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Intelligent-Hunt7557 t1_jb7mi0w wrote

Reply to comment by ceiffhikare in Rep. Scott Beck: Is this education alliance good for Vermont students? - VTDigger by halfbakedblake

Hello, SJA graduate here. Am I missing something recent? IIRC what public schools call “homeroom” some of us called “chapel”—that’s where the religious content ends, the name of an assembly building. Are you aware of any religious iconography, curriculum, anything?

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Mofo-Pro t1_jb7tgpa wrote

Fellow SJA alumn and lifelong atheist. No one ever shoved the bible down our throats, or the Quran, or the Torah, or the Communist Manifesto for that matter. The faculty made it a point to welcome and encourage the sharing of diverse religious and nonreligious worldviews, often using the daily morning gathering (AKA "Chapel") as the forum for it. We had a kid lead us all in a Buddhist meditation for 15 minutes one morning, a good friend of mine gave a talk on Paganism and Wicca at another. Other times, it was literally just going over sports results, the schedule for the day, advertising for upcoming club, educational, or extracurricular events.

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ceiffhikare t1_jb8x21h wrote

We need a public option for high school that provides busing. My problem with SJA is that its a private not a public school.

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Mofo-Pro t1_jb9is7u wrote

Except St J provided busing for several of my friends and classmates who lived as far away as Peacham and Sheffield. As to it being private vs. public, what specifically about it being private makes it bad? If it comes down to cost and you live in a sender town, that's what your property taxes effectively go towards. If it comes down to oversight issues then what specifically are they doing in the education of our children that you think is so wrong?

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ceiffhikare t1_jb9k08y wrote

They stopped busing the students between when i went and my kid was there..idk when exactly. That was a helluva burden on a single factory worker and threw my life into chaos. Public dollars belong in public schools period full stop. The patrons of these private schools want them to remain in business then they can pay out of pocket for them, and the parish's can pay for the religious ones from tithes.

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Mofo-Pro t1_jb9nf0n wrote

Well, regardless of the busing thing (I graduated in 2015) St Johnsbury is largely funded by private benefactors. Even though the towns are paying a tuition to send their children there, it's not much more than they'd otherwise spend on a public regional high school (supposing one were to spontaneously appear at no cost) and the education received and opportunities to explore different subjects, the arts (performing and visual), career and technical training, extracurricular activities are miles ahead of what a public school can provide. The majority of tuition funding for St J comes from the Dorm students. On top of that, encouraging benefactors from all over the country to donate only adds to the institution's resource pool, which it then uses to improve the student experience.

Yelling absolutes like "public dollars belong in public schools" means nothing if you can't back it up with a good reason to change the current status quo. Yes on principle it's an easy logical conclusion to come to, but in practice it might not be the best solution for a lot of rural areas in our state. A large part of why young families even move to the NEK is because they have access to schools like STJ and LI that they otherwise wouldn't find anywhere else in the country. It's part of what makes our state unique and, if I'm gonna be brutally honest, it's one of few things keeping our state afloat in its undying quest to attract and keep young people and families. You abolish public funding to STJ tomorrow and all of a sudden an entire county has to recreate that with a fraction of the funds? People will leave in droves. I get that a lot of people in this part of the state are willing to cut their nose off to spite their face in the name of "sticking it to the flatlanders" but not me.

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ceiffhikare t1_jb9of2w wrote

>St Johnsbury is largely funded by private benefactors.

Great then they dont need the funding from the public coffers!

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Mofo-Pro t1_jb9rjs6 wrote

So these institutions should just take our kids pro bono? That's just not how it works. It's ultimately a business transaction between the public and private sector that is mutually beneficial for everyone. The school gets a larger student body to work with, and therefore more opportunities for advanced learning, extracurricular activities and clubs, additional curricula that aren't feasible with smaller student bodies; the public gets access to some of the best secondary education in the country without having to deal with the hassle of running its own school district, funding its own building and grounds maintenance, hiring and oversight, etc. The money the towns are spending on their education is the same money that they'd be spending otherwise to send them to some regional high school that they'd have to continually assess repairs and improvements for, and wouldn't even be guaranteed to provide a better education or growth outcomes for its students than the current model. It's just not a risk worth taking.

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ceiffhikare t1_jba2tqh wrote

>So these institutions should just take our kids pro bono?

No, the towns need to get together and build a regional HS for the needs of the public. IDC how bad/good the private schools are, public tax dollars should not be used to fund private and religious schools.

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murrly t1_jb882io wrote

Came here to say this, went to the Academy as well and there wasn't an ounce of religious anything. There are so many diverse students there as well, you get a ton of different insights into cultures.

Hell I had swordfish at lunch one day from the international line. As a high schooler in the NEK.

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ceiffhikare t1_jb8wpi6 wrote

So i will start out by saying i went to SJA. I didnt really do well there in whatever kind of environment they are trying to cultivate there. Then i had a kid years later go there and it was just as bad of an experience. Everything from the expense of transporting her ( a couple thousand more a year in fuel costs ) to changing my schedule around to shift work so i could pick her up and drop her off.

SJA didnt offer me or mine much that wasnt more expense and trouble than it was worth, i loathe that my property taxes are going to a non public school.

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Intelligent-Hunt7557 t1_jba2ns7 wrote

You really could state your case a lot better without conflating religious, independent, and private, as this jumbled thread shows. It sounds like what has happened over the past 5 years is not unique to the NEK or anywhere in VT. And really it has nothing to do with whether you or your child did well there.

As Americans we are spoiled rotten about a number of things rigged by the government (on a bipartisan basis!) to be cheap for us. Fuel and food costs are among them, and those have seen occasional spikes over the past 50 years (sometimes at the expense of getting re-elected as President!). And COVID times have brought us a new (horrible!) era of resetting our appreciation of labor logistics as consumers. “No one WanTS to WORk ANymORE” = workers know their worth. Are the days of minimum wage drivers and child care workers over? You tell me. Add to that our state’s housing crisis and all the other things affecting us and we have many problems to work through, 0 interest in building a new public high school in St. J for what!? Everyone wants a school right outside their door. Why don’t you move to where the school is if it will save you all this money?

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Intelligent-Hunt7557 t1_jba2zvq wrote

I mean, we’re talking what a 200-acre campus, 8-10 years from RFP, and tens of millions right? Show me the money

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ceiffhikare t1_jbaabqf wrote

Not sure why you are confused about something so simple as no public funding for non public schools..unless you have a vested or ideological interest in these places existing. The NEK needs a public option to the existing facilities.

As for the rest..? smh talk about me going off on jumbled rants,lol

Edit: im done with the thread so you all with the last word disease can get your digs in,lol. have a great day people!

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Intelligent-Hunt7557 t1_jbbsiaa wrote

I’ll keep it simple: you

  1. blamed St. Johnsbury Academy for high transportation costs and
  2. implied a public high school would be more convenient or somehow have less expensive transportation

Both of these points need proof and you didn’t provide any. I tried to explain why the nation is experiencing high transportation costs but maybe you’re not interested in understanding. Enjoy your misdirected outrage!

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