From left, fourth graders Lily Colon, Xander Shedd, Madison Champagne, Sophia Sinsigalli and Mia King find the location of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance, which sunk in the Weddell Sea off Antarctica in 1915, on a world map in their classroom at Samuel Morey Elementary School in Fairlee, Vt., in March 2022. Photo by Alex Driehaus/Valley News/Report For America This story by Alex Hanson was first published in the Valley News on March 26, 2026. Samuel Morey Elementary School, one of the two elementary schools in the Rivendell Interstate School District, has landed on the state’s list of schools in need of improvement. While such a designation generally indicates that a school is in crisis, Rivendell Superintendent Randall Gawel said he thinks the district needs to look at it as an opportunity to improve. “It stinks, but this is a chance for us to get better,” Gawel said in an interview. Morey is not meeting state standards and is showing continued decline, the state report card says. The data on which the state Agency of Education’s decision was based are from 2023 through 2025, Gawel said. The agency determines which schools are in need of improvement based on all of the available data, and how a school’s status changes from one year to the next. Morey serves around 110 students from Fairlee and Orford in grades K-5 and a separate preschool class for the district as a whole, which also includes the towns of West Fairlee and Vershire. Under federal education law, a school is identified for what’s called Comprehensive Support and Improvement when it meets one of three criteria, one of which pertains to high schools with a persistently low graduation rate, and so doesn’t apply to Samuel Morey. The most common criteria is “the lowest-performing 5% of Title 1 schools based on a weighted combination of all measures of school performance.” The third criteria covers schools identified for additional support that nevertheless did not improve. A Title 1 school receives federal funding because roughly 40% of its students live below the poverty line. Vermont data from 2025 shows that Morey had only 33% of its students qualify for free and reduced price lunch, a common marker for poverty, but the state report card shows that 59 students, more than half, are part of historically marginalized groups, including the poor, BIPOC, LGBTQA+ and first-generation students. Comprehensive Support and Improvement is a three-year process in which a school or district receives state assistance to identify where a school’s instruction needs to be better. It includes funding for programs that target the school’s deficiencies. Those details are yet to be determined at Samuel Morey, said Gawel, who is in his first year as superintendent after serving as superintendent and assistant superintendent at Orange East Supervisory Union in Bradford, Vt. He expects that efforts will focus on literacy and math lessons, on improving the school’s multi-tiered system of supports (abbreviated as MTSS, this is a structure designed to give targeted support to students who need it), and overall instruction. “We certainly could use additional supports with teaching, learning and intervention,” he said. In particular, it would help “being better able to identify students in need and being able to focus on them.” Based on size and need, schools on the Comprehensive Support and Improvement list received between $110,000 and $330,000 in extra funds in the 2024-25 school year, state records show. The subject of Morey’s status came up at the district’s annual meeting on March 21. It is currently the only school on the Vermont side of the Upper Valley receiving this level of state support and oversight. “It’s inexcusable,” School Board Chairman Charles Newton, of Orford, told the meeting. “We’re aware of it, and we’re already working on it.” In years past, Westshire and Morey were using different curriculum, and students would arrive at the middle school having learned different methods, Newton said. That practice has ended, he added. He also noted that the students tested in third through fifth grades over the past three years were among the children who missed early instruction during the coronavirus pandemic. Data in the state’s annual report card on its schools, released last month, is mixed where Morey is concerned. For example, it shows Morey far behind in achievement in science, but “approaching” state standards in math and literacy. It’s worth remembering, Gawel said, that test results are a snapshot. “Even if we were a high-achieving school, that’s still not the whole picture,” he said. Read the story on VTDigger here: State designates Samuel Morey Elementary School as low-performing. ...read more read less