Parent Communication Guide for Vermont Teachers

Vermont is a state of small communities, strong local identity, and, in Burlington, dramatic diversity. For new teachers, this creates a communication context that varies more by school than almost anywhere else. A first-year teacher at a Burlington elementary school may be navigating families from four continents and three language families. A first-year teacher at a small village school in the Northeast Kingdom may know every parent by name within a month.

What is consistent across Vermont is that Act 173 has created real parent communication obligations around tiered support systems, and that Vermont parents, whether in Burlington or in a 60-student town school, tend to expect genuine engagement from teachers rather than institutional form letters.

This guide covers what Vermont law requires, how to handle Vermont's distinctive communication context, and how to build habits in your first year that serve you throughout your career.

What Vermont parents expect from classroom communication

Vermont has a strong tradition of local control and community engagement in school governance. In small Vermont towns, school board meetings are community events. Parents are often personally acquainted with their children's teachers. The newsletter in a small Vermont school is not just a compliance document. It is a community publication that parents actually read because it is about a school they are deeply invested in.

In Burlington, the picture is more complex. The city's rapid diversification means that some Burlington school communities include families from very different cultural backgrounds with different expectations of the teacher-parent relationship. Some refugee families from contexts where schools were authority institutions may initially be less accustomed to the kind of informal, collaborative communication that Vermont schools typically expect. Building trust through consistent, respectful, accessible communication is the foundation.

Vermont law and what it means for classroom teachers

The two most important legal frameworks for Vermont classroom teacher communication are 16 VSA Section 164 (assessment) and Vermont Act 173 (2018). Here is what each means in practice:

• VTCAP communication (16 VSA 164): Vermont's assessment uses Smarter Balanced for ELA and math in grades 3-8. Individual results go to families, and you are the primary interpreter of what those results mean for each student in the context of your classroom.
• SAT School Day for grade 11: Vermont funds SAT School Day for all grade 11 students. High school teachers should communicate test dates, what the SAT measures, and how scores connect to college applications.
• Act 173 MTSS notification: When you refer a student for Tier 2 or Tier 3 support, the parent must be notified and involved in the process. This is not an administrative step you wait for the special education team to handle. Your initial contact with the family matters.
• Proactive progress communication: Vermont's Act 173 framework assumes parent engagement throughout the support process, which means communication about student progress cannot wait for formal IEP or evaluation meetings. Regular progress updates in your newsletter support this expectation.

Vermont Act 173 and the classroom teacher's role

Vermont Act 173 is one of the most parent-centered special education and tiered support laws in the country. It shifted Vermont schools from a traditional special education eligibility model to an MTSS framework that requires tiered interventions before formal evaluation. Critically for classroom teachers, it also strengthened parent engagement requirements at every tier, not just at the formal IEP stage.

For a classroom teacher, Act 173 means this: when you identify that a student needs more support than universal Tier 1 instruction provides, the parent conversation begins with you. You are not passing the student off to a specialist and waiting for that specialist to contact the family. You are the first communicator. A brief note home explaining what you are observing, what the school's tiered support system looks like, and what additional support the student will receive sets the stage for the parent's involvement throughout the process.

Your newsletter can support this by including a standing explanation of the MTSS system in your back-to-school issue. When parents understand from the start of the year what Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 mean, a Tier 2 referral notification is not alarming. It is the system working as expected.

Burlington's refugee communities and multilingual communication

Burlington has one of the highest refugee resettlement rates per capita in the United States. The city's refugee communities include significant Congolese populations (primarily French and Lingala speakers), Somali families, Bhutanese families (who primarily speak Nepali), and Nepali families from Nepal directly. Church World Service, the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program, and other organizations have built Burlington into a well-established resettlement destination.

For Burlington classroom teachers, the practical implication is that some families in your class may not read English fluently. Burlington School District has multilingual family liaisons for major language communities, and your first step when you know you have non-English-speaking families in your class is to connect with that liaison in week one.

For Congolese families, French is usually the written communication language (Lingala and Swahili are spoken, but French literacy is more common). For Bhutanese and Nepali families, Nepali is the appropriate written language. For Somali families, Somali. Machine translation into these languages is unreliable for nuanced educational communication. The multilingual liaison or community interpreter relationships your school has established are the right tool.

One additional note: refugee families arriving from contexts where education was interrupted, inaccessible, or weaponized by governments may have complex feelings about official school communication. Consistency, warmth, and patience build the trust that makes your communication effective over time. A family that receives six consistent, respectful newsletters before feeling comfortable enough to respond is a communication success, not a failure.

Small Vermont school communication: the newsletter as community document

Outside Burlington, most Vermont schools are small. Very small. A kindergarten class of 12. A grade 5 with 18 students. An entire K-6 building with 75 children total. In these schools, the newsletter serves a different function than in a large suburban school. It is the primary source of community news about the school. It is read by parents, by grandparents who pick up students, by board members, and often by community members who do not have children in the school.

Use this. A newsletter that describes what the class built in science, includes a photograph of students presenting their projects, and names the skills they practiced in the process builds genuine community pride in the school. It is also, practically, the most effective thing you can do to generate parent goodwill before you need it for harder conversations.

One caution for small Vermont schools: be thoughtful about reporting data in ways that might identify individual students. If your class has 15 students and you report that 60 percent met the VTCAP standard, you have effectively told the community that 6 students did not. Focus on what the data means for your instructional approach, not on the percentages themselves.

VTCAP communication that helps families

VTCAP uses Smarter Balanced, with four performance levels (Level 1 through Level 4) and Level 3 meeting the standard. Vermont also produces a school quality report that places school performance in context. When VTCAP scores come back, most parents have the individual report but not the context to understand it.

Your newsletter after VTCAP results should explain the four performance levels in plain language, describe where your classroom's students landed in general terms, and name one or two specific things you are focusing on in the coming months to address areas of need. Skip the defensive preamble about how hard students worked. Focus on what comes next.

Building your communication habit in Vermont

Vermont parents, particularly in small communities, notice when a teacher communicates consistently. Set your newsletter day in week one. For Burlington's multilingual schools, establish your translation relationships in week one. For small town schools, write a first newsletter that introduces you, your teaching philosophy, and what you are excited about teaching this year, and send it before the first week of school ends.

Daystage makes the weekly newsletter fast enough to maintain even when you are also the school's IT support and the person who shovels the front steps in winter. Set up your template once, update the variable sections weekly, and publish. For Burlington's multilingual community, Daystage supports parallel-language versions from the same template. The free plan covers everything most Vermont classroom teachers need, with no credit card required.