Renee McGuinness, Vermont Family Alliance Policy Analyst
Vermont legislators continue to search for loopholes to avoid education tax dollars going to religious schools while maintaining public funding for “woke” independent schools, despite President Trump’s Executive Orders to End Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schools, Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, and Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families, and despite an appeal in August 2024 to the 2nd Circuit in Mid Vermont Christian School v Saunders: a case in which MVCS is being excluded from Vermont’s Town Tuition Program and inter-school sports.
As an example, Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (D-Chittenden) and the Heads of two Southern Vermont Independent schools discussed drawing a hard line against independent schools that do not abide by LGBTQ+ ideology during a recent Senate Education Committee meeting.
As a part of the legislature’s education reform considerations, Colin Igoe, Head of the Long Trail School, and Mark Tashjian, Head of Burr & Burton Academy, appeared before the Senate Education Committee on January 31 to provide information on their schools’ histories, culture, financing, academic standards, educational creativity unburdened by public school regulations, and the value of Vermont’s Town Tuition laws under Title 16, Chaper 21. Long Trail and Burr & Burton are located in Bennington County, in the towns of Dorset and Manchester, respectively.
Early in their presentations, both Igoe and Tashjian emphasized that Long Trail and Burr & Burton are inclusive schools and alluded to their morally superior stance over Mid Vermont Christian School (MVCS), also located in Southern Vermont in the town of Quechee, which is currently being excluded from Vermont’s Town Tuition Program and inter-school sports based on alleged discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals under Vermont Agency of Education rules drafted in 2022.
According to Tashjian of Burr & Burton (@8:40), “We come in all different shapes, sizes, colors, learning styles, orientations, genders. You know when I arrived [at Burr & Burton] in 2008, I knew nothing about gender fluidity, for whatever that’s worth. I don’t think any of us did, and we’ve learned to embrace how people identify in their own way . . . and we build a community grounded on respect for individual differences.”
Igoe stated (@26:50) that Long Trail School has an environment of inclusivity, a strong LGBTQ+ student group, and that the school, “was in headlines a few years ago, battling a really challenging situation where folks were not as inclusive of some of our students. That was front page news around the world.”
Igoe was referring to the incident in which MVCS girls’ basketball team forfeited a game to Long Trail after the Vermont Principal’s Association (VPA) denied MVCS’s request to have a biological male removed from Long Trail’s team. MVCS was subsequently excluded from receiving Town Tuition funds and banned from inter-school sports and activities.
As a side note, Long Trail is an International Baccalaureate school, which is the institution that created the Primary Years Program of Inquiry implemented in a kindergarten classroom at Mary Hogan Elementary in Addison Central School District (ASCD), guided by the International Baccalaureate Learner Profile that provides the platform for the controversial books included in the “Who We Are” gender ideology literacy program.
While Igoe expressed (@18:00) the importance of students and families being able to “choose the environment that’s right for them” under the Town Tuition program, he is clearly against affording these same benefits to students and families that choose to attend independent schools with a Biblical worldview.
The subject comes back around @1:13:23, when Senator Hinsdale accurately summarized the incident involving MVCS and Long Trail School, and continued, “I think that’s a very live conversation right now, you know. What are we going to do in an environment where we might have to draw a bright line around discrimination of any kind and honor the will of Vermont voters who would like to ensure we don’t fund that kind of discrimination, and ensure that maybe you’re part of a cohort of Independent Schools where you’re saying, ‘Hey, like, you’re going to mess this up for the rest of us,’ but you know that might force a conversation on us very soon, given the executive orders coming down that causes us to have to behave in . . . more black-and- white ways. Has that been coming up in your conversations with other Independent Schools, or maybe others can help answer this, how did this situation get resolved with this school and do we still have schools that are discriminating against kids that are getting public tuition dollars?”
