This commentary is by Molly Bachman of Montpelier, former general counsel of the Vermont Agency of Education and of the Vermont Department of Taxes.
The Vermont Senate is currently grappling with how to respond to a lawsuit that expanded the state’s voucher system to private religious schools. It is also looking at limiting the use of vouchers to neighboring states.
Currently, education fund dollars are used to subsidize tuitions at private sectarian and nonsectarian schools across the country and in foreign countries.
The Senate may believe that enacting prohibitions against certain kinds of discrimination and somewhat limiting the flow of education dollars out of the Vermont public education system is the best it can do in the face of the national and state advocacy for privatizing education, but it can and should do more.
Vermont’s voucher system — like voucher systems generally — is expensive and inequitable. Of course, Vermont taxpayers should not subsidize education at Swiss private schools and, of course, Vermont education dollars should not go to schools that discriminate based on special education needs and LGBTQ status, but the larger question is why do we have a system that requires Vermont taxpayers to support private educational entities? The Constitution does not require it.
Public education dollars can be limited to supporting public education. But once the door is open to funding private schools, it is not easily closed, as is clear in recent targeting of Vermont by national conservative litigation groups.
Vermont has an opportunity to reform its voucher system to make it more fiscally responsible and equitable. Districts that do not operate a public school, due either to their small student population or choice, should be limited to paying vouchers to other Vermont public schools. This would keep education dollars in Vermont, paying public teachers’ salaries, maintaining public infrastructure and supporting education that is available to all of our children.
Funding both public and private schools costs Vermont taxpayers a lot of money. In a 2021 report, Vermont State Auditor Doug Hoffer wrote that “public expenditures to independent and out-of-state schools totaled $99.4 million for school year 2018-19.”
That money would be better spent supporting our public school system, including its infrastructure, which is a public asset. Voucher payments to private schools support assets that remain in private ownership. In addition to direct cost savings, when students from voucher districts enroll in public schools, their enrollment reduces the per-pupil cost of education in Vermont. Lower per-pupil cost leads to lower tax rates for everybody.
In terms of equity, those who favor privatizing education will argue that the same voucher amount (equal to the average announced tuition for Vermont public schools) is available to all; therefore no harm, no foul. But it’s unlikely that low-income families access private school vouchers at the same rate as higher-income families, since the cost of the remaining tuition has to be covered.
An Agency of Education analysis of 2015 enrollments found that, while about 50% of students from voucher districts enrolled in public schools, about 70% of students with disabilities and 60% of economically disadvantaged students from voucher districts enrolled in public schools.
That means a disproportionate number of students who have additional needs are concentrated in public schools.
As with most voucher systems, “choice” is illusory. If Vermont stops sending education funds to private schools, parents will have the same choice to access a private school education for their children as they do now; they just could not subsidize that choice with taxpayer dollars.
Some 25 years ago, Vermont was faced with the challenge of addressing the geographic inequity of our education system and responded by creating a statewide education system so that the quality of a child’s education did not depend upon the town in which the child lives.
Vermont recognized then that education is a public good that we, as taxpayers, are obligated to support. Vermont should reassert its belief in education as a public good and protect our education system from private interests that seek to access our education dollars.
