School choice is essential to attracting doctors to rural areas in Vermont, one hospital CEO says, as the state’s Town Tuitioning program faces more restrictions.
Vermont has the nation’s oldest school choice program, established in 1869 for residents of towns that don’t have a public school. But the state has made recent efforts to restrict funding and the types of schools parents can choose, much to the dismay of some residents.
Shawn Tester, head of Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital in St. Johnsbury, said his neurologist “read the tea leaves” and decided to leave the state because of the changes.
“She had been here for 12 years,” Tester wrote in VermontBiz. “Her kids were approaching high school age. She was watching the policy landscape in Vermont, reading the tea leaves, and she and her husband made the decision to leave – for lower taxes, lower costs, and a place where the future felt more certain.”
Tester posted her job but has had no applicants in the last year.
