Opinion ID: 1969525
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Right to Education in Vermont

Text: From its earliest days, Vermont has recognized the obligation to provide for the education of its youth. That obligation begins with the Education Clause in the Vermont Constitution. A provision for the establishment of public schools was contained in the first Vermont Constitution of 1777. That section, in part, provided: A school or schools shall be established in each town, by the legislature, for the convenient instruction of youth.... Vt. Const. of 1777, ch. II, § 40. The clause was amended in 1786 as part of a comprehensive constitutional revision. The amendment modified the language of the section and combined it with the so-called Virtue Clause which followed the Education Clause in the original Constitution, to read as follows: Laws for the encouragement of virtue, and prevention of vice and immorality, ought to be constantly kept in force, and duly executed: and a competent number of schools ought to be maintained in each town, for the convenient instruction of youth.... Vt. Const. of 1786, ch. II, § 38. This amended version roughly corresponds with the education clause in Chapter II, § 68 of our current Constitution. Two points are striking about this constitutional provision. First and foremost is its very existence. It is easy to forget from the perspective of two centuries the daunting task that confronted the creators of Vermont's initial government and law. They were compelled to create an entirely new Constitution setting forth, at a minimum, a declaration of fundamental human rights and a basic frame of government. The fact that they chose, in this statement of first principles, to include a right to public educationparticularly in light of the relative paucity of state-supported public schools in existence at the timeis remarkable. The important point is not simply that public education was mentioned in the first Constitution. It is, rather, that education was the only governmental service considered worthy of constitutional status. The framers were not unaware of other public needs. Among the first statutes enacted by the General Assembly in 1779 were two separate acts for the maintenance and support of the poor and infirm. One, entitled An Act for Relieving and Ordering Idiots, Impotent, Distracted and Idle Persons, specifically required towns to make necessary provision for the relief, support and safety of persons who, because of [p]rovidence ... age, [or] sickness, were uncapable to provide for themselves. Acts and Laws of Vermont 1779, at 15-16. The other statute, entitled An Act for Maintaining and Supporting the Poor, required towns to take care of, support, and maintain their own poor, id. at 97, giving rise to what has euphemistically been called poor farms. Despite the obvious public concern for those least able to care for themselves, the framers made no provision in the Constitution for public welfare or poor relief as it was then known. Indeed, many essential governmental services such as welfare, police and fire protection, transportation, and sanitation receive no mention whatsoever in our Constitution. Only one governmental servicepublic educationhas ever been accorded constitutional status in Vermont. The Education Clause is also instructive in what it does not provide. Although it requires that a school be maintained in each town unless the Legislature permits otherwise, it is silent on the means of their support and funding. The Legislature has implemented the education clause by authorizing school districts to raise revenue through local property taxes. But neither this method, nor any other means of financing public education, is constitutionally mandated. Public education is a constitutional obligation of the state; funding of education through locally-imposed property taxes is not. An examination of the Education Clause in its historical context proves enlightening, as well. Vermont did not exist as a political entity prior to 1777. Before the Revolution, the territory was known as the Hampshire Grants and was torn by the competing claims of New Hampshire and New York. It was occupied by an amalgam of settlers from neighboring colonies whose loyalties often lay elsewhere. See G. Aichele, Making the Vermont Constitution: 1777-1824, 56 Vt. Hist. 166, 167 (1988); State v. Elliott, 159 Vt. 102, 112-13, 616 A.2d 210, 216 (1992), cert. denied, 507 U.S. 911, 113 S.Ct. 1258, 122 L.Ed.2d 656 (1993). This changed dramatically in 1777, when the people of Vermont, emboldened by events in the colonies, issued their own declaration of independence, created the independent Republic of Vermont, and adopted their own constitution. Thus Vermont became the first self-created state. Records of the Council of Censors of the State of Vermont 1 (P. Gillies & D. Sanford eds., 1991). It was not until 1791 that Vermont would enter the union as the fourteenth state. With the formal creation of the Vermont Republic all of the institutions of self-government that had long existed in the original thirteen colonies had to be created anew. More important, all of the habits and values of a self-governing people had to be freshly invigorated and reinforced. As one historian of this period observed, The creators of Vermont ... could not appeal to a colonial past.... [T]he new state's leaders had to convince not only the `powers of the earth,' but also the people of Vermont and themselves, that they were entitled to statehood. P. Onuf, State-Making in Revolutionary America: Independent Vermont as a Case Study, 67 J. Am. Hist. 797, 802 (1981). Thus, for the founders of the frontier Republic of Vermont the fostering of republican values, or public virtue as it was commonly known in the eighteenth century, was not the empty rhetoric it often seems today; it was an urgent necessitya matter literally affecting the survival of the new Republic. This urgency was reflected in the Constitution, one provision of which instructed that frequent recurrence to fundamental principles, and a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, industry and frugality, are absolutely necessary to preserve the blessings of liberty. Vt. Const. of 1777, ch. I, art. 16. Another constitutional provision, the so-called Virtue Clause, declared that [l]aws for the encouragement of virtue, and prevention of vice and immorality, shall be made and constantly kept in force. Id. ch. II, § 41. Republican theory of the eighteenth century held that public virtuein the broad sense of moral restraint, public responsibility, and ethical valueswas the bedrock and essential ingredient of self-government. See G. