In 2010, the law changed to require teachers to work until 65 after 30 years of teaching. The former age was 62. Or years spent in the classroom plus the teachers age must now equal 90. A waiver was made for teachers who were "close" under the previous system.
Funding
The legislature passed Act 60 in 1997 in an attempt to balance taxation for education among towns. It has been controversial.
State spending for K-12 in 2008 was $1.057 billion dollars. The remainder was raised by the individual towns.
In 2010, educators accounted for 70% of a school's cost.
According to one study, enrollment in kindergarten through 12th grade has declined by nearly 10 percent during the 1990s. During the same period total staff numbers have increased by more than 20 percent. Per pupil spending grew from $6,073 in 1990 to $13,664 in 2006. A study by the Census Bureau lists Vermont with the fourth highest expenditure per pupil in the country at $11,835 for 2005. There are several ways to compute per student spending. An alternate computation gives $15,575 per pupil in the 2008-9 school year, third highest in the country. The average effective spending per pupil in Vermont was $11,548 in 2008.
In 2007, state costs for special education was $264 million, more than double what it was in 1998. In 2008, 14% of public school students qualified for special help.
Vermont is 49th out of 50 states in the nation for funding higher education, per capita.
Sports
As in most areas, high schools compete in sports in two types of division. One, because of logistical and geographical constraints, is necessarily local. That is, large schools play small ones in the same area. A second division is based on school population and is statewide. Eventually, schools with the best records in this type of division will meet each other for seasonal playoffs. Football division assignments are based on a combination of football wins over the last four years, the number of boys playing the sport and the total boy enrollment in the school.
There are three major geographical groups: Northern Vermont Athletic Conference (NVAC), Marble Valley (MVL, and Connecticut Valley (CVL). These in turn are broken into geographical divisions CVC Central, NVAC Lake (near Lake Champlain), Mountain, NVAC East, NVAC Metro (Burlington area), NVAC Capital, CVL, and MVL Divisions A, B, and C. Divisions based on population are I, II, III and IV, with the largest schools in I.