The Democratic/Progressive legislature seems poised to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Under S.66, they would destroy the much-admired Vermont town-tuition system in order to prevent a small minority of parents and students from choosing a religious school under the tuition system. Their argument: they oppose teaching religion at the taxpayers’ expense, citing the compelled support clause of the Vermont Constitution. They ignore the following:

• Religious schools such as Rice Memorial High School meet the state certification standards and attract non-religious students as well as religious students. No one is compelled to attend.
• Non-religious independent schools such as Sharon Academy, Compass school, Thaddeus Stevens and many others would be caught in the S66 web and could no longer qualify for the town-tuition program.
• The public schools—at taxpayer expense—teach a Progressive value system, most egregiously about sexuality, without the consent of most taxpayers. If Rice and others forfeit tuition vouchers for including religion in their curriculum, why are the rest of us compelled to support public schools that continue to teach woke?

Either we are all free to express our beliefs and values or none of us are. That is the essence of the recent SCOTUS decisions about vouchers and schools.

What parents want when they send their children to religious schools is twofold: a return to academics over activism and freedom from indoctrination in values that conflict with their own.

Carol Frenier
Chelsea, Vermont