The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that Maine could not exclude religious schools from its school tuitioning program. The 6-3 decision will likely have.
Officials: Vermont ruling on religious school tuition raises questions
Modified: 4/28/2021 9:00:25 PM
When the Vermont Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that public funding couldn’t be used for religious worship or education but could be used for secular classes at religious schools, it left school districts in a bind.
Local school boards and administrators in districts that pay tuition to schools had no yardstick with which to gauge whether payments to a religious school would be funding religion or education. Districts made decisions on their own, with some paying tuition to religious schools and others drawing a bright line.
Last week’s decision by the Vermont State Board of Education requiring three school districts to pay tuition to religious schools, a matter that’s also the subject of litigation in federal court, doesn’t make things any clearer, according to school officials in two of the districts, both of them in the Upper Valley.
Vermont board tells 3 districts, including Hartland, to pay for tuition at religious schools
Modified: 4/22/2021 10:00:17 PM
MONTPELIER The State Board of Education has ordered three Vermont school districts to reimburse families who live in “choice” towns for the tuition they paid out of pocket this year for their children to attend religious schools.
The board’s decision, released on Wednesday, was not entirely unexpected, given recent court rulings at the state and national levels. But it still does not settle the fundamental question at the heart of several lawsuits still pending in Vermont and elsewhere: To what extent, if any, can states exclude religious schools from receiving taxpayer funds?
Ruling tests limits on school vouchers in Vermont
Modified: 1/28/2021 10:12:49 PM
A federal appeals court judge has ruled that three Vermont school districts cannot, for now, exclude Catholic school students from the state’s voucher system.
Whether that decision will stick, and what it means for the state’s decades-long prohibition on spending public funds at religious schools, remains to be seen.
But a series of rulings suggest Vermont may soon find out whether two constitutional principles one enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, the other in Vermont’s can indeed coexist.
Vermont is currently defending itself in court against two separate lawsuits brought by two powerful national conservative legal groups. Both cases argue that the exclusion of religious schools from the state’s “town-tuitioning” program is unconstitutional. Districts that don’t have their own schools have been allowed to “tuition out” students to private or public schools. Eighty-one to