ESSEX JUNCTION — U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon paid a visit to the Essex-Westford School District’s career and technology center Tuesday while dozens of protesters, including students, demonstrated outside the school.
McMahon was in Vermont as part of her “Returning Education to the States” initiative, a tour of the country’s grade schools, colleges and universities to promote workforce development. The secretary was set to tour Vermont State University’s Williston campus later Tuesday.
As President Donald Trump’s education secretary, McMahon has been tasked with shrinking the federal Education Department and returning control over education to the states.
In a press scrum during her tour Tuesday, McMahon said she specifically wanted to see the district’s Center for Technology, Essex.
“This is a wonderful model, and if Vermont could see its way to invest here, or in other places like this, I think that they could serve the state of Vermont very well for the skilled workforce needs that they have,” she said.
News media were not invited to tour the school with McMahon. She later said she spoke with a number of students in the district’s tech program and touted the educational programs offered at the school, from automobile mechanics to culinary arts.
Her visit also was not publicly announced. The school district received notice of her interest in visiting last week, according to Essex-Westford School District board Chair Robert Carpenter.
While protesters mostly stuck to the campus’ entrance, dozens of student protesters left their classes at Essex High School and dotted the school grounds Tuesday, hoping to confront McMahon.
“There’s a trans-hating racist in our building right now,” Logan Fox, a senior at Essex High School, said through a bullhorn, as Secret Service and state police stood guard near the school.
Fox and other students said they only learned of her visit early Tuesday morning and that it was important they protest her visit.
“This administration is openly fascist, and the first line of defense for fascism is education,” Fox said.
Hallie Corneau and Basil Taylor, juniors at Essex High School, said they were protesting to stand up for the LGBTQ+ community. Corneau said McMahon and the Trump administration were “tearing apart our education system.”
“I am out here, in any way I can, to protect my sense of security and self, and everyone else’s security and self,” Taylor said.
Trump and the education secretary have worked to dismantle the Department of Education, offloading programs to other agencies and eliminating thousands of positions since the beginning of the president’s second term.
McMahon has been a controversial figure in the role. A co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment, she had virtually no experience in education prior to her appointment, and she’s since led the department through a period of unprecedented turmoil.She has also criticized efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the country’s schools.
Last summer, she threw Vermont school districts into financial limbo when her department announced it was withholding $26 million in federal funding to Vermont’s public schools — funding that has since been released. And during her tenure, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has conducted numerous investigations into school districts — including the neighboring Champlain Valley School District — over their transgender student policies.
In a statement, Carpenter, the Essex-Westford school board chair, said the district is “always ready to provide tours of our CTE program to interested members of the public, including local, state, and federal officials.”
“We look forward to highlighting the success of the (district’s) CTE program within the greater context of the excellence and best practices modeled by Vermont CTE and Vermont public education as a whole,” he wrote in a statement Monday, adding that the district would “continue to amplify the values and equitable practices that ensure all students grow and thrive: in the EWSD community and beyond.”
Erin Maguire, the co-director of the district’s student support services, said staff were notified last week of McMahon’s visit but that the district was “constrained” in what it could announce.
Vermont and the Essex-Westford district have hosted members of the U.S. Department of Education in years past, Maguire noted, including then-President Barack Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan.
Still, “this is new, for obvious reasons,” she told reporters.
Protesters Tuesday criticized McMahon on a number of fronts, from her push for private and charter school funding to her dismantling of the Education Department. The demonstrators included Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amanda Janoo and Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, P/D-Chittenden Central.
“Congress is the one who set up the Department of Education, and this regime is illegally dismantling it,” said Mary Lummis, a Winooski resident protesting Tuesday. She called McMahon a “pathetic” choice for the education secretary.
Speaking to reporters inside the school building, McMahon said she was a “strong proponent” for school choice and lauded a new federal school choice tax credit program established last year under Congress’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The credit is widely regarded as a way to steer tax breaks toward private schools, create a national voucher program and expand private school choice across the country.
“I’ve heard a lot, you know, ‘School choice takes away from public schools,’ and I’m branded with, ‘Oh, you want to get rid of public schools.’ Absolutely not,” she said. “I want public schools to be better and better and better, and I have found that a rising tide lifts all boats. Competition is a good thing.”
Asked about the demonstrations outside the school, McMahon said her goal is to make sure that “education is better and better.”
National test scores, including Vermont’s, have declined for years, despite the government spending trillions since the Department of Education’s creation in 1980, she told reporters.
“We are failing our students, and we are continuing to fail them,” she said. “We need to change, we need to do something different, and I think that education is best handled closest to the child. That is certainly what President Trump has told me time and time again.”
