by Kevin Russell
• August 1, 2026
Dennis Hall grew up calling the Number Nine Schoolhouse just “school.” He walked to it, sat in its classrooms, and learned to read inside its walls. Decades later, he showed up with a mower and cut the grass. He also plowed the parking area and refused payment for it.
Hall, known to everyone in Fayston as Babe, volunteered his mowing services as FNNS prepared for the June 7 work party. He’s a former student at the schoolhouse — one of the last generation of children to attend School District No. 9 before the building changed hands. His connection to the place isn’t sentimental in the abstract. It’s specific. He knows which room he sat in.
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by Kevin Russell
• March 27, 2026
Purchasing the Number Nine Schoolhouse was the beginning. Restoring it is the work.
The Purchase Was the Beginning
Friends of the Number Nine Schoolhouse closed on the 1903 schoolhouse at 831 Mill Brook Road in Fayston on August 27, 2025. The Burley family, which had owned the property for six decades, sold at half the appraised value and extended a five-year mortgage to make the purchase possible. Without that, there was no deal.
The purchase settled one question and opened a dozen others. FNNS now holds the building. The harder work is what happens next.
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by Kevin Russell
• November 8, 2025
When the Catamount Trail Association (CTA) decided to relocate its statewide office, it had options. It chose to leave Burlington and move to a 120-year-old schoolhouse in the Mad River Valley — and the reason is pretty simple: the trail runs right up the road.
That proximity isn’t just convenient. It reflects something intentional about what the Number Nine Schoolhouse is becoming. CTA joins the Northern Forest Canoe Trail (NFCT), which already occupies part of the lower level, as a long-term anchor tenant. Together, they bring the spirit of Vermont’s great outdoors directly into the building — and provide the kind of stable, mission-aligned tenancy that makes the schoolhouse’s long-term sustainability possible.
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by Kevin Russell
• August 27, 2025
Today, Friends of the Number Nine Schoolhouse (FNNS) officially closed on the historic 1903 schoolhouse at 831 Mill Brook Road in Fayston, Vermont — and it almost didn’t happen without an extraordinary act of generosity.
The Burley family, who have owned and worked from the building since 1962, offered the property to FNNS at half its appraised value and carried a five-year mortgage to make the purchase possible. Without that commitment, the numbers simply wouldn’t have worked. It’s a rare thing when the sellers of a property are as invested in its future as the buyers — and that alignment of values made all the difference.
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