Public School Gaslights Community after Disciplining Student for Conservative T-Shirt

A Vermont superintendent and an attorney for a public school that prohibited a young student from wearing a shirt that states “There are only 2 genders” now claim the school did not discipline her, and that it has consistently “[done its] very best to protect free speech in schools.” These officials are using local media to gaslight the Vermont public and the school community. The school’s own emails reveal what actually occurred.

Peoples Academy Middle Level school in Morristown, Vermont, repeatedly disciplined thirteen-year-old student “M.P.” for wearing a school-prohibited T-shirt. Only when she retained legal counsel did school officials relent (though even then, she was initially threatened with discipline by a teacher). Thomas More Society special counsel Adam Hochschild alleged in a letter to school officials that M.P. had been removed from class, reprimanded, punished with in-school suspension, and admonished that her prohibited shirt was “hate speech.”

After the school conceded that M.P. would henceforth be permitted to wear the shirt and that her free speech rights would be respected, the matter should have ended. However, Vermont school superintendent Ryan Heraty and legal counsel Pietro Lynn then claimed in an interview with a local newspaper that the school had never disciplined M.P. and always strove to act impartially. This is classic gaslighting, in this case dismissing the young girl’s complaints as if the school, not she, was the victim.

The article in the Vermont Community Newspaper Group’s News & Citizen references the letter from Thomas More Society and states, “The student was never disciplined, according to Lynn and Heraty.” Lynn is further quoted as saying, “Schools generally do their very best to protect free speech in schools[.]”

Heraty is quoted in the article:

We’ve been put in the middle of this culture war that’s using the public school system as a place to play out national politics, and we really don’t want any part in national politics.

These are simply false statements. M.P. was disciplined. Peoples Academy Middle Level school fully embraced the social justice transgender ideology that it inflicted on M.P. The school didn’t just happen to find itself “in the middle of this culture war” – the school was waging it against a young girl, and still is, as reflected in the article.

This is what actually happened: On more than one occasion, the Peoples Academy Middle Level school principal pulled M.P. out of class for wearing the verboten T-shirt, condemned the shirt as “hate speech,” and refused to allow her to return to class unless she removed the shirt or hid its message – hardly “doing their very best to protect her free speech rights.”

At the time, the school admitted in writing that it had disciplined her. In a September 2024 email to M.P.’s parents, school principal Jessica Wills stated:

Today your daughter wore a shirt to school that caused harm to our learning community. ... The shirt “there are only two genders” is an act of harm that targets gender identity. ... You chose to take her home today, as an unexcused absence, rather than take one of our three options of providing her with a clean shirt, bringing her other clothing, or having the shirt turned inside out.

In December 2024, right after M.P. again bravely wore the shirt in direct protest against this violation of her fundamental free speech rights, the principal wrote:

I have asked [M.P.] to keep her shirt covered up several times now, she didn’t want to. I offered her an alternative space to work where she would be alone, and she opted for that instead of being in classes. I will not always have an available separate space for her.

The school backed down only after the family’s counsel this year demanded that the school stop censoring and disciplining M.P. Even then, the next time she wore the shirt, a teacher took her out of class and told her she would be written up.

The statement that M.P. “was never disciplined” suggests that being called to the office, denied liberty to return to class, and made to sit alone in a separate room from other students is not discipline. It is a false statement.

These officials would not directly respond to my specific inquiries about their public statements to the media, again displaying the opposite of “being in the middle” of an ideological dispute they have imposed on students. In an email, I asked Ryan Heraty:

You claim in the interview that the student was never disciplined. Is that accurate? Was she at any time told that she could not wear the shirt stating “There are only two genders,” or sent out of class, written up, isolated, or otherwise censored?

I received the following evasive response, which restates the faux claim that the school is victim, and not victimizer, in this dispute:

Let me do my best to answer all of your questions with one statement. We believe that all of our students should feel like they are welcome and belong in our schools. We also follow Vermont law in [sic] regards to any curriculum materials. Unfortunately, public schools are often used as a platform for political division and that is causing significant harm. We do our best to keep the focus on teaching and learning.

This school administration “does its best” to dissemble and deny accountability for its overt politicization of gender theory in the classroom. This superintendent and legal counsel followed up the abuse of M.P. by the public school with a hit job against her and her parents in the local media — hardly doing their best to “keep the focus on teaching and learning.”

When I emailed attorney Pietro Lynn, he responded, “I am not authorized to communicate with you about the matter.” Apparently, Lynn was authorized (and paid?) to communicate untruths to a sympathetic local media outlet, but not to answer as to how he could claim that M.P. was not disciplined for her shirt.

I directed Lynn to Vermont’s Rules of Professional Conduct, which apply to him as an attorney but not to dishonest school superintendents. For example, Rule 4.1. (TRUTHFULNESS IN STATEMENTS TO OTHERS) provides that “in the course of representing a client a lawyer shall not knowingly make a false statement of material fact or law to a third person.” Rule 8.4. (MISCONDUCT) states, “It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to: ... (c) engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation; (d) engage in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice.”

Readers can judge for themselves whether Pietro Lynn violated Vermont’s Rules of Professional Conduct by stating to a newspaper that M.P. was not disciplined for wearing her shirt to school and that the school protected her rights. Lying to the media after the T-shirt event was just one more slur against this child and her family, publicly denying responsibility for egregious official policy and conduct.

(Originally published at American Thinker.)