The Bellwether School was founded in 1995 by Ron Miller, an internationally known author and publisher in holistic education. He believed that The Bellwether School would be distinctive in designing its entire program around holistic principles; in other words, Bellwether would become an important model school, a true Bellwether.

The school, he envisioned, would practice holistic, developmentally based, learner-centered educational methods and offer an integrated curriculum emphasizing the arts and experiential activities in the community and in the world of nature. In his founding words:

"The term "holistic" refers to an underlying philosophy of education that emphasizes connectedness, integration, context and meaning: The learner is viewed as a whole person, with emotional, social, aesthetic, moral and spiritual qualities nourished along with intellectual potentials; a group of learners and teachers are viewed as a community with a dynamic life of its own; the curriculum does not divide experience into separate subject areas or time periods but aims for integrated, meaningful understanding; and the ultimate purpose of education is seen as a deeply felt connection with both the natural world (ecological literacy) and the social and cultural world (social responsibility). In short, holistic education does not strive so much for eventual career success as for cultivating a compassionate sense of wonder, a knowledge of one’s cultural and ecological roots, and deep self-understanding.

"Developmentally-based education is an approach that recognizes the inherent patterns of intellectual, social, emotional, and spiritual unfolding within every young person. In essence, a developmental approach asserts that children do not gain an authentic understanding of the world by having preselected facts, ideas, texts, and ‘curriculum units’ delivered to them by adults, but that they construct their knowledge by interacting with their environment according to the characteristic capacities of each stage of development. It is the educator’s task to stimulate and call to these capacities, turning the learner loose to experiment, explore and discover."

Bellwether became a Vermont nonprofit corporation on November 21, 1994 and opened its doors for children ages 3-8 in September 1995. The school added an Elementary program (grades 2 through 6) in the fall of 2000.