J.D. Vance addressed the graduates of Middletown High School during the 2017 commencement ceremony. Photo: Middletown City Schools on YouTube

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) will visit Middletown High School on Monday, July 22 for his first official campaign stop in his hometown as the Republican Vice Presidential nominee.

While accepting his nomination for Vice President at the Republican National Convention on July 17, Vance promised voters he will be “a vice president who never forgets where he came from.”

Before Vance was a Senator, a venture capitalist, a Yale Law student or a Marine, he was a Middie – a moniker for a person from Middletown schools. Vance graduated from Middletown High School in 2003, and before that, he attended the since-demolished Roosevelt Elementary and Vail Middle Schools, also in the Middletown City Schools district.

While Middletown has an impressive list of notable alumni (Olympic gold medalist Kayla Harrison, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Clarence Page, baseball star Kyle Schwarber, etc.) it’s rare for the Title I school to tout an alum with as much celebrity as Vance.

Middletown schools react to Vance VP announcement

After news broke that Vance would be former President Donald Trump’s running mate, Middletown City Schools posted a celebratory “Middie Rising” photo of the alum on the district’s social channels.

“Congratulations to U.S. Senator JD Vance, a 2003 graduate of Middletown High School, on being named the Republican nominee for vice president,” the post reads. “Vance’s journey from the City of Middletown to the national political stage is a testament to what it means to be #MiddieRising.”

Edit history on the post shows its author eventually removed an exclamation point after the first sentence, and comments were quickly removed and turned off after predictable jabs were made at Vance. Middletown, despite sitting within the reliably red-voting Butler County, had a unique bone to pick with Vance after the release of his controversial memoir Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir Of A Family And Culture In Crisis.
The best-selling book tells the story of Vance’s upbringing in Middletown, chronicling his mother’s opioid addiction, being raised by his “Mamaw’s” Appalachian values and how abuse and poverty shaped his view of white, poor, working class Americans. The memoir, later adapted into a Ron Howard film by Netflix, launched Vance into the hearts and minds of liberal academics and media trying to make sense of Trump’s seemingly sudden rise to power in 2016.

Critical reception for Vance’s memoir was mixed; some thought the story was inspiring, others exploitative. CityBeat asked Middies themselves what they thought of Vance’s portrayal of Middletown during his 2022 Senate run, with most respondents taking issue with Vance’s generalizations, if they knew who he was at all.

Now, Vance has returned to the spotlight, and again brought Middletown with him.

The district’s superintendent, Deborah Houser, told CityBeat in an emailed statement that Vance’s upcoming rally at the high school’s auditorium is not reflective of an endorsement from the district, but that his success is reflective of “the aspirations we hold for every Middie.”

“As a graduate of Middletown High School, JD Vance has achieved success in his chosen career journey, exemplifying the aspirations we hold for every Middie,” Houser writes. “Middies will rise to achieve anything they put their minds to.”

Educators of Middletown on Vance’s “Middie Rise”

CityBeat reached out to the district’s elected Board of Education members for comment on Vance’s ascent, none of whom responded by deadline. Some Middletown High School teachers responded to CityBeat, including Shawn Thomas, who has taught Biological Sciences at the high school for 28 years.

“J.D. Vance is from Middletown and came from the same streets and area that our students are from,” Thomas said. “That’s pretty cool that someone from our town can, with enough effort, become a Senator of Ohio. Now quite possibly could become the Vice President of the United States. Putting all politics aside, whether or not I agree with his policies or his belief system is, at this moment, irrelevant. It’s just very inspiring to see a kid from our hallways make it to this point. I actually had J.D. in a Middie Advisory Period (MAP) I think everyday for 15 minutes. He was as regular a student as I have today.”

But not all Middletown teachers are inspired, or even happy, with the district celebrating Vance’s rise to possible Vice Presidency.

