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Families have until Monday to lock in funding for independent schools
by Dave Soulia, for FYIVT.com
Families in Vermont’s school choice towns have until Monday, June 30, to enroll their children in independent schools if they want to lock in public tuition payments under the current rules. After that, new restrictions go into effect that could cut off funding for many popular schools — including Mount St. Joseph (MSJ), Christ the King, and Rutland Area Christian School (RACS) — depending on where families live.
The policy change stems from H.454, passed by the Vermont Legislature earlier this month and signed into law with little fanfare. The new law fundamentally reshapes which independent schools are eligible to receive public tuition payments — and which students qualify to have their tuition covered.
What’s Changing July 1?
Under the new rules, only independent schools located within certain geographic areas will remain eligible to receive public tuition payments from school choice towns. To qualify, a school must:
- Be located in Vermont, and
- Be within a supervisory union or district that does not operate a public school for some or all grades (as of July 1, 2024), and
- Have had at least 25% publicly tuitioned students enrolled in 2023–2024.
If a school doesn’t meet all three criteria, it becomes ineligible to receive public tuition payments for new students, even if it remains an approved independent school in good standing.
This effectively removes tuition eligibility for independent schools located in districts that operate their own public schools — including many schools in the city of Rutland, which does not participate in school choice.
Grandfathering Clause for Currently Enrolled Students
Section 22 of the law includes a one-time exemption:
“A school district that pays tuition […] shall continue to pay tuition on behalf of a resident student enrolled for the 2024–2025 school year in or who has been accepted for enrollment for the 2025–2026 school year […] until such time as the student graduates.”
That means students currently attending an independent school, or those who are accepted and enrolled by June 30, 2025, can continue receiving public tuition through graduation — even if their school becomes ineligible under the new rules.
What This Means for Families Right Now
If you’re in a school choice town, and your child is:
- Already enrolled in an independent school, or
- Accepted for the 2025–2026 school year at a currently approved school,
Then your tuition funding is protected — but only if that enrollment is official before July 1.
If you wait until July 1 or later, your child’s tuition may not be covered, unless the independent school qualifies under the new geographic and enrollment criteria.
Families in non-choice districts, such as Rutland City, are not eligible for public tuition to independent schools at all — and haven’t been — but this change tightens the options for surrounding towns that previously had broader access.
Agency Guidance and Next Steps
The Vermont Agency of Education confirmed the rollout in a bulletin sent to superintendents and independent schools late Friday. AOE staff will be holding office hours on Monday, June 30, from 1:00 to 2:00 p.m., to answer questions from schools. A second session is scheduled for July 14.
Independent schools will also be required to certify past tuition data, and supervisory unions will help validate enrollment records for the prior year to determine ongoing eligibility under H.454.
Families with questions are encouraged to:
- Confirm enrollment status with their school before Monday,
- Check eligibility with their supervisory union, and
- Contact the AOE at Deborah.Ormsbee@vermont.gov for school eligibility or Ted.Gates@vermont.gov for tuition validation issues.
The Bottom Line
If your family relies on public tuition to send a child to a local independent school — and you haven’t finalized enrollment — you’ve got one weekend left to act.
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Categories: Education, News Analysis
So neighbors, how do you like having your “representatives” in Montpelier managing you kids’ education? Had enough yet? Ready to get the state out of the schooling business? Ready to turn raising kids back over to patents? Rise up folks.
Have had more than enough. Totally fed up. Get the legislature out of the business of controlling education!
This is the latest chapter in the education establishment’s drive to wipe out the superior quality education offered by independent schools. It’s particularly noticeable that three catholic schools are affected, probably because their courses do not push DEI, transgender propaganda and other far-left foolishness that takes time away from basic education subjects.
RACS is not a catholic school. It is proudly nondenominational.
We can simply presume that those three Rutland City school were highlighted by Mr. Soulia because he lives and works in that area.
Mr. Davis, no one stated RCAS was Catholic. What gives?
Pam,
The article mentions three “popular” Rutland schools in paragraph one. Bob Frenier indicates with his comment above that these three schools are all catholic.
If that’s not the case, then what three catholic schools is Bob referring to in his comment?
It’s not only parents who lose the ability to make choices. In my tuitioning district, a local independent school that can read the writing on the State House bathroom wall is closing its doors for good. It can no longer compete in this despotic regulatory capture zone.
Make no mistake: ‘Regulatory Capture’ it is. “Corruption of authority that occurs when a political entity, policymaker, or regulator is co-opted to serve the commercial, ideological, or political interests of a minor constituency, such as a particular geographic area, industry, profession, or ideological group. When regulatory capture occurs, a special interest is prioritized over the general interests of the public, leading to a net loss for society.”
Vermont is the local petri dish for Marxist tyranny. A lesson for all to learn.
Lots of factors in play when looking at Westminster but the Compass School had been operating at a loss since 2016. It seems like a good educational choice for some but clearly wasn’t a sustainable model.
I was informed today, by a Compass School associate, that the school has not been operating at a loss for the last 8 years.
That being said, clearly, there’s no question the Compass School model was not sustainable. One reason was its anticipation of the 25% demographic decline in the area’s 7th thru 12th grade population and its inability to raise the tuition it charges to cover increasing costs.
But of even more significance is the fact the Compass model didn’t include the ability to raise taxes to cover its costs… like the public-school monopoly does year after year after year.
Try as they might, with property taxes taking an ever-increasing proportion of parent’s discretionary spending, it was only a matter of time before parents, who would otherwise choose Compass, simply couldn’t afford to do so. Some of them were forced to use the public-school monopoly. Others left Vermont for other places to live.
Again, “when regulatory capture occurs, a special interest is prioritized over the general interests of the public, leading to a net loss for society.”
And keep in mind too, the public-school monopoly model, especially as modified in H.454, is unsustainable too. It won’t be long before the only people living in Vermont are wealthy retired folk with no children, or those who are employed by the public-school cartel. After all, the Vermont education system is the largest employer in the State, and those employees will be the only ones left to pay for the exorbitant inefficiencies of its own making.
As Ernest Hemmingway wrote in ‘The Sun Also Rises’: “How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly.”
Compass was not the first shoe to drop. And it won’t be the last.
I’ll believe the school’s own tax filings over an unknown “associate.”
In its annual 990 form filed with the IRS – analogous to a tax return for the nonprofit world – the school posted healthy yearly surpluses from 2011 to 2015. Starting in 2016, the filings show a number of years of losses even before the pandemic hit in 2020.
https://www.commonsnews.org/issue/821/821compass_closing