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.