Igoe responded (@ 1:16:30), “all of the sudden we were thrust – a small school in Southwestern Vermont – into a cultural war, right? And what I’m most proud of and that our school and our students and those families is that we the in this whole nonsense . . . we were singularly focused on that student and supporting that student and we circled the wagons and school went on, and athletics went on, and we didn’t comment or get sucked into things that would take away from a 16-year-old kid kid who had a tough life who’s just trying go to school and play some basketball . . . and I think that’s actually probably emblematic of the way good schools are going to operate.”
Tashjian interjected that he was a part of a group that sent a letter to the Vermont Principal’s Association (VPA) expecting MVCS to be expelled from competition for violating “rules of governing,” and further stated that religious beliefs are “okay until they do harm to another kid . . . and I think there just has to be a red line there, you know, discrimination.”
Senator Hashim suggested the Committee hear from Legislative Counsel Beth St. James before discussing the ongoing case any further.
Meanwhile in early May of 2024, House Judiciary Committee members gnashed their teeth against “so-called lawyer” Gregory Baylor, Senior Counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, when he testified that Proposition 4 Constitutional Amendment, if passed, “will be added to our toolkit,” during the poorly attended public hearing for Proposition 4 “Equal Rights Amendment.”
CJ Spirito, Head of Rock Point School, and Sergio Simunovic, Head of Greenwood School will appear before the Senate Education Committee Tuesday, February 11 at 3:15 PM. A Committee field trip to St. Johnsbury Academy is scheduled for Thursday, February 13. To date, no Heads of religious schools have appeared on the agenda to offer witness testimony, and no field trips have been scheduled.
Students, staff, and administrators at MVCS are getting a real-world lesson in Matthew 5:11-12 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. / Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets before you.”
Timeline of the Vermont school choice program and efforts to exclude religious schools:
1869: Vermont school choice program is implemented: it is unclear to me whether it’s true that the public money can be used for students to attend any non-religious school inside or outside the state, as there is a history of public funds being transferred to religious schools outside the state. There is no language in 16 V.S.A. § 821, 16 V.S.A. § 823 or 16 V.S.A. § 828 that excludes religious schools.
1999: Vermont Supreme Court held that allowing towns to reimburse parents for tuition to religious private schools through the Town Tuition Program violated Article 3 of Vermont’s state constitution in Chittenden Town School District v. VT Dept. of Education.
2017: Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer, SCOTUS decision, “government cannot exclude churches and other faith-based organizations from a secular government program simply because of their religious identity,” according to Alliance Defending Freedom.
2020: Espinoza v. Montana Dept. of Revenue, 140 S. Ct. 2246, 2261 (2020) (“[a] State need not subsidize private education. But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.”).
2022: Carson v. Makin, SCOTUS decision, “Maine cannot discriminate against religious schools,” ADF
2022: As a result of the Carons v Makin decision, ADF on behalf of Rice Memorial High School, settles with Vermont in A.H. v French (2020) and E.M. v French (2022): The VT Agency of Education sends letter to school districts that, “the First Amendment requires districts to treat tuition requests for religious schools the same as secular school tuition requests.” ADF
2023: The Vermont Supreme Court dismisses Vitale v. Vermont, which argued the state should pay for all Vermont students to attend their public or private school of choice.
2023: Senators Hardy, Cummings, Gulick, Lyons, MacDonald, McCormack, Ram Hinsdale, Vyhovsky, Watson, White and Wrenner introduce S.66, which would require local school districts to select up to three public or private schools from which parents would be allowed to choose. See, “Newly introduced Vermont legislation could derail education choice in Green Mountain State.” And “Will a U.S. Supreme Court decision end Vermont’s School Choice System?”
2024: The timeline for Mid Vermont Christian School v. Saunders can be found on Alliance Defending Freedom’s website.
2025: H.122, introduced by Representatives Birong of Vergennes and Graning of Jericho, also proposes to eliminate parental choice by requiring school districts to designate not more than three schools to which parents can send their children, in up to 25 school districts.