Fewer private schools are now eligible for public dollars in Vermont

As the debate over education reform raged on in Montpelier, one subject came to dominate the rest: independent schools.

Bitter disagreements over private schools nearly ended negotiations on several occasions, and critics of the overhaul have leaned into concerns about privatization, highlighting the role that two lawmakers with independent schools ties played in crafting the legislation.

But for all the angst the topic has generated, there has been little discussion about what the legislation would actually do regarding the private schools that receive public money. And some of the new law’s provisions, which quietly came into effect last week, may surprise some of its critics.

H. 454, now Act 73, has been signed into law by Gov. Phil Scott, but the majority of its most consequential reforms may never come to pass. School district consolidation won’t happen unless lawmakers draw new district maps, a politically difficult task that will coincide with an election year. And those new maps must be in place for the foundation formula — whereby the state, not local voters, will determine the bulk of school spending — to take effect.

One part of the law, however, took effect immediately: new rules that limit which private schools can receive public money. Even if the rest of Act 73’s intended reforms never come to fruition, those new guardrails will stick.

“Independent schools are essentially the only guaranteed losers in this bill,” Oliver Olsen, who lobbied for the Vermont Independent Schools Association this session, said last week.

In Vermont, certain school districts don’t operate schools. Instead, they pay for families to attend the public or state-approved independent school of their choice in a practice often called town tuitioning. In the past, families could take these vouchers anywhere — including out of the country.

But as of July 1, any out-of-state private schools became ineligible for these publicly funded vouchers. Private schools located within the borders of a school district that operates public schools for all grades, K-12, also became ineligible. That will essentially disallow most private schools that operate within more urban areas, like Barre, Burlington, Hartford and Rutland City. And schools where fewer than 25% of students are publicly funded will also no longer qualify. (There is a grandfather clause: any currently enrolled student can continue using public tuition to stay at the same school until they graduate.)

For Olsen, the legislation represents “the most significant reduction in access to independent schools in the history of Vermont's education system.”

Democratic Rep. Peter Conlon, who chairs the House Committee on Education, has long sought to impose much stricter guardrails on town tuitioning. And while he’s not usually in alignment with Olsen, on this, he agrees.

“We have limited where taxpayer dollars flow in a way that has never been done before,” he said.

The scale of the new rules’ impact remains to be seen. Excluding therapeutic schools, which are not subject to these new eligibility tests, there are 47 independent schools that were eligible for public tuition in Vermont last year. Many, if not most, of the schools that are expected to fall off that list have traditionally only received a handful of publicly tuitioned students at a time.

All 12 of the state’s Catholic schools will likely be ineligible under the new rules, according to David Young, the superintendent of schools for the Diocese of Burlington. But in total, only 109 students received public vouchers to attend Catholic schools in Vermont this year. That’s a tiny fraction of the roughly 2,200 students who go to Catholic schools in the state.

Finalizing the list of who’s in and who’s out will be a challenge for the state’s Agency of Education. It shouldn’t be difficult to determine which schools are no longer eligible based on geography. But figuring out who meets the 25% threshold will be trickier.

While the state has collected this kind of enrollment information from independent schools in the past, the data has been self-reported — and, until now, relatively unimportant.

“The stakes are high regarding how we're using this data, so we have launched a data validation and certification process,” Education Secretary Zoie Saunders said this week. The state has given private schools and districts that tuition students until July 28 to submit new information.

Critics of the new law note that one independent school's loss is not necessarily the public education system’s gain. Under Act 73, no community that uses vouchers has yet lost access to private school choice. Their pick of schools is just more limited.

“If kids in Hartland can't go to Kimball Union Academy, do they choose The Sharon Academy?” said Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, a Norwich Democrat. “Do they choose Stratton Mountain Academy? Do they go to St. Johnsbury Academy? Do they go to Hartford High School? I don't know.”

Holcombe, a former secretary of education in Vermont, believes that ultimately, the new law could pave the way for more students to wind up in private schools on the public’s dime. The shift to a foundation formula alone, she said, sets the stage.

“That is really one of the preconditions for a voucher system, right? Because it's, it's saying, this is the amount of money that this child will carry, and it doesn't matter where they enroll,” she said.

And redistricting will also force the question of whether to expand choice, she said, as lawmakers contemplate merging districts that do and don’t tuition.

Conlon, for his part, is bullish that redistricting won’t expand private school choice, and instead offers new opportunities to curtail it. But he agrees with Holcombe that the biggest fight is next year.

“People are very concerned that there is a lot of decision-making left to do, and what will the influence of the independent school lobby be on those future decisions? And you know, that's a legitimate concern,” he said. “I'm confident that the Legislature will continue to see the wisdom of supporting a strong public school system.”