This commentary is by Kayce Bradley, who lives in Concord. She has two sons and is an independent hairstylist.   This past December, my son Cody packed his bags for Michigan to begin a specialized welding program. He has found a career path he is passionate about and is confident in his sk ills after earning a high school diploma with high honors. If you had seen him several years ago, before he started high school at St. Johnsbury Academy, you might not have believed this future was possible. As the parent of a child who had special education needs, I learned the hard way that no single school model works for every student.  Education is not a monolith, and neither are our children. Vermont is currently engaged in a necessary debate over education reform, and I welcome that conversation.  However, what I cannot welcome — and what compels me to speak out — is the argument pushed by advocates who insist that public schools are the only legitimate option. They want families in tuitioning districts without their own public schools to be stopped from using public tuition dollars to send their children to independent schools. Sadly, this effort is often built on arguments that are not just misguided but harmful to families like mine. The most offensive narrative to me is the claim that independent schools discriminate against students with disabilities or only accept the best students while leaving others behind. My family’s experience proves the exact opposite. Before high school, Cody attended a public school. He struggled with reading and consistently scored low grades, barely passing. In that environment, he wasn’t thriving; he was just there. As Cody described it, he felt like they “kind of just sat me in a room” and gave him worksheets, but didn’t focus on him as a person. We felt left behind. When we used school choice to send him to St. Johnsbury Academy, the difference was immediate. They didn’t turn him away. He was welcomed wholeheartedly.  They sat down with us, went over his education plan, and ensured he had access to a multitiered literacy program. It wasn’t a generic fix; it was two or three students with one teacher, working intensively for an hour a day. The results speak for themselves. The boy who was barely passing in middle school was on the honor roll or high honor roll for all four years of high school. He flourished not because the standards were lower, but because the support was real. For Cody, this meant learning from instructors in culinary arts and welding, programs that engaged him and gave him a reason to love school. Those programs, and the teachers who led them, are the direct reason he is pursuing a career in welding today. If independent schools were the unaccountable, discriminatory institutions critics suggest, my son would have fallen through the cracks. Instead, he was lifted up. Under Act 173, schools receiving public funds cannot turn students away without just cause. Discrimination against students with disabilities is illegal — full stop.  St. Johnsbury Academy and Vermont’s independent schools are approved and regulated under the State Board of Education’s 2200 rule series. It’s a framework nearly twice as long as the standards governing public schools. The idea that these schools are the Wild West of education is a myth. Finally, there are the administrative arguments: that tuitioning funnels money to discriminatory religious institutions.  This is demonstrably false. The Legislature has already solved this. Under Act 73, just 18 independent schools in Vermont remain eligible for public tuitioning and none of them are religious. All of them follow Vermont’s strict anti-discrimination laws. I support Vermont’s public schools. I want them to succeed. But I also know that our state’s education system has long relied on a healthy mix of public and independent options to meet the needs of diverse communities. I have another child graduating from eighth grade soon, and we are looking forward to him having the same opportunities Cody did. Families like mine should not be punished because some advocates are intent on creating a false narrative to limit our choices. Vermonters deserve an honest conversation about education, not one built on fear and distortion.  For my child, the environment where he could thrive, where he went from “stuck in a room” to a high honors graduate with a bright future, happened to be an independent school.  Vermont’s tuitioning system made that possible. Don’t tear it down based on claims that simply aren’t true. Read the story on VTDigger here: Kayce Bradley: Stop attacking our independent schools. ...read more read less