The chair of the Barre Unified Union School District board is being criticized for agreeing to participate in a local Turning Point USA event by residents who consider the group too partisan.
Michael Boutin, who also represents Barre City as a Republican member of the Vermont House, was listed as a speaker at a Turning Point event that had been scheduled for last Friday at the Canadian Club in Barre. Three community members objected to that during a recent school board meeting.
Since the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk in September, the group’s high school chapters nationwide have doubled in number, to more than 3,000. Administrators, teens, parents and community members have participated in charged debates across the country over the role and place of the conservative group in secondary schools. Turning Point USA has no official high school chapters, known as Club America groups, in Vermont.
Although the Turning Point Vermont event in Barre was postponed, opponents said Boutin’s visible support for the organization raised questions about whether embracing its political ideology is in line with leading a public school system.
In comments to the school board this month, Cassidy Lang, a Barre City resident, cited Turning Point’s conservative education initiatives and its stated mission to “restore God as the foundation of education.” She added that projects such as the group’s School Board Watchlist, which tracks school-related policies and decisions that the group deems radical, were especially troubling.
“I believe that we should be building a community of compassion, empathy and inclusion that nurtures differences in support of learning,” Lang said during the meeting. “For that reason, I am thoroughly disappointed that the chair of our school board is involved with such an organization.”
Last year, Seven Days spotlighted Boutin in a cover story that tracked two rookie lawmakers during their first session in the House. Also featured was Rep. Shawn Sweeney (D-Shelburne).
Boutin didn’t address the issue during the school board meeting. But in an interview with Seven Days, he said the speakers’ objections did not change his plans to participate, nor his stance on any issues.
“I think their desire was to frazzle me, and it just didn’t,” he said.
Spaulding High School freshmen Seth Fewer and Javion Kastner founded the activist hub of Turning Point USA in Barre last year after trying to establish an official Club America chapter at the high school. They were unable to enlist a willing faculty sponsor, so they instead created the group independently of the school.
Fewer said he considers Boutin a friend and extended an invitation to Boutin to speak. Fewer has also appeared on Boutin’s podcast, “802 Scoop.” The January event lineup also included Fewer, Kastner, Vermont Republican Party chair Paul Dame and Renee McEvilly, a Turning Point USA representative for high schoolers in the region.
Fewer began planning the event after attending a similar gathering for a Club America chapter in New York last December. He decided to postpone the event because he and the other organizers couldn’t secure a guest speaker from Turning Point USA in time. Fewer hopes the forum will eventually help build awareness of the group as it gets established.
Lisa Liotta, a Barre City resident, said Boutin’s participation flew in the face of the nonpartisan nature of public education governance. “The alignment of Chair Boutin with such a heavily politicized group risks transforming our schools into a battleground for that ideological conflict,” Liotta said.
“Our primary goal must be to ensure that every student feels safe, valued and able to learn without fear of political surveillance, intimidation or outright bullying,” she added, calling on Boutin to reaffirm a commitment to nonpartisan governance.
Boutin said he did not consult with other board members or district staff before agreeing to participate.
“The thing that I have to do when I’m sitting in the position as a board chair is to be fair and not be biased, to do what I feel is right for those that have elected me to do a job,” he said. “And I’m pretty confident that I do that.”
When he was not confident, he stepped aside. As the board chair, Boutin has done so only on issues involving school consolidation, an effort he strongly supports that is at the center of the state legislature’s ongoing education reforms. In those instances, he deferred control of the meeting to board vice chair Giuliano Cecchinelli II.
Boutin contended that as elected officials, school board members are inherently political, some more than others. He pointed out that fellow school board member Emily Wheeler Reynolds, for instance, participated in training held by Emerge Vermont, an organization dedicated to recruiting and training Democratic women to run for office.
Wheeler Reynolds told Seven Days that it felt like the controversy triggered by Boutin’s involvement with Turning Point USA has detracted from the school board’s work as it grapples with a challenging budget season.
“Party politics is not the place for school board meetings,” she said.
The Vermont School Boards Association, a nonprofit membership association that serves boards, does not have rules nor guidelines about the political activities of school board members, according to Sue Ceglowski, the association’s executive director and general counsel.
Fewer, the student organizer, expects to reschedule the Turning Point Vermont event for mid-February.
Boutin plans to participate if he is still invited and available. His remarks would address affordability, public safety, school consolidation and the cost of health care — the same issues he would talk about if invited by any other organization, he said.
“If someone calls or asks me to speak, I’m going to do it,” Boutin said, as long as the invitation is in good faith.
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