Vermont Goes the Way of Maine

In 1869, Vermont preceded Maine by four years in introducing vouchers via a so-called Town Tuitioning Program, whereby residents of districts too sparsely populated to support a secondary school could sent their children at public expense to a public or nonsectarian private school in a neighboring district or beyond (according to recent practice, if the school were public, the total cost was covered; if private, coverage was pegged to per-pupil statewide average spending).

Following the Supreme Court’s June decision in Carson v. Makin, however, it is Maine that is leading Vermont in establishing that such voucher programs may not exclude religious schools if including nonsectarian private schools.  

According to K-12 Dive, the Vermont Agency of Education two weeks ago issued the following guidance in light of Carson: “Requests for tuition payments for resident students to approved independent religious schools or religious independent schools that meet educational quality standards must be treated the same as requests for tuition payments to secular approved independent schools or secular independent schools that meet educational quality standards.”

Such guidance constitutes a routine reflection of state abidance by federal law. The Carson decision left Vermont little, if any, room for interpretation.

Where Carson could nevertheless have a substantial impact is in prompting advocates of religious schooling in other states without town tuitioning programs to lobby legislators to follow in the path of these two New England states in implementing such programs.

New Hampshire already has a modest version, introduced in 2017. Many more states stand to establish similar programs given the growing demand for parental choice and the Supreme Court’s endorsement of such public funding of religious schooling.

- S.E. Abrams