Tammy Partlow-Daniels taught English within the Middletown City School district for 28 years before retiring last year. She said she never had Vance as a student, but said she used to live in the same neighborhood as Vance’s “Mamaw,” who raised Vance while his mother battled an opioid addiction, according to his book. Daniels said the details of how Vance rose to notoriety are getting lost in the district’s celebration.

“Up until Vance garnered the spotlight with his book, I would agree that he represented Middie-Rising. But how is telling the world that your hometown sucks, positive?” Daniels told CityBeat. “How a person reaches the level of success that Vance has is more important than being successful. He has said horrible things about immigrants, women and has said if he had been where Mike Pence was on Jan. 6, we wouldn’t have certified the election, defying our Constitution. I would like to be proud of a hometown person being picked as a Vice Presidential running mate, even if I disagreed with his politics, but I can’t be. It’s not his politics I disagree with, but the lack of integrity in his character.”

CityBeat spoke with Todd Hall, a history teacher who’s been with the district for more than 30 years. During Vance’s time at MHS, he was a vice principal.

“To know that that kid came through your school is just unreal,” Hall said. “It helps [remind ourselves] why are we here, and what are we doing for kids? And you know, you always push kids to be the best they can be, and most of the time they don’t understand that message until they get out, and he is a great representation of what can occur no matter what the situation is in your life.”

Conflicting policy

Middletown High School is considered a Title I school, meaning it enrolls at least 40% of students from low-income families. The Ohio Department of Education issued MHS a 2.5 star rating out of five, meaning the school “needs support to meet state standards,” according to the state’s report card. According to the district’s 2021-2027 Strategic Vision plan, 18.83% of Middletown City Schools students are Black, while 14.63% are hispanic and 12.49% are multiracial.

Vance, who was once a poverty-line student himself, has admitted he nearly dropped out of MHS before enlisting in the Marines after 9/11, saying the paperwork for college financial aid overwhelmed his family. Even by the time he reached Yale Law School, he discusses in his book how he still felt like an outsider because of his background.

Despite Vance’s storied experience about cultural forces making it harder for him to reach and navigate higher education, Vance has targeted affirmative action for students of color in college admissions during his first 18 months in the Senate. Vance’s bill targeting affirmative action was moot after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned affirmative action, but the Senator also sent a letter to 10 universities, including Ohio’s Kenyon College and Oberlin College, accusing their leadership of being “openly defiant” toward the Supreme Court because they had expressed disappointment with the ruling.

During his Senate campaign, Vance accused schools of teaching ”critical race theory” while attacking COVID-19 mask policies, the second cause he would later take up in his “Freedom to Breathe Act,” which, like all 33 of his bills, has not passed.

“As we saw from the radical Left’s culture war waged during COVID-19 and the continued CRT indoctrination in our kids’ schools, it’s clear that we should never let politics drive public health decisions and deprive our kids of a good education,” Vance wrote on his 2022 campaign website.

The subject of race in schools is central to Vance’s public messaging on education. In a June 2024 tweet, Vance called for outlawing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies nationwide, calling DEI “racism, plain and simple.”

But Vance has spoken to Middletown students about education directly before, and his message and tone stand in stark contrast to the candidate we see today.

After the immediate success of Hillbilly Elegy, Middletown High School selected Vance as its guest speaker for the 2017 commencement ceremony. A younger, shaven Vance can still be seen on YouTube encouraging students to find success in what makes them happy.

“I’ll tell you the thing that makes people happy,” Vance says to the graduating class. “The first is that they play a part in their community. They don’t just live in their homes and focus on the things of their day-to-day lives, they plant themselves in a community and try to contribute to it meaningfully. Maybe that means they volunteer at a dog rescue operation, maybe that means they’re very involved in their church, maybe that means they’re very involved in helping low-income students have access to educational opportunities.”

Doors open for Vance’s rally at Middletown High School at 10:30 a.m. on July 22; the rally starts at 1:30 p.m. Tickets are available here.

Watch J.D. Vance’s 2017 Middletown High School commencement address below.

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This article appears in Jul 10-23, 2024.