by Aaron Warner

An email was sent out recently by the Interim Superintendent for the Hartford School District, Caty Sutton, raising questions about the safety of Hartford area students at school.  

In the cryptic letter Miss Sutton implies one or more of the recent executive orders issued by the Trump Administration has raised the fears and anxiety of some of the less privileged people in town to “unimaginable levels”.  

Adding little clarification she writes: 

“Some of the executive orders appear to directly influence schools and have many in our communities worried about the protection of their children while they are at school,” before waxing poetically “Much like this clear winter Sunday morning, I am contacting you all to state transparently and unequivocally that our children, while they are in our buildings, are loved, included, and belong.” 

At no point in the letter does Miss Sutton indicate which executive order(s) and who might be targeted by them or for what.  Rather it’s a vague notion of threat to a student’s safety with no indication as to what manner the threat actually exists.  

As I read through the comments and looked at the respondents who “liked” or “loved” the post it would appear the executive order targets middle aged white women in town and by proxy their children.  However looking through the list of executive orders and doing a search online and via ChatGPT asking “which of the Trump administrations newest executive orders threaten the safety of school children” there is one titled “ENDING RADICAL INDOCTRINATION IN K-12 SCHOOLING” which was signed January 29, 2025. 

It begins: 

“Parents trust America’s schools to provide their children with a rigorous education and instill patriotic admiration for our incredible Nation and the values for which we stand. In recent years, however, parents have witnessed schools indoctrinate their children in radical, anti-American ideologies while deliberately blocking parental oversight”. 

This pro-parent and pro-transparency message actually seems to support Miss Sutton’s expressed concerns, so where is the discrepancy? 

Looking at Section 2 Definitions we may find the clues: 

1. The definitions in the Executive Order “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” (signed January 20, 2025) shall apply to this order. 

Harkening back to Hartford’s failure to protect the Mid Vermont Christian School girls basketball team but rather denying an MVCS girl the right to play on a Hartford team for merely attending the school means Miss Sutton and the staff at Hartford can no longer bully and shame the girls in this Christian based education school for observing ten thousand years of human biology nor exercising their first amendment right to protest athletic events where biological boys are allowed both into girls locker rooms and onto the field of competition.  

The K-12 EO also bans “Discriminatory equity ideology” or “an ideology that treats individuals as members of preferred or disfavored groups, rather than as individuals, and minimized agency, merit, and capability in favor of immoral generalizations, including that:

• “Members of one race, color, sex, or national origin are morally or inherently superior to members of another race, color, sex, or national origin”, and 
• “An individual, by virtue or the individuals’ race, color, sex, or national origin, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously, and
• An individual, by virtue of the individual’s race, color, sex, or national origin, should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment to achieve diversity, equity, or inclusion

Reading through the comment section the irony of the liberal white women chastising men who comment as having “privilege” and to “stay in their lane” while claiming victimhood for having to respect the administration who was democratically elected by a vast majority of Americans (just not Vermonters) is rich.  Nothing in the executive orders threatens children in any way other than to re-establish a level playing field and eliminate the preponderance of “special” (re: privileged) status for the recent wave of woke activists pushing their agenda on the American people especially here in Hartford.  

No more will children and staff who don’t want to play the pronoun game be intimidated by force of government power in the hands of the Marxist activists – which brings “unimaginable levels of anxiety and fear” to those losing their power.  No more will girls be forced to undress with boys or get smacked around on playing fields by children of parents who are unclear on the physical advantage their trans-kid has over biological girls.  No more will students have to sit through daily indoctrination about sexual preferences and preferred pronouns whilst being told to hate the country they live in. 

Oh, the horror. 

As a reminder folks Karl Marx was a racist and sexist who didn’t keep a steady job, didn’t bathe, cheated on his wife, refused to claim one of his children and let three of his children die of malnutrition while two of his daughter’s later committed suicide – probably because he low-key worshipped the devil. This is your guy?

As a public service announcement I’d like to remind the vast number of liberal white women in town who are keen on wound collecting and claiming victim status where none exists the results of this Pew Research Poll revealing over 50% of white liberal women report one or more mental illnesses.  The “unimaginable” fear and anxiety about having to let kids be kids without sexualizing them, forcing their speech to appease a privileged minority and gaslighting parents and students by pretending your teenage boy is now magically a girl would seem to qualify.  

Vermont currently ranks tops in the nation in student spending at just under $25k/per year compared to the national average of $13k/per.  Vermont students have also steadily declined in academic performance as costs have gone up.  The current swing to the right in the state with former Democrat turned Republican John Rodgers as Lieutenant Governor and over thirty seats picked up in the house and senate defeating the supermajority indicate Vermonters have had it with progressive politics and pandering to the cultural Marxist activists marching through the institutions. 

Hartford, it seems, has yet to get the memo.

The author is a VDC columnist and Upper Valley regional reporter. He lives in Hartford, VT where he owns two award-winning small businesses. He is a graduate of Leadership Upper Valley class of 2010.