. Only 8 districts have enough scoreable schools for a ranking to carry any weight.

Vermont schools filled out the 2021-22 federal collection carefully. We grade the reporting of 14 schools in the state as doubtful — 4.6% of the state's schools, against 11.3% nationally. That is a statement about records, not about children. It means most of what you read on this page rests on figures a school actually submitted. It does not mean Vermont schools are safer than schools in other states. The comparison behind these grades is not adjusted for state, and that is deliberate: when one state's schools report far less than another's, what differs is reporting behavior, not child safety.

Each school is compared to roughly 1,500 schools nationally closest to it in enrollment that teach the same grade levels. Among the peers that reported something, we take the 25th percentile incident rate — a deliberately low bar. A school reporting less than a quarter of what that implies for its size has not given evidence of safety. A and B mean records we believe, and those are the only grades we publish a score for. C means a school reported almost nothing but is small enough that a genuine zero is common — not evidence of safety, but not implausible. D and E mean schools of the same size normally report several incidents, or ten or more, and this one reported almost none. A school with no score is the method working, not a gap in it.

The districts we can rank

These five rank highest among Vermont's eight. Hartford School District is safer than 74% of ranked US districts, with all five schools in its scored set complete enough to score. Burlington School District, safer than 65%, with 8 of the 9 schools in its scored set scoreable. Addison Central Unified School District, safer than 57% (5 of 9). Essex-Westford Educational Community Unified School District, safer than 51% (8 of 10). Mt. Abraham Unified School District, safer than 43% (5 of 6). Those counts describe each district's own scored set. Where fewer of them scored, read the district figure as a partial view.

Safest ranked cities in Vermont

Percentile is against all ranked U.S. cities (higher = safer). Only cities with ≥5 trustworthy-data schools are ranked. Home value is Zillow's ZHVI.

Safest ranked districts

Every Vermont city with schools

Every Vermont school district