Island generosity has flared discussion about church and state, with ramifications for communities across Maine.

Tiny Swan’s Island, with a year-round population of about 325, created a tuition subsidy policy in 2006 for island families. As a town without a high school, Swan’s children can get state-paid tuition to other schools.

As long, however, as they are secular. The state, 27 years ago, removed this privilege for religious schools. So islanders, known for banding together, decided if the state won’t pay for religious school tuitions, they would.

It was a bold step. Whether tuition subsidies should extend to religious schools has been hotly debated. It got as far as the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, where justices in 2006 refused to hear a challenge.

The island’s generosity toward its residents was criticized by civil liberty groups and municipal representatives, so much so the subsidy was repealed by voters. An island family then sued, and lost.

The case is now before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.

For Swan’s Island, the policy made sense. The mainland religious school utilized by the suing family has a $3,600 tuition, while the public school on Mt. Desert Island would have cost about $8,000.

Both the family’s values and town pocketbook are being served here.

Yet there is fear other communities situated like Swan’s – Minot and Durham are two prominent examples – would seize this example to circumvent Maine law against nonsecular subsidies, and gray lines between church and state.

Both are legitimate claims – public funds should not support religious organizations of any denomination or discipline. It’s a founding American tenet and must be respected.

Allowing Swan’s Island’s policy to hold would still do this, though.

The issue here is not religion, but whether church/state separation trumps popular will.

In true island fashion, Swan’s residents gave financial support to one of their own, the same as if a neighbor had fallen sick or on hard times. The town, in this case, was merely the fiscal conduit for the community’s assistance.

This tuition issue only becomes an issue in communities like Swan’s Island: small, rural, interdependent. The subsidy exists to strengthen rural villages and towns, their families, and provide excellent education.

Vermont has a similar program as Maine, and allows subsides for pre-approved nonsecular schools. Local school boards, as well, can control how much subsidy is paid. Maine could easily consider the same.

If this is not enough, there is fiscal logic as well. Per-pupil costs at nonsecular institutions are often less than Maine’s per-pupil cost, which is now $8,230. (Up from $4,938 a decade ago.)

The real question, however, is which founding democratic principle is dearer – the integral divide between religion and state, or the ability to self-govern?

While some say the former is threatened by this subsidy, it is as dangerous to let the latter be violated.