Chapter 47: Vermont

In 1997, the Vermont supreme court held “Yesterday’s bare essentials are no longer sufficient to prepare a student to live in today’s global marketplace. To keep a democracy competitive and thriving, students must be afforded equal access to all that our educational system has to offer. In the funding of what our Constitution places at the core of a successful democracy, the children of Vermont are entitled to a reasonably equal share.”¹

Vermont’s founding fathers identified the importance of public education in the state’s original constitution of 1777, declaring, “A school or schools shall be established in each town, by the legislature, for the convenient instruction of youth, with such salaries to the masters, paid by each town, making proper use of school lands in each town, thereby to enable them to instruct youth at low prices. One grammar school in each county, and one university in this State, ought to be established by direction of the General Assembly.”²