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In a series airing all week, independent producer Erica Heilman talks with teachers, administrators and staff in the Northeast Kingdom about their struggles after two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, Erica talks with teachers and staff at Newport City Elementary School about gaps they’re noticing in development and learning among their students.

All over the country, schools are struggling with the omicron surge, and struggling to keep up with rapidly changing COVID protocols. It has been a chaotic time. Last week, independent producer Erica Heilman spent a day at Brighton Elementary, a pre-K through eighth grade school of 107 students up in Island Pond. It was a particularly challenging day.

Until this summer, COVID numbers in the Northeast Kingdom remained low. Since the summer and the onset of the delta variant, those numbers have risen, and in the weeks after Halloween, there's been a surge of COVID patients at small regional hospitals.

COVID numbers have been on the rise for months in St. Johnsbury. As they work in the local hospital, two night nurses mourn losses in their communities both here and abroad.

Respiratory therapists, like many other health care workers, are in very short supply. The job of an RT is to make sure that patients with respiratory problems are getting enough oxygen. And during this COVID surge, they are having to marshal these resources very carefully and imperfectly.

COVID numbers in the Northeast Kingdom have been climbing, and according to staff at the Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital in St. Johnsbury, the weeks after Halloween have been the most trying since the beginning of the pandemic.

Vermont has struggled to contain the delta surge for months now, and COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations have reached all-time highs. It comes at a time when hospital workers say they are exhausted from nearly two years of the pandemic, and frustrated by people who refuse to get vaccinated.

Finn Rooney was a boy growing up in northern Vermont. This is a story about Finn and the people in his community who loved him, and who came together after his death to finish something Finn had started. Listen for this special broadcast collaboration between VPR and Rumble Strip.

After 98 years in business, Caplan’s Army Store in St. Johnsbury is closed. They closed on the last day of 2020. Independent reporter Erica Heilman stopped by to talk with longtime employee Gary Ely about the store, and his many years there.

People come from all over the Northeast Kingdom to watch the demolition derby at the Orleans County Fair in Barton. This year, independent producer Erica Heilman stopped by to watch, and talk with some of the participants.