There's a lot of good school districts within ~30 minutes of Barre that are not in the "super-super-expensive" zones of Montpelier or Stowe. MMU and CVU both have great reputations and cover big districts that include some cheaper areas and where you can get to Barre in 35ish minutes. Roxbury's a tiny town - it's not bougie like Montpelier - but they send their kids to Montpelier schools, so you get the good school district without the crazy real estate prices - if you can find anything for sale there (it's really really small). U-32 has a good rep as well and that covers a lot of the general Barre area.

VT public schools are generally really good compared to elsewhere. I totally understand wanting to avoid Barre city schools themselves, but the well-established big union school districts like MMU, CVU, and U32 really do deliver a great quality education.