Lawmakers in a key House committee have introduced a bill that would place new regulations on private schools receiving public money, including tightening anti-discrimination requirements and increasing state oversight.
But the bill, introduced Friday in the House Committee on Education, would leave the state’s tuitioning system largely unchanged — a sign that legislators may opt for relatively moderate reforms to public dollars in private schools.
“As the committee has taken lots of testimony from independent schools, public schools and others, we have identified areas that could use greater clarity, greater oversight and greater accountability,” Rep. Peter Conlon, D-Cornwall, the committee’s chair, said in an interview. “And I would say the committee bill reflects that.”
This legislative session, lawmakers in both House and Senate education committees have been closely examining Vermont’s school tuitioning system. In towns too small to operate public schools, students can use taxpayer money to attend public and private schools in and out of Vermont — and even the country.
Students were generally barred from using those dollars to attend religious schools, but in the past few years, a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions — most recently, a case called Carson v. Makin, decided in June 2022 — have whittled away that restriction.
Amid the shifting legal landscape, public dollars are flowing to Vermont religious schools. That has left many Vermonters uncomfortable with the prospect of public money subsidizing religious education — and raised fears that taxpayers could be supporting schools that discriminate against prospective LGBTQ+ students and staff.
In an attempt to address those concerns, a group of lawmakers introduced legislation last month that would dramatically transform Vermont’s school tuition system.
Two bills introduced in the House and Senate — H.258 and S.66 — were intended to cut off the flow of public dollars to almost all private schools in or outside the state, religious or not.
Instead, students would be able to use public dollars only to attend other public schools or one of the so-called “four historic academies”: St. Johnsbury Academy, Thetford Academy, Manchester’s Burr and Burton Academy, and Lyndon Institute.
That proposal drew swift opposition from independent schools and school choice advocates. The Vermont Agency of Education also opposed it, Education Secretary Dan French said earlier this week.
“Unlike public schools, independent schools exist for a variety of purposes. Regulating them in a manner comparable to public schools would be inappropriate,” French wrote in testimony submitted to the Senate Committee on Education.
The proposed legislation, he said, “would significantly alter the independent school landscape in Vermont.”
On Friday morning, the House Education Committee, which has been discussing the issue, appeared to signal that it would take a less dramatic route.
Some provisions in the new committee bill are already required under state rules: Independent schools must follow state anti-discrimination laws and post a “statement of nondiscrimination” on their websites, and private schools are barred from rejecting students because of a disability.
But the bill would establish some new requirements. Schools would also have to be accredited by the Association of Independent Schools in New England or the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, and would have to report more of their students’ academic information to public school districts.
The proposed legislation would limit public money flowing out of state, requiring private schools that received those dollars to be within 25 miles from the Vermont border. And it would place a moratorium on new independent school approvals.
“The tuition program was never intended to sort of create a private school proliferation or industry,” Conlon told the committee Friday morning, “but rather to educate students under the obligations that we have in the constitution of Vermont.”
That route would be much less disruptive to Vermont’s independent school landscape than the previous proposals. If enacted as written, it would also mean that public dollars would continue flowing to private religious schools.
Conlon noted in an interview that the bill had just been introduced and could change before leaving the committee.
“We really haven’t even discussed it in great detail,” he said. “Or gotten reaction — more importantly, we haven’t gotten any testimony on it yet.”