Two years ago, more than half the students in Kingdom East School District were chronically absent. In St Johnsbury, the figure was approaching half. Both districts sit in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, the state's most economically isolated region, where limited healthcare, long bus rides, and winter weather compound every barrier to regular attendance.

By 2023-24, both districts had pulled their chronic rates below the state average. Kingdom East^↗ET dropped from 50.6% to 22.5%. St Johnsbury^↗ET went from 46.1% to 22.2%. These are the largest turnarounds in Vermont over the past two years, achieved in the state's most economically isolated region.

Parallel trajectories

The two districts improved on nearly identical paths. Kingdom East shed 28.1 percentage points and St Johnsbury 23.9 from their 2021-22 peaks, with the steepest drop in the first year and continued improvement in the second.

Kingdom East's 28.1 percentage point improvement from 2022 to 2024 is the largest of any Vermont district. St Johnsbury's 23.9 points ranks third. The parallel nature of the improvement -- two neighboring districts, similar demographics, nearly identical trajectories -- raises questions about whether this reflects formal collaboration or independent responses to the same regional conditions.

The raw numbers

In 2021-22, 631 of Kingdom East's 1,247 students were chronically absent. By 2023-24, that number had dropped to 277 out of 1,232 -- 354 fewer students missing excessive school.

St Johnsbury saw 166 fewer chronically absent students, going from 315 of 684 to 149 of 670. The district is smaller, but the proportional improvement is comparable.

The geography

The Northeast Kingdom is rural by any standard. Kingdom East operates seven PK-8 schools spread across eight towns: Burke, Concord, Lunenburg, Lyndon, Newark, Sheffield, Sutton, and Wheelock. Students in these communities face transportation challenges, limited access to pediatric care, and the economic pressures of a region where good-paying jobs are scarce.

Rural poverty compounds absenteeism by making it harder for families to get children to school consistently. Kingdom East and St Johnsbury demonstrated in 24 months that the pattern is not inevitable.

An underreported story

Neither district has received significant media coverage for its attendance improvements. Karen Conroy became superintendent of St Johnsbury in January 2025, inheriting gains that were already well underway. No specific attendance program has been publicly documented in either district, which makes the mechanism behind the improvement a genuinely open question.

The answer matters beyond the Northeast Kingdom. More than a dozen Vermont districts still have chronic rates above 30%, and most of them share the same rural barriers that Kingdom East and St Johnsbury face every winter.

The VTEdTribune reached out to Kingdom East and St Johnsbury superintendents for comment.

Data source

Analysis uses chronic absenteeism data from the Vermont Agency of Education, covering 2021-22 through 2023-24.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.