Virginia Regulatory Town Hall View Comments

Department of Education

State Board of Education

Guidance Document Change: Every day, throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia, educators and school leaders work to ensure that all students have an opportunity to receive a high-quality education. As a part of that work, educators strive to meet the individual needs of all students entrusted to their care, and teachers work to create educational environments where all students thrive. The Virginia Department of Education (the “Department”) recognizes that each child is a unique individual with distinctive abilities and characteristics that should be valued and respected. All students have the right to attend school in an environment free from discrimination, harassment, or bullying. The Department supports efforts to protect and encourage respect for all students. Thus, we have a collective responsibility to address topics such as the treatment of transgender students with necessary compassion and respect for all students. The Department also fully acknowledges the rights of parents to exercise their fundamental rights granted by the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to direct the care, upbringing, and education of their children. The Code of Virginia reaffirms the rights of parents to determine how their children will be raised and educated. Empowering parents is not only a fundamental right, but it is essential to improving outcomes for all children in Virginia. The Department is mindful of constitutional protections that prohibit governmental entities from requiring individuals to adhere to or adopt a particular ideological belief. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees religious freedom and prohibits the government from compelling speech that is contrary to an individual’s personal or religious beliefs. The Department embarked on a thorough review of the Model Policies Guidance adopted on March 4, 2021 (the “2021 Model Policies”). The 2021 Model Policies promoted a specific viewpoint aimed at achieving cultural and social transformation in schools. The 2021 Model Policies also disregarded the rights of parents and ignored other legal and constitutional principles that significantly impact how schools educate students, including transgender students. With the publication of these 2022 Model Policies (the “2022 Model Policies”), the Department hereby withdraws the 2021 Model Policies, which shall have no further force and effect. The Department issues the 2022 Model Policies to provide clear, accurate, and useful guidance to Virginia school boards that align with statutory provisions governing the Model Policies. See Code of Virginia, § 22.1-23.3 (the “Act”). Significantly, the 2022 Model Policies also consider over 9,000 comments submitted to the Department during the public comment period for the 2021 Model Policies.

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9/27/22 10:08 am

Commenter: Matthew Montero, parent, VA citizen

Strongly Oppose this cruel policy which takes resources from substantive educational improvements

This policy couches it's hate in an argument for "parents rights", which weren't being infringed upon, and uses VA DOE resources and time to manage something that required no management. Never was a policy "solution" more in search of a problem than this. The simple fact is that the authors are using this argument to encode a fundamentally religious view into public policy where religion has no place, instead of using the resources at their disposal to produce policy positions that actually benefit the citizens and students of the state of Virginia. Public policy is no place for bullying the powerless, and by forcing these changes on the children in our schools, you unnecessarily risk the safety of those children for no substantive benefit to them or to the other students in our classrooms.

Go back, tear this policy up, and come up with something that actually makes life better for our students. How about a tax subsidy for teachers so they aren't taxed on the income made while teaching? Or funding a rebate to them to ensure they can afford supplies for their terribly under-funded classrooms? Or a state-level fund to increase teacher pay and attract new talent to our under-staffed schools? Literally any of those ideas would be more useful to our students than this.

CommentID: 145797