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by Guy Page
Two recent legal victories on parents’ rights and women’s sports are prompting calls by SPEAK VT, a non-profit parents rights group, for Vermont officials to clarify their stance on the issues.
SPEAK VT also wants the Legislature to approve a binding Parents Bill of Rights.
In Mahmoud v. Taylor, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that parents have the right to direct their children’s moral and religious upbringing, including the ability to opt their children out of lessons they consider objectionable. The case involved storybooks with sexual content that conflicted with some families’ beliefs. Justice Samuel Alito wrote that public education cannot be conditioned on parents’ acceptance of instruction that undermines their faith.
In a separate case, the U.S. Department of Education reached a settlement with the University of Pennsylvania over its decision to allow transgender swimmer Lia Thomas to compete in women’s events. Under the agreement, UPenn will restore female athletes’ records, titles, and awards, issue an apology, and pledge to bar male athletes from competing in women’s programs or using female facilities.
SPEAK VT President Marie Tiemann added that both developments raise questions for Vermont’s Agency of Education: whether it will respect parents’ right to opt out of controversial classroom material, and whether it will protect female athletes under Title IX.
“Now the question is: how will the Vermont Agency of Education respond to both rulings?,” Tiemann said in a recent statement. ‘Will the Agency respect the right that parents have to opt their children out from lessons that are opposed to their family values? This is a big source of frustration and concern for Vermont parents that I have talked to and they are forced to make major sacrifices to protect their children. Parents are the primary teachers of their children, and VT legislators should restore parents’ rights in their role in education.”
“Riley Gaines and the other women athletes will receive the awards that are rightfully theirs and the apologies that they are due,” Tiemann said. “Will Vermont girls also have their rights protected?,”
“Parents’ rights do not end at the schoolhouse door,” she said, urging lawmakers to consider a formal parents’ rights policy for Vermont.
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Categories: Education, State Government
VTHope.net/parentsrights.html has information for parents. It includes a sample opt out letter to be shared with your school boards and a link toDefending Education Director of Strategic Initiatives, Paul Runko, joined by Defending Education’s Vice President and Legal Fellow Sarah Parshall Perry to discussing the important U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
Attend August and September local school board meetings and ask for details in what your schools will do to be in compliance.
Do be aware that Vermont is a blue state and some boards will balk and it would be wise to seek community volunteers to be engaged in the schools. Offer to help put up bulletin boards, monitor school lunch or recess, help with a school garden, provide some homework help sessions, or coordinate a book buddy program – Vthope.net/Bookbuddy.html Our youth are the future of our communities. We owe it to ourselves to make a difference for the public school children even if you homeschool or have your kids in an independent school.
I totally agree with VT parents demand public schools comply with feds, that is just common sense!
Parent’s rights? Since when have parents been able to demand anything from the deep state education bureaucracy?
“Who is more foolish? The fool or the fool who follows him?” – Obi-Wan Kenobi
Excellent article. You won’t find this kind of coverage anywhere else in Vermont. Thank you, Guy. Thank you, Marie!
It’s so sad and pathetic that we are at a place where parents feel they have to write up and pass a policy that enforces their rights to raise their children in the manner that meets with their values. It’s actually frightening as well. I believe the proper thing to do is to remove whatever mandates the states place on schools that force unwanted content on children. Force a policy that forbids inappropriate material from schools and children’s libraries instead. Parents are pushing for the wrong thing. Parents’ rights are God-given as are our individual rights.
The current VT administration will do their level best to disregard the rights of parents and the safety of our children. I repeat 95% of all gender dysphoric children resolve their issues with their exisisting gender by age 19.
To begin taking control of children’s sexuallity at any age below age 19 is child abuse.
I wonder if parent’s who want to ‘opt out’ their children from learning about gays and such feel that their children should be able to go to classrooms without gay people in them. They may say gay people are against their moral and religious viewpoints and their children should not be subject to those type of people in public schools.
Also, what if a classmate tells stories in class about their gay parents? Will parents be allowed to complain and get teachers in trouble? Are teachers allowed to ask students about their gay family members and talk about it in class? Or are they only concerned about reading books?
You present another classic false dichotomy, Nick. It’s never an either-or proposition.
As long as parents have the ability to choose the education curricula they believe best meets the needs of their children, whatever sentiment they express should be fine.
For example, while certain parents may choose to send their children to classrooms without gay people in them, certain other parents may choose to send their children to classrooms with only gay people in them. But the caveat is that neither sentiment, from one parent or the other, can stop a gay person from being in a classroom if they choose to be there, any more than it can stop a straight person from being in a strictly gay classroom.
Does that mean that classrooms must have both gay and straight people in them? Suppose there are no straight people in the neighborhood? Must they be recruited in order to provide a legitimate education?
Another example: should a family that is homeschooling its children be forced, one way or the other, to include gay or straight people in their home?
The point of this discussion is that morality cannot be legislated. In fact, any attempt to do so typically creates more amoral behavior… depending on one’s belief in the legitimacy of an individuals right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness… as long as others aren’t tangibly harmed in the process.
Which then, of course, leads to the prospect of ‘harmful’ thoughts and opinions. The proverbial rabbit hole that only free enterprise has been able to avoid.
“The key insight of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.”
“The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another.”
― Milton Friedman
Parents (or anyone) with first-hand knowledge of where Vermont school teachers or administrators who have violated Federal regulations that prohibit public educators from squashing parental rights, allowing males to enter girl’s bathrooms or locker rooms, allowing males to compete in girls’ sports, providing special or medical/counseling treatments to minors without parental notification or consent, pushing biased ideological viewpoints or “modern” religious beliefs such as transgenderism onto students, exposing students to age-inappropriate or pornographic content without parental notification or parental consent, practicing race-based bias/discrimination against students or their families, or engaging in other nefarious practices can share their information in complete confidence with SPEAK-VT by emailing Marie at chair.speakvt@gmail.com. SPEAK can help correct these violations.
Also, parents with first-hand knowledge of the application by public school employees of “disparate impact” in disciplinary decisions should contact Marie at SPEAK-VT. “Disparate impact” is when authorities consider race and other such considerations when imposing student discipline. An April 2025 Executive Order requires that schools NOT use “disparate impact.”