Education Week - December 1, 2021 - 9

class, and she is now thriving at Husson University in
Bangor, where she studies business.
The Carsons say they can afford the tuition, but because
their town has no high school, they would not
have had to pay if the exclusion of religious schools
were removed.
" If it's an approved, accredited school, it shouldn't
make a difference to the state, " David Carson said.
At Bangor Christian Schools, there is little effort to
mask the conservative viewpoints it shares with its
sponsor, Crosspoint Church, an evangelical congregation
whose building is across the parking lot from the
two small buildings that make up the school campus.
Martha Boone, the principal of Bangor Christian
Schools, led a reporter on a tour of the school recently
while emphasizing that the school itself is not a party to
the case. Still, she said, the school would participate in
the tuitioning program " if we are allowed to be us, and
there are no strings attached to the money. "
" We will not change who we are, " Boone said. " We
won't change the core of what our values are. The
anti-discrimination laws are written to include religious
exemptions. "
But Bindas said the case is not about " funneling
public money to religious schools. "
" The problem here is Maine has been discriminating
FROM TOP: Amy Carson,
left, and her daughter,
Olivia, outside Bangor
Christian Schools, where
Olivia graduated in 2021.
Parents David and Amy
Carson discuss their
upcoming U.S. Supreme
Court case in a classroom
at Bangor Christian
Schools.
against parents who desire a religious education for their
children for four decades, " he said. " Perhaps people
have gotten used to this state of affairs. "
The parents have most of the same allies that Montana
private school parents attracted in the Espinoza
case, from conservative religious liberty groups to professors
to religious congregations. One notable difference
is the federal government, with the Trump administration
having supported the Montana tax credit (and
the parents in this case in the appeals court), while the
Biden administration sided with the state.
Maine education groups say that religious-school
parents are trying to 'hijack' the program
The state, which declined an interview request,
argues among other things that the religious schools
may not even wish to accept public tuition funds.
Both Bangor Christian and Temple Academy, for
example, have policies that bar LGBTQ people from
employment. The state says that would run afoul of the
Maine Human Rights Act, which bars such discrimination
and provides a religious exemption only for organiportation
for some towns where there is a cluster of tuitioning
students, while some districts provide buses.
John Bapst and the 23 other participating Maine
private schools last school year received $11,950 per
student in the state tuition program, a nonnegotiable
figure set by the state education department.
The challengers of the exclusion of " sectarian "
schools point out that Maine has approved some
private schools with religious traditions or character,
such as out-of-state but nearby boarding schools such
as Cardigan Mountain School in Canaan, N.H.
But the out-of-state approvals tended to be for " a family
here or a family there, " and the state has tightened its
criteria for approving such programs, said Steven W. Bailey,
the executive director of the Maine School Boards
Association. Only one out-of-state school is approved
this year, the Dana Hall School, in Wellesley, Mass.
Recent Supreme Court decisions prompt the
legal test in Maine
Maine's exclusion of " sectarian " schools was challenged
by the Carsons and by Troy and Angela Nelson,
who have sought to have their two children attend
another Christian school, Temple Academy in
Waterville, Maine, at state expense.
The families filed their challenge after the Supreme
Court ruled in a 2017 case, Trinity Lutheran Church
of Columbia v. Comer, that Missouri violated the U.S.
Constitution's guarantee of free exercise of religion
when it denied a church participation in a state program
to improve the safety of playgrounds. The decision
in that case was based on the religious status of
the Lutheran school.
The high court took the same view in the 2020 decision
in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue,
when the court held that a state constitutional provision
barring aid to religious schools discriminated against
schools and families seeking to benefit from the aid.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the
court, emphasized the religious status of the schools
that would benefit from the tax-credit program, rather
than any religious use of the aid.
In the Maine case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
1st Circuit, in Boston, said in an opinion last year that it
was significant that Maine's program imposes a prohibition
based on religious " use " of the state aid.
" Because Maine permissibly requires public educational
instruction to be nonsectarian for reasons that
reflect no hostility to religion, it betrays no hostility
toward religion when it imposes a use-based 'nonsectarian'
restriction on the public funds that it makes
available for the purpose of providing a substitute for
the public educational instruction that is not otherwise
offered, " said the opinion for a 1st Circuit panel
that included retired Supreme Court Justice David H.
Souter sitting by designation.
That decision was appealed to the Supreme Court
by the Carson and Nelsons.
In an interview in one of Bangor Christian's classrooms,
after the school day had let out, David and
Amy Carson said they chose the school for Olivia because
of its religious curriculum, its small size, and
its strong academics. Both parents graduated from
Bangor Christian themselves.
" It's faith-based, " Amy Carson said. " It's a college
prep school. The school meets all the educational requirements
and then some. "
The school has a total enrollment of 310. Olivia
Carson had 21 students in her high school graduating
zations that do not receive public funds.
" Accepting public funds would result in a significant
change in how BCS and TA operate, " the state
argues, saying the schools could no longer refuse to
hire LGBTQ teachers or discriminate against LGBTQ
students.
Maine is supported by the major education groups
within the state, along with a range of outside groups.
The Maine School Management Association, joined
by groups representing the state's school boards and
principals, argue in a brief that the religious school
parents are trying " to hijack Maine's tuition law and
force Maine taxpayers to fund religious education for
their children. "
Bailey, a former principal and superintendent who
leads the state school boards association, said that while
relatively few students and schools would be added to
the tuition program if the exclusion of religious schools
is overturned, " it's the principle that is large. "
" This has always been very limited school choice, "
he said.
Grace Leavitt, the president of the Maine Education
Association, which joined the brief from multiple
teachers' unions in support of the state, said the parents
and their backers " are trying to turn this into a
voucher program. "
Maddaus, the University of Maine professor, noted
that some parents choose to live in towns without high
schools so they can send their children to approved private
schools at state expense. In that sense, the tuitioning
program has acted as a school choice program. But there
has never been a widespread desire to make the program
apply statewide, even in towns with high schools.
" Most Mainers don't see the need for that, " he said.
" This program never fully went in the direction that
national proponents of school choice intended. "
EDUCATION WEEK | December 1, 2021 | www.edweek.org | 9
http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - December 1, 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - December 1, 2021
