Property taxes, student outcomes, demographics, labor force…
by Rob Roper
I just read, I think, the most important op-ed to appear anywhere in Vermont this year. It is by Shawn Tester, CEO of Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital, and it is about school choice. Why is a healthcare guy writing about the importance of school choice? Because access to school choice and a variety of independent schools in the Northeast Kingdom is a major – if not THE major – selling point that can attract doctors to our state. And, yes, we need to do that. In Tester’s powerful words,
We are competing not just with hospitals in Berlin or Burlington, but with hospitals in New Hampshire, Virginia and Colorado. All can offer the same salary that we can. Many can offer lower taxes, lower housing costs and a lower cost of living.
A physician making $300,000 a year who chooses to live and work in Littleton, New Hampshire, instead of right across the river here in Vermont, will take home roughly $15,000-$25,000 more annually. That’s not a rounding error. That’s school loans paid off. That’s a down payment on a house.
When a doctor finishing their residency googles our state, here is what they find: potential hospital closures, regulatory battles, a cost of living that keeps climbing and a housing market that has become unrecognizable. There is almost nothing positive in that search. We are asking people to choose Vermont despite all of that. So, we had better have something extraordinary to offer.
We do. What we can offer — what has time and again made the difference — is the quality of life that defines this corner of Vermont. Our outdoor recreation. Our rural culture. And yes, our independent schools.
Vermont’s 150-year-old tuitioning system, which allows parents who live in towns that do not operate a public school to pick any public or approved independent school anywhere in or out of state that best suits their child’s needs with the money following the child, has long been a draw for young, productive families (not just doctors). In the Northeast Kingdom and in the southern part of the state where school choice is the norm you hear all the time at community forums (when, as is often too often the case that the legislature is trying to take away or limit school choice) some version of, “We moved here for school choice,” often followed by, “and brought our business here.”
During an Act 73 public hearing in Rutland County, for example, the Mountain Times reported,
Over and over, speakers defended small schools, independent schools, and school choice as practical lifelines in mountain towns.
One Plymouth parent, drove the point home: “School choice isn’t just about convenience. It’s about survival.” In a town without an elementary school, she said, choice lets families pick a school along daily work routes. “Take that away, and families start leaving.”
Our politicians constantly say we need more young families moving here and staying here. School choice helps solve that problem. We have a doctor shortage. School choice helps solve that problem. We have a school funding crisis. The simpler, more equitable funding mechanism used by tuitioning towns could help solve that problem if adopted statewide. We have rapidly declining student outcomes. Vermont’s independent schools tend to do a better job of educating their students than their government operated public school counterparts – and they generally do so for fewer tax dollars, the $18,266 set tuitioning amount for 2024-25 grades 7-12 being significantly less than the nearly $30,000 average public school per pupil expenditure. So, expanding access to school choice and independent school choices could help solve our education spending and property tax crisis.
Our politicians keep pulling every whacky program they can think of out of their hats – often at great cost to citizens either directly through taxes or indirectly through higher prices – to get people to move/stay here. Everything from higher-than-average minimum wages, subsidized child care, paid family leave, even straigh cash $10,000 bribes…. None of them work. The one policy we know actually works to attract and retain young families and where we have a century and a half track record of leadership and success – school choice with a variety of independent choices to choose from – is the one they are trying to eliminate. Utterly insane.
I won’t go so far as to say school choice is a silver bullet for all of Vermont’s problems (we have way too many of those for one policy to solve), but it is certainly a potential ball in the shell of silver buckshot. So, why are nearly zero politicians pushing hard for this obvious piece of the solution(s)? (Shout out to Senator Steve Heffernan (R-Addison) for his push for expanded school choice programs, and Representative Mike Tagliavia (R-Corinth) and the six co-sponsors of his bill, H.89 – An act relating to school choice for all Vermont students, as the exceptions.)
I get why the Democrats are doing their level best to crush Vermont’s school choice communities as the VTNEA teachers’ union endorses and supports Democrats almost exclusively, and the Democrats long ago made the soul-selling decision to put the wants of the adults in the system ahead of the needs of the kids and taxpayers. But why aren’t Republicans doing more to elevate expanded school choice as part of the education reform debate – and the labor shortage, and demographic crisis, etcetera conversations? In fact, Governor Scott’s own version of Act 73 specifically wiped out over half the independent schools that had been able to accept tuitioning students, thus limiting families’ choices. And consolidation of school districts threatens to eliminate school choice all together for some, if not all, towns that have school choice today.
It’s not just politicians who don’t show interest. Voters don’t either. I am acutely aware that because “School Choice” is in the title of this article it will receive fewer views than if it didn’t. (Prove me wrong by sharing this post widely).
But, since the mandatory school district consolidation proposals under Act 73 seem to have evaporated here in the closing hours of the 2026 legislative session – no surprise to anyone with a modicum of political instincts, and GOOD! – it means real education finance and delivery reform still has a long way to go. This is an opportunity to bring expanded school choice back into the debate, hopefully in a big way. Republicans blew that opportunity after the 2024 elections. Let’s hope they don’t blow it again going into the 2026 campaign season.
To quote Shawn Testor one more time,
Enough is enough. It’s time for lawmakers — and the political groups attacking our independent schools — to respect those of us who live in rural communities…. Our independent schools are not a relic of the past or a privilege of the wealthy. They are one of the essential threads holding this community together. Pull that thread, and you will find out — too late — just how much was attached to it.
Spot on. Seriously, read the whole op-ed. It’s eye opening.
Rob Roper is a freelance writer who has been involved with Vermont politics and policy for over 20 years. This article reprinted with permission from Behind the Lines: Rob Roper on Vermont Politics, robertroper.substack.com