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 68 (1969) (The eighteenth century mind was thoroughly convinced that a popularly based government `cannot be supported without Virtue. '). As John Adams wrote, `Liberty'... `can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul.' B. Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution 135 (1992) (quoting John Adams). [7] In 1786, as noted, the Virtue and Education Clauses were combined to form a single section. Nothing could be more indicative of the close connection in the minds of the framers between virtue and all that that impliedcivic responsibility, ethical values, industry, self-restraintand public education than this textual union within the Constitution. No explanation for the 1786 modification survives, but the logical connection is self-evident. The amalgamation was perfectly consistent with the commonly held view of the framers that virtue was essential to self-government, and that education was the primary source of virtue. In a history of Vermont published several years after its founding, Ira Allen, youngest brother of Ethan Allen and a storied figure in his own right, explained the relationship as follows: The greatest legislators from Lycurgus down to John Lock[e], have laid down a moral and scientific system of education as the very foundation and cement of a State; the Vermonte[rs] are sensible of this, and for this purpose they have planted several public schools, and have established a university, and endowed it with funds ... to draw forth and foster talents. The effects of these institutions are already experienced, and I trust that in a few years the rising generation will evince that these useful institutions were not laid in vain;... our maxim is rather to make good men than great scholars: let us hope for the union, for that makes the man, and the useful citizen. I. Allen, The Natural and Political History of the State of Vermont, in 1 Collections of the Vermont Historical Society 319, 482 (1870) (emphasis added). In thus characterizing education as the cement of [the] State, Allen was expressing a central tenet of republicanism: no democracy can survive without a virtuous citizenry ... `and to inspire it ought to be the principal business of education.' J. Nelson, Adequacy in Education: An Analysis of the Constitutional Standard in Vermont, 18 Vt. L.Rev. 7, 35-37 (1993) (quoting C. Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Law, bk. IV, ch. 5, ¶ 5, quoted in A. Hubsch, Education and Self-Government: The Right to Education Under State Constitutional Law, 18 J.L. & Educ. 93, 95 n. 1 (1989)). Because human nature was not viewed by the framers as naturally inclined to virtue, Allen and his contemporaries saw education as the state's tool to insure self-preservation. Id. at 37. As Moses Mather concisely observed in 1775: `The strength and spring of every free government ... is the virtue of the people; virtue grows on knowledge, and knowledge on education.' Wood, supra, at 120 (quoting M. Mather, America's Appeal to the Impartial World 66-67 (1775)). Thus understood, the Education Clause assumes paramount significance in the constitutional frame of government established by the framers: it expressed and incorporated that part of republican theory which holds education essential to self-government and which recognizes government as the source of the perpetuation of the attributes of citizenship. Hubsch, supra, at 97-98 (footnote omitted). The State places great store in the fact that the 1786 amendment which combined the virtue and education sections also modified the text of the Education Clause from its original schools shall be established to its current  ought to be maintained. Vt. Const. of 1777, ch. II, § 40; Vt. Const. of 1786, ch. II, § 38. From this it infers that the framers intended to relegate education to a mere discretionary ideal. The framers, however, drew no distinction between ought and shall in defining rights and duties. The Declaration of Rights set forth in the revised Constitution of 1786 declared, for example, [t]hat all elections ought to be free and without corruption, Vt. Const. of 1786, ch. I, art. 9 (emphasis added), that search warrants unsupported by probable cause  ought not to be granted, id. ch. I, art. 12 (emphasis added), that the right to trial by jury  ought to be held sacred, id. ch. I, art. 14 (emphasis added), and that freedom of the press  ought not to be restrained, id. ch. I, art. 15 (emphasis added). The contention that the framers intended these fundamental freedoms to be mere aspirational ideals rather than binding and enforceable obligations upon the state cannot be seriously maintained. The State also suggests that placement of the Education Clause in Chapter II, setting forth the Frame of Government, rather than Chapter I, which contained the Declaration of Rights, implies that education was not considered by the framers to be an individual right. The argument is equally unpersuasive. Chapter II of the original Constitution enumerated any number of individual rights besides education, including the right to trial by jury, Vt. Const. of 1777, ch. II, § 22, the right to bail, id. ch. II, § 25, and the right to hold and acquire land. Id. ch. II, § 38. From the perspective of the framers, Chapter II represented a perfectly logical place to provide for education. We have already touched upon the essential role of education in the framers' theory of self-government. Considered in this light, the Education Clause properly belonged in that part of the Constitution setting forth the frame of government, and the essential conditions of its survival. Apart from its prominence in the Constitution, the importance of education to self-government and the state's duty to ensure its proper dissemination have been enduring themes in the political history of Vermont. From the beginning of the Republic, Vermont's chief executives have used the occasion of their inaugural addresses to elaborate upon the state's affirmative obligation to cultivate the essential attributes of citizenship through public education. Addressing the General Assembly in 1802, Governor Isaac Tichenor observed: It is on the progress and influence of education, knowledge, virtue and religion, that all orders of men will receive the most substantial benefits that can accrue, either to individuals or to societies. 