This commentary is by Ed Campbell, chair of the board of trustees at Burr & Burton Academy in Manchester, and Bob Fairbanks, vice president of the board of trustees at St. Johnsbury Academy.
Like so many in our rural Vermont communities, we have deep and extended family ties to St. Johnsbury Academy and Burr & Burton Academy.
St. Johnsbury Academy was founded by Erastus, Thaddeus and Joseph Fairbanks in 1842, and members of the Fairbanks family have served on the academy’s board of trustees ever since.
Burr & Burton was founded in 1829, and Campbell family members have attended the academy and served on its board of trustees for five generations, covering more than 100 years.
That kind of longevity gives us not just a sense of connection to the schools we currently serve as trustees, but also a sense of history, and an awareness of what these schools have — and have not — been in their almost two centuries of educational service.
Faced with a legislative challenge to the system that has served our communities for generations, there is much to debate. One point, however, deserves not debate but rebuttal: the premise that the historic academies were once public schools. They are independent. They have always been independent. And they have used that independence to fulfill a public educational mission across three centuries, providing opportunity to rural Vermonters through a system that predates the public education system in Vermont.
Along with Lyndon Institute (1867) and Thetford Academy (1819), St. Johnsbury Academy and Burr & Burton were incorporated by the Vermont General Assembly, as were all private institutions prior to the enactment of the 1913 corporations law and a constitutional amendment prohibiting further grant of acts of incorporation by the General Assembly.
Other institutions similarly incorporated include our private postsecondary institutions of Saint Michael’s College and Norwich University, as well as Northfield Savings Bank, Passumpsic Bank, the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, and the Vermont Historical Society.
Years later, the Internal Revenue Service recognized each of the historic academies as 501(c)(3) charitable organizations: St. Johnsbury Academy in 1937, Lyndon Institute in 1937, Thetford Academy in 1972, and Burr & Burton in 1974. They remain not-for-profit organizations today.
The town tuition program began in 1869 and independent schools have been receiving public tuition ever since. For very brief periods in these schools’ 150-plus years of history, one or more may have fallen under a definition of “public school” in Vermont statutes, but that reflected the General Assembly’s intent to treat them differently from other independent schools for purposes of setting tuition rates; it did not change the way they were governed as independent, not-for-profit organizations and it did not subject them to public school requirements.
While the historic academies have always had a commitment to serving the students from nearby towns, they have also enriched their communities by operating boarding programs for domestic and international students and by serving private day-tuition students. Their independent status has enhanced their ability to benefit from private giving and to establish and maintain endowment funds.
Notably, independent schools generally have not been eligible to receive state school construction aid. The impressive infrastructures at St. Johnsbury Academy and Burr & Burton have been acquired from private funding.
Our boards of trustees are committed to the important mission of educating our young people and educating them all in an excellent manner. The independent nature of our schools allows us to be innovative, strategic, flexible and responsive to the rapidly changing needs of our
students. Burr & Burton’s Success Program and St. Johnsbury Academy’s new Literacy Lab are just two examples, and they underscore why we value our independence.
As our legislators debate various proposals impacting the educational landscape of our two corners of the state, it’s important to note that this is not a partisan issue but a geographic and rural issue. We respectfully request that they keep in mind that we have always been independent schools, and we want to continue to be independent schools that serve our communities responsibly and well.