by Shawn Tester, CEO, Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital
I grew up on my grandparents' farm in the Northeast Kingdom. It's where I learned what community means — not as an abstraction, but as the neighbor who helps you pull a tractor out of the mud, the school that sees something in a kid that no one else does, the hospital that's there when everything else falls apart. My grandparents are buried on that land. I had always hoped I would be, too.
That hope feels less certain every year.
I share this not for self-pity, but because I believe it's important for people to understand what is actually at stake in the never-ending debate over Vermont's independent schools and school choice. This isn't an ideological argument for me — it's personal and it's professional. I believe the two are deeply connected.
As the CEO of Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital, one of the most pressing challenges I face every single day is recruiting and retaining the health care professionals our community depends on. We are competing — not just with hospitals in Montpelier or Burlington — but with hospitals in New Hampshire, Virginia, and Colorado. All of them can offer the same salary we can. Many of them can offer lower taxes, lower housing costs, and lower cost of living.
A primary care physician making $300,000 a year who chooses to live and work in Littleton, New Hampshire, instead of right across the river here in Vermont, will take home roughly $30,000 more annually. That's not a rounding error. That's school loans paid off. That's a down payment on a house.
When a young doctor finishing their residency sits down and Googles our state, here is what they find: potential hospital closures, regulatory battles, a cost of living that keeps climbing, a housing market that has become unrecognizable. There is almost nothing positive in that search. We are asking people to choose Vermont despite all of that. So we had better have something extraordinary to offer.
We do. What we can offer — what has time and again made the difference — is the quality of life that defines this corner of Vermont. Our outdoor recreation. Our rural culture. And yes, our independent schools.
When I sit down with a young physician or specialist who is weighing their options, and they have a family, and their kids are young, the conversation inevitably turns to education. What happens when I tell them about St. Johnsbury Academy? About Lyndon Institute? About Riverside School? They start asking questions because they understand that their children, living in a rural community that many outsiders would write off, can access a genuinely exceptional education. That changes the calculus.
I know this firsthand — not just as a hospital administrator, but as a product of that very system. I am a graduate of Riverside School. I came from a single-parent household. We were not wealthy. The only reason I was able to attend Riverside was because my mother happened to live in the town of Kirby, which had school choice. If she had lived one town over, my life would have looked different. I say without hesitation that Riverside changed the trajectory of my life. I would not be sitting in this chair today without it.
And here's the part that doesn't get talked about enough: independent schools don't just help us recruit professionals to the Kingdom — they help us keep them. A physician who enrolls their child at Riverside, and then watches that child thrive, and then sends them on to the Academy for high school — that physician has put down roots. What might have been a four-year commitment to our community quietly becomes a decade. Sometimes a career. That is not a small thing. That is the difference between a community that has a neurologist and one that doesn't.
I know, because we lost ours last year. She had been here for twelve years. Her kids were approaching high school age. She was watching the policy landscape in Vermont, reading the tea leaves, and she and her husband made the decision to leave — for lower taxes, lower costs, and a place where the future felt more certain. She gave her notice, and we immediately posted for her position.
In the past year, we have had zero applicants.
That is the reality of recruiting in the Northeast Kingdom. That is what we are working with. And that is why every single advantage we have matters enormously — including the ability to look a prospective hire in the eye and say, “Your children will receive a world-class education here.”
For more than a decade, Vermont's legislature has returned, again and again, to chip away at independent schools and school choice. Each time, those of us in rural communities have fought back. Each time, we have been told that our concerns are overstated. Each time, the stakes have grown higher.
Enough is enough. It’s time for lawmakers — and the political groups attacking our independent schools — to respect those of us who live in rural communities.
I am not interested in fighting culture wars. I am interested in making the Northeast Kingdom a place where people want to live, where families can thrive, and where my own children might one day choose to come home. Our independent schools are not a relic of the past or a privilege of the wealthy. They are one of the essential threads holding this community together.
Pull that thread, and you will find out — too late — just how much was attached to it.
Shawn Tester is the CEO of Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital in St. Johnsbury, Vermont.
To support vital journalism, access our archives and get unique features like our award-winning profiles, Book of Lists & Business-to-Business Directory, subscribe HERE!
Vermont Business Magazine