Seven Days’ Alison Novak knew that K-12 schools around the state were dealing with declining enrollment — as an education reporter, for years she’d heard related predictions and warnings from sources and elected officials. That sobering reality is at the heart of the ed reform debate roiling the state.
But when Novak dug into the Agency of Education’s enrollment data recently and plugged the numbers into a spreadsheet, “the decline in enrollment was much steeper than I had realized,” she said.
She found that, in the past 20 years, the state has lost more than a quarter of its public school students.
This demographic trend affects rural schools — I’ve lost count of how many Vermont towns are fighting to keep their elementary schools open — but also urban ones. The new, state-of-the-art Burlington High School that’s opening in the fall? It’s built to educate up to 1,150 students. Size of the current BHS student body: around 850.
Novak also discovered some interesting variation from school district to school district. “Towns that have built lots of housing, like Colchester and South Burlington, are holding pretty steady with enrollment, while some others, in central Vermont and elsewhere, are experiencing especially steep declines,” she said.
She contextualizes the data about school enrollment — and how it relates to property taxes and difficult community decisions — in this week’s cover story, “Empty Desks.” Vermont has one of the oldest populations in the country, and the lowest birth rate, too. To reverse these trends, the state needs to either retain more young adults or convince more of them to move here and have kids. Both are challenging propositions.
My own Gen Z kids are eyeing their options. Graham, 20, is finishing a few classes for his associate degree in health sciences from the Community College of Vermont. He’ll likely stick around for at least a couple of years to get his bachelor’s, but after that, who knows? A former wrestler who benches more than 300 pounds, he’d like to live somewhere with more affordable gyms for someone on a tight budget.
His 17-year-old sister, Ivy, is more adamant about leaving Vermont. She graduated high school early and is taking a gap year, working construction, babysitting and traveling. Last fall, she and Graham backpacked across Europe for almost three months, and she’s itching to return. The colleges she’s applied to so far are in Ireland, as she chases a nursing career and an EU passport.
There’s no shortage of nursing jobs in Vermont. “Why not stick around?” I asked her.
Everyone here knows everyone else, she noted. To me, a Detroit-area native, that’s an asset. But like many others her age, Ivy wants to meet new people and have new experiences. “It’s not like we can drive 30 minutes and be in a big city where you can see and do things,” she lamented. “Here, you drive 30 minutes, and you’re not even in Montpelier.”
Both of my kids are also keenly aware of the high cost of housing here. Gone are the days when you could land in Burlington and quickly find a room downtown for a couple hundred bucks a month, like I did as a newly minted college grad. In Burlington, according to city data, the median rent for a three-bedroom apartment in 2024 was nearly $2,300. Split three ways, that’s $766 a month, plus utilities — if you can even find a place, given the area’s low vacancy rate. The median price for a single-family home last year was an eye-popping $550,000.
Those numbers aren’t scaring everyone away; in the past 20 years, Vermont has added about 20,000 people. They’re just older. In 2019, one in five residents was over 65, according to U.S. Census data; four years from now, one in three will be over 60.
Seven Days documented the causes and effects of the state’s aging population in an award-winning 2024 series called “This Old State: The Graying of Vermont.” Novak’s cover story kicks off a new series focused on the opposite end of the demographic shift. Over the course of this year, “Gen Zero: Where Are Vermont’s Young People?” will examine this question from various angles.
Got a story suggestion? Send it to us at genzero@sevendaysvt.com.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Introducing ‘Gen Zero’”
This article appears in February 18 • 2026.
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