By Marie Tiemann
I’m very grateful for Jarrod Vaillaincourt’s excellent commentary in the Dec 10th issue of the Vermont Daily Chronicle. He exposes efforts by elementary school staff to market a new school-sanctioned “sexuality” club – to elementary school students! Although such conduct by public school educators is beyond revolting, it’s unfortunately not surprising.
A Dec 2-4 National Education Association (NEA) training event guided NEA members on how to push divisive race-based and gender ideologies onto children… “Advancing LBGTQ+ Justice and Transgender Advocacy”.
These documents contain the following:
- Accusations that opponents and “Republicans” are using “strategic racism and transphobia”…calling them “anti-LGBTQ people,” “far right groups,” and “fascists.”
- Instructions for including pronouns everywhere and on everything — email signatures, badges, documents, internal systems. If their ID badge can’t be changed, they suggest purchasing and wearing pronoun pins all the time.
Earlier, Kendall Tietz of Defending Education, a nationwide pro-parent organization, disclosed a radical 434-page NEA handbook (before the NEA scrubbed it from its website). This handbook blames a “white supremacy culture” for “systemic racism,” pushes illegal racial quotas, erases Jews from the Holocaust, calls for “educational reparations,” and attacks homeschooling.
The handbook reveals NEA to be an organization obsessed with divisive ideologies and political power, not education. NEA’s focus on politics, its attacks on parental choice and accountability, coupled with embarrassing academic outcomes, prove that the NEA is failing students and teachers alike.
Understandably, the NEA’s politically partisan and Marxist behavior has upset members in both chambers of Congress. So much so that legislators (not any of Vermont’s delegation, however) want to require that the NEA’s unique Federal Charter be contingent upon NEA transparency and an end to NEA lobbying, political activity, and racial quotas.
The Vermont chapter of the NEA is the largest union in Vermont. It spends heavily on political campaigns and is a major force in Vermont education policy. Under its influence, Vermont’s public schools have the 2nd highest per student cost in the country and yet rank only 36th nationally. When accounting for demographics, Vermont’s scores look even worse with non-Hispanic white Vermonters (that’s about 90 percent of our student population) scoring 47th and 48th compared to their peers nationally in math and reading.
As Kendall said, “A teacher’s job is to teach facts and skills, not train kids to be social justice activists. Yet NEA members are focused on staff transition plans, pronoun pins and a ‘Race Class Gender’ playbook that filters every part of life through a race-and-gender lens and insists no one can ever escape ‘ever-present’ systemic oppression. This rhetoric tells students that no matter how hard you work, the system is rigged, and you are doomed from the start.”
SPEAKVT for Parents in Education, Inc. informs Vermonters of political forces that put ideological and cultish agendas ahead of student welfare.
There are many good teachers in the public schools. But what is taught is determined by state-wide bodies such as the Vermont Principles Association, the Vermont Superintendents Association, and the Vermont Board of Education, which are all closely aligned with the NEA. Curriculum should return to the academics of math, reading, writing, science & history that is free of political and sexual persuasions.
I’m sure that there are many more parents with similar concerns about the content being presented to their children in school. Where are their voices? They are afraid to speak up for fear of retribution to their children and families.
But silence is not golden, the more parents who join in speaking up for their rights and protections of their children, the more impact they will have in restoring education to academics of excellence.
Parents: become aware of your rights and stand up for them. Parents have sent opt out letters to their schools, but some schools are not complying with parents’ request.
One school’s response: “Exposure to differing viewpoints is integral to the development of our students as engaged citizens. We ask our students to think critically and recognize different perspectives in respectful and productive ways. Disagreement and discomfort are part of this critical learning process and do not generally support a right to opt out or censorship.”
I’d say the Vermont school system is not recognizing that parents are the ones who are responsible for deciding how and when to introduce their children to sensitive issues surrounding gender and sexuality.
Parents: join together to stand up for and speak up about directing your children’s education. And contact us at speakvermont@gmail.com for more information and assistance.
The Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution provides that parents have a fundamental right to direct the upbringing and education of their children, as the U.S. Supreme Court has explained in Mahmoud v. Taylor, 606 U.S. ___ (2025); Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57, 65 (2000); Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205, 232 (1972); and Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 534-35 (1925). Here is a link to the parents opt out form by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty.
The author is President for SPEAKVT for Parents in Education, Inc.