1802 Journal of the General Assembly of the State of Vermont, 19. Governor Samuel Crafts, speaking in 1828, echoed these sentiments: As our social and political institutions can be sustained and perpetuated, only by the general virtue and intelligence of the community; it is our indispensable duty ... to make such provision for instruction, as will qualify our youth to discharge the important trust which will be committed to their care. 1828 Journal of the General Assembly of the State of Vermont, 12. Similarly, Governor Erastus Fairbanks, on the eve of the Civil War, declared: [A] proper system of instruction is recognized as one of the first duties of the State.... [I]t is only as the youth of the country shall be properly instructed, morally and intellectually, for the duties of citizens, that our free institutions, in the hands of the coming and future generations, are to be preserved intact. 1860 Journal of the Senate of the State of Vermont, 18. The courts of this state have been no less forthright in declaring education to be a fundamental obligation of the state. In 1860, this Court gave voice to that duty with unequivocal clarity: From the earliest period in this State, the proper education of all the children of its inhabitants has been regarded as a matter of vital interest to the State, a duty which devolved upon its government.... The constitution of the State especially enjoins upon the legislature the duty of passing laws to carry out this object.... .... ... [T]he whole subject of the maintenance and support of common schools has ever been regarded in this State as one not only of public usefulness, but of public necessity, and one which the State in it sovereign character was bound to sustain. Williams v. School Dist. No. 6, 33 Vt. 271, 274-75 (1860). Similar statements in later decisions abound. See, e.g., Buttolph v. Osborn, 119 Vt. 116, 119, 119 A.2d 686, 688 (1956) (It [is] clear that education is a function of the state as distinguished from local government.); Vermont Educ. Bldgs. Fin. Agency v. Mann, 127 Vt. 262, 266, 247 A.2d 68, 71 (1968) ([O]ur Constitution imposes on the General Assembly a duty in regard to education that is universally accepted as a proper public purpose.), appeal dismissed, 396 U.S. 801, 90 S.Ct. 9, 24 L.Ed.2d 58 (1969); Palmer v. Bennington Sch. Dist., 159 Vt. 31, 37, 615 A.2d 498, 502 (1992) (discussing importance of education in preserving representative government and noting state's commitment to this essential government function). Notwithstanding its long and settled history as a fundamental obligation of state government, the State contends that the primary constitutional responsibility for education rests with the towns of Vermont, that its funding must be derived from whatever sources are available locally, that the only substantial tax available to towns is the property tax, and therefore that funding inequities are an inevitablebut nevertheless constitutionalconsequence of local disparities in property wealth. The State asserts that its only responsibility, if any, is to ameliorate inequities if they become too extreme, and that it has acted responsibly in this role. This argument fundamentally misunderstands the state's constitutional responsibilityoutlined abovefor public education. The state may delegate to local towns and cities the authority to finance and administer the schools within their borders; it cannot, however, abdicate the basic responsibility for education by passing it on to local governments, which are themselves creations of the state. The State's position confuses constitutional endsthe obligation to maintain a competent number of schools ... in each town, Vt. Const. ch. II, § 68,with legislative means, that is, the methods it has employed to fulfill its obligation. As noted, our Constitution nowhere states that the revenue for education must be raised locally, that the source of the revenue must be property taxes, or that such revenues must be distributed unequally in conformity with local wealth. To be sure, these are longstanding and traditional components of the educational financing system in Vermont, but none of these represents a constitutional imperative. They are choices made by the government of the State of Vermont, and choices for which it bears ultimate responsibility. The wisdom of the original constitutional structure becomes most apparent when considered in a modern context. Chapter II, § 68 states in general terms the state's responsibility to provide for education, but is silent on the means to carry it out. What the State characterizes as the basic constitutional structure of the system is really the legislative means of implementing it, which can and should be modified if it no longer fulfills its purpose. Means and methods that were effective in a rural society with limited development of property resources and largely local industries may become ineffective with the advent of major ski resorts and sizable industrial developments. The towns where the employees of these businesses actually live and educate their children bear the financial burden of development, while reaping none of the tax advantages. Whether this dysfunction between means and ends ultimately denies the citizens of Vermont the common benefit, Vt. Const. ch. I, art. 7, of the education constitutionally guaranteed is the question to which we now turn.