Vermont Agency of Education

09/02/2026

Thousands of meals in the first three days of school, featuring house made pesto, local lettuce, and Vermont cheese, bread, and pizza dough. Congratulations to the Harwood Unified Union School District food service team! School nutrition professionals across Vermont are building meals around local ingredients and welcoming more students to the table, and the Agency is grateful for their work.

08/28/2026

A new school year is beginning across Vermont.

Secretary of Education Zoie Saunders has a message for Vermont's students, educators, school staff, and families: what the Agency is working on this year, and what families can do at home to support their students.

Wishing everyone a safe, joyful, and inspiring school year.

08/21/2026

The Agency of Education is continuing to develop an ambitious vision for the future of public education in Vermont.

On Tuesday, the Agency convened a Steering Committee of educators, district leaders, and community partners from across Vermont to review and provide feedback on a draft of the Agency's Strategic Plan. Once complete, the plan will guide the Agency's priorities and its work to strengthen Vermont's public education system in the years ahead. Steering Committee members have been engaged throughout 2026 to shape the plan, and this week they saw their contributions reflected in the Agency's vision and roadmap.

We are deeply appreciative of their partnership, and we are looking forward to sharing the Agency's plan with Vermonters later this year.

08/19/2026

Special Education Parent Survey: Your Voice Matters!

Are you a parent of a student who received special education services between the start of the 2025-26 school year and December 1, 2025? If so, please complete this Special Education Parent Involvement Survey ( https://anlar.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5nBacLwy8w0CQgC ). Your feedback helps to improve special education services and student outcomes in your supervisory union or district and is completely anonymous.

If you have not yet completed this survey, please submit your response by September 15, 2026.

If you need your unique survey identification code, please call: (802) 828-1256

For additional information about this survey please visit: https://education.vermont.gov/special-education/parent-involvement-survey

08/03/2026

Vermont schools are not alone in seeking guidance on how to best support multilingual learners.

Stephanie Vogel, who leads Differentiated Instruction and Multilingual Programs at the Agency and serves as President of the National Association of English Learner Program Administrators, spoke with Education Week about what she is hearing from Vermont schools and from state education agency leaders nationwide. Her team is a resource for any Vermont school navigating this work.

A new research study shed light on how anti-DEI policies affect English-learner education.

07/31/2026

Most guidance on supporting multilingual learners is written for districts that serve hundreds of them. Vermont districts often serve a few.

Dr. Rebecca Callahan of the University of Vermont and Stephanie Vogel of the Agency talked through research on that gap in a recent episode of Across the Fence, looking at what rural schools with small numbers of multilingual learners actually need.

Watch the episode here:

07/13/26 Find out about efforts to support multilingual learners in...

07/30/2026

For six days, Vermont's 2026 Teacher of the Year was the student.

2026 VT State Teacher of the Year Linda Alvarez WRCC represented Vermont at Space Camp for Educators alongside State Teachers of the Year from across the country. The missions were built to be difficult on purpose. Plans changed, mistakes happened, and success depended on trusting people she had known for a matter of days. No lectures, just hands-on work, reflection, and trying again.

She came back thinking about what that feels like for a Vermont student being asked to take the same kinds of risks in a classroom, and more convinced that this is what learning should feel like.

Congratulations Linda, and thank you for representing Vermont!

07/28/2026

The Agency is redesigning how Vermont measures and communicates school performance for the first time in almost a decade. The State Board of Education has endorsed this work, voting unanimously to submit a letter of support following the Agency's presentation to the Board earlier this month.

The State Board's letter of support is a critical milestone in the shift to a more transparent, technically rigorous, and actionable accountability system. The redesign will be informed by extensive engagement with Vermont's education community, so the updated system reflects the needs of students, schools, and communities.

In the video below, Secretary of Education Zoie Saunders shares what this work means for Vermont and how Vermonters can help shape it.

07/24/2026

Congratulations to our own Stephanie Vogel, who this month became President of the National Association of English Learner Program Administrators (NAELPA).

NAELPA represents the people leading English learner programs in states and districts across the country, and Stephanie was chosen by her peers to lead it. She has spent her career supporting Vermont's multilingual learners and the educators who teach them, most recently leading Differentiated Instruction and Multilingual Programs here at the Agency.

We could not be prouder to have her representing Vermont on the national stage.

07/10/2026

To reflect on America's 250th anniversary, Career Technical Education students from Randolph Technical Career Center and Green Mountain Technology & Career Center recently released a series of short documentary videos exploring the question: are there unfinished revolutions in Vermont?

This eight-month project was a collaboration between the Agency of Education, the Vermont 250th Anniversary Commission, and Vermont Public, and it gave students hands-on experience with video production while they interviewed neighbors and community members about issues that matter to their communities, right here in their own towns.

It's a great example of what happens when technical skills, local journalism, and student voice come together, and we're proud of the perspective these students brought to the table.

Watch the full series from Vermont Public: https://www.vermontpublic.org/about-us/2026-06-15/student-storytelling-videos-america-250-vermont

Thanks to the educators, students, and community members who made this project possible!

Vermont Public partnered with two Career Technical Education (CTE) programs on an eight-month digital media project inviting students to reflect on Vermont today through the lens of America's 250th anniversary. Watch the completed videos.