Vermont tax dollars may soon be going to faith-based elementary and secondary schools, if a case filed last week in Federal district court succeeds. The case is styled Valente v. French. The lead plaintiffs are Mt. Holly parents who send their son to the Roman Catholic Mt. St. Joseph Academy in Rutland. French is the Secretary of Education.            The case is the latest product of a decades-long legal debate over a sentence of the First Amendment that reads âCongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.â In a 1947 case the Supreme Court incorporated these protections to bind the states as well.