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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.
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Categories: Commentary, Education, Race and Division
Thank you for bringing out these important points ! Agree with Kendall on the teachers proper function
Far too disturbing to even really expound upon.
Teachers: Stick to Reading, Writing, & Arithmetic. If this fundamental basis for learning is correctly attributed to Saint Augustine, though he was undoubtably influenced by the era in which he lived, his guidance is generally well-founded……certainly much more so than your RuPaul.
To put it more concisely, your pupil’s private parts are just never any of your damn business.
It is a well-accepted notion that acceptance of specific religious principles is not to be taught or discussed in public schools. How about skipping all discussions and normalizing of ALL specific sexual and gender practices, short of discussions regarding the health aspects of STDs and pregnancy? I dont want to use the word “closet” here, but that stuff ought to be dealt with in the home, church or other PRIVATE spaces, as approved by parents. When the test scores for math, science and reading are all up to par, then maybe we can have the debate about what else to include in the curriculum.
Private-sector unions like the VTNEA are a cancer upon our country.
correction: PUBLIC sector unions…
Are these unions a non profit organizations?????????
And still, when parents fill out the ‘Opt-Out’ form, what then?
While the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly interpreted the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to protect a fundamental substantive due process right of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children, this right is not absolute; the state can intervene with compelling interests (e.g., preventing abuse or ensuring basic education), but infringements must typically meet strict scrutiny.
In other words, the only alternative for parents to Opt-Out of a public education monopoly that has a captured clientele, is to escape with extraordinary effort, financially and vocationally.
And what about taxpayers who prefer not to fund these bizarre programs?
Again, the hypocritical and self-congratulatory “goodness” promoted by Vermont’s public education cartel is masking its pride, control, and cruelty. It is more dangerous than most transparent wrongdoing because it cloaks itself in virtue and resists self-examination. The result is a kind of moral decay that smells worse (metaphorically or literally) than honest sin.
Our options:
First, go along to get along. Do what you must on the homefront, if you can, to help your children navigate this tyranny without making them feel like the pariah the public education system will accuse you and your children of being.
Second, eliminate the Agency of Education and all taxpayer support of ‘public’ education. Good luck with that.
Third: Our only feasible recourse is the education freedom provided by Vermont’s School Choice Tuitioning governance. And Vermont’s School Choice Tuitioning still exists.
Yes, the Governor and his minions are trying to eliminate School Choice freedoms through Act 173. Scott is, after all, an exemplary representative of the ‘goodness tainted’ tyranny. But unless parents are independently wealthy and can afford to financially support the public education cartel in addition to whatever independent school and/or homeschool alternatives they may have, they are out of luck.
It’s a shame our government has come to this. But remember:
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” – – Shakespeare
The following is AI generated: “Lenin stated that while his generation laid the foundation for a new social order, it would be the children who complete its construction, indicating a belief in intergenerational revolutionary progress.
Alexandra Kollontai and Friedrich Engels outlined how communist society would take over many functions of child-rearing from the family, including education and care, through public institutions and qualified educators, aiming to raise children as conscious communists committed to collective values.
This collectivization of upbringing is intended to replace what Marxists see as the oppressive structures of the bourgeois family, which they argue fails the working class by pushing children into labor early and undermining parental authority.
Some critics argue that this approach amounts to ideological indoctrination. For instance, George Bernard Shaw suggested that after a proletarian takeover, the state would prevent traditional mind-formation in children—such as obedience to class hierarchy—and enforce an “official second nature” in early education, dismissing dissenting teachers or caregivers.
More recently, commentators have claimed that modern educational frameworks like critical race theory or social-emotional learning are vehicles for Marxist indoctrination, asserting that schools now function as sites for systemic ideological transformation.”
There is no doubt that this has been and is taking place. The NEA should be abolished at least, or be designated a terrorist organization at best, for corrupting and indoctrinating our children in a deceitful and diabolical way.
You are absolutely correct, Paul. They need to be labeled as domestic terrorists like Antifa. I would like to point out that everytime one of these socialist/communist unions call you a fascist. They really mean capitalist. The system that they claim is racist is capitalism because capitalism doesn’t produce equal outcomes across society.
This article, does more to support school choice for all, than all the other most notable benefits a student could get from opportunities in other school systems…sad as it is…but true!
There appears to be a misunderstanding of the term “ideology”
Opt out forms are an unfortunate reality of the government school systems but in order to opt out, parents must first be hyper aware of their children’s curriculum, something the schools ensure is next to impossible. As a former school board member myself i can attest it’s worse than we think. Get your kids out of the government schools. If you’re like me and you can’t, grill your kids daily on what they are hearing and seeing at school.
Can the parents also opt out of all the other commie, lefty, progressive propaganda that gets incorporated in with the LGBT+++ brainwashing? Whatever happened to reading writing and ‘rithmetic??? Oh, I forgot, that stuff has apparently become insignificant in the proper raising of children in a democrat-run state like modern-day Vermont.
Calvin Coolidge must be rolling in his grave. If only we could tap into that energy source to power our heat pumps…
My children are in public school system. I love it. They love it. I don’t mind them learning about transgender / gay / sexuality issues. I look forward to those conversations. I’m a proponent of school choice. I also recognize we are lucky in the US to have public schools and they are not going to please everyone. Part of school choice is taking your kid out of school if you want to.
For one thing, public school doesn’t teach children to call people “retard” and “piggy” and calling countries “s***hole countries.” You have to go to the wharton school of business for that. I do have to tell my children that many citizens think those words are funny and use them to make other people feel bad. Navigating trans issues is much easier than navigating our president’s words, let alone telling my children that grown adults champion this language with their votes. Oh yea, and that being a convicted sex offender is totally presidential behavior too. And while many adults claim trans people will go into bathrooms and gawk at women, these same people voted for a guy who walked into a teen beauty pageant to gawk at the girls getting dressed. My children understand hypocrisy even though they can’t spell it.
It’s like buying more stock when it’s returns continue to decline and price continues to climb. Counterintuitive, counterproductive, emotional as opposed to logical. Some choose to keep whistling as they walk past the graveyard.