Randolph Union High School (RUHS) made national news when its girls’ locker rooms were opened to biological males. Recent conflict has arisen from opening girls’ bathrooms, by removing the doors completely. When faculty had RUHS student bathroom doors removed in an effort to control vandalism and drug use, a substantial group of students revolted.

RUHS has been the center of a prolonged series of conflicts, almost all of which have been instigated by faculty-driven social justice initiatives, previously by Elijah Hawkes, and then by Layne Millington. These seem to have had a cumulative impact of dividing the community while student test scores have continued to hover at the bottom of state measures, and behavior and drug problems have escalated.

Hawkes insulted the community by leading an effort to impute racist KKK motives to the school’s long standing “Ghost Rider” mascot. RUHS may have been the first in the nation to display the Black Lives Matter flag, a partisan proclamation that inflamed political tensions. It was taken down after the United States Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that favoring flags was unconstitutional: Layne Millington implied citizens who had correctly opposed its display were racists.

Layne Millington, Orange Southwest School District Superintendent

In addition to the fracas over transgender bathrooms (which had also occurred in the previous year but went unreported), RUHS saw disputes over a baseball-team Chick-Fil-A fundraiser that Superintendent Millington unilaterally decided was unacceptable; prohibitions on chanting “Let’s Go Brandon”; students were rebuked for claiming there are only two genders (shirts saying so not allowed); an 8-year-old was disciplined for “misgendering” a classmate; an trans-teacher upset many parents with social media posts. Many parents claim this public school has essentially become a Democrat “woke” school, focused more on ideological saturation than core subject learning. Layne Millington claims he is being targeted by hateful national groups.

Always front and center has been Layne Millington. A petition calling upon Millington to resign in an effort to reduce contention was circulated in 2022. More recently, an on-line survey asks parents and community members to assess the performance of Layne Millington and Assistant Superintendent Heather Lawlor as measured by the “Core Leadership for Vermont Educators.”

The 12-page survey reflects disenchantment with the current school administration which reportedly transcends political affiliations or ideological divisions. The survey, titled “Survey on Orange Southwest School District Leadership,” begins:

Randolph.VT.Cares is a community based group of individuals who are concerned with the direction of our school district and the divisive, destructive and impulsive decision-making at the top level that is impacting our children’s education and dividing the community versus unifying it.

This is not a political group.

This is about seeing that our children get to learn in a safe, inclusive and just school system and that a research based tool is used for evaluating the effectiveness of our superintendent and Assistant Superintendent.

Layne Millington customarily employs the local Front Porch Forum, and the District’s community email system, to rally community support. Perhaps he will ask his supporters to similarly root for him in the current survey.

It does not appear that Thursday’s bathroom-door kerfuffle was related to the community turmoil over school administration leadership. RUHS’s co-prinicipals issued a public email at 5:33 p.m. Thursday:

Dear RU Community,

Today was a challenging day. While many students and families were glad that we followed through with what we had previously shared regarding our next steps with the bathrooms and that we took action related to the vandalism and substance use in bathrooms, others struggled with the decision.

For some students, it felt like a significant invasion of privacy, and today these students expressed themselves through a small but powerful student protest that led to a listening session in the Media Center. There were a lot of emotions and personal stories shared, and eventually, we got to a place where students moved into alternative spaces to get support. We plan to meet with concerned students in small groups beginning next week to move us in a positive and productive direction and to get input from our students to establish our next steps….

We encourage you all to have conversations with your students about the vandalism and substance use in the bathrooms and what they see as being solutions to this issue and to share these thoughts with us, and if your student is struggling with what transpired today, whether it be the removal of two of the external bathroom doors or the related student protest and the aftermath, please contact us so we can connect our students to the social and emotional support that they may need. Please also talk to your student about being kind to others who may face different emotions when thinking about this situation.

Whether or not the school can reverse growing vandalism and drug use problems, many community members perceive the administration has for too long prioritized partisan social justice efforts above core study areas, discipline, and sensitivities to all political and other views. After years of efforts to communicate with the school administration, many citizens “face different emotions when thinking about the situation” and have initiated the survey (or pulled their children from the school!) to “move into alternative spaces to get support” for their unheeded complaints about what they perceive to be a pattern of school administration misconduct.

As the ongoing survey states: “There is a vote of confidence/no confidence at the very end.” It will be interesting to see if Vermont’s public school system is responsive to the community’s opinion, and what that opinion really is.

John Klar is an attorney and farmer residing in Brookfield. © Copyright True North Reports 2023. All rights reserved.