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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10/21/22 11:57 am

Commenter: Jason Schadewald

We need to protect kids from transphobic parents and community members

Under the guise of parents' rights, the 2022 Model Policies treat students as property of their parents and as prisoners of the state rather than as human beings with rights of their own. The existence of transgender people, including transgender children, is not an ideological belief; it is an incontrovertible fact backed by science, medicine, and history. This denial of their existence, however, is undoubtably ideological, especially to the extent that it puts transgender students directly in danger from bigots who may include their own parents. Yes, bigoted and even violent parents exist, and students deserve protection from those parents by way of protecting all students' privacy with respect to their gender identity and expression.

Trans acceptance is not "aimed at achieving cultural and social transformation in schools." Quite to the contrary, the withdrawal of the 2021 Model Policies is what seeks to put Virginia's schools on an imaginary timeline where sociocultural progress hasn't already occurred. According to Pew Research (May 16-22, 2022)[https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/06/28/americans-complex-views-on-gender-identity-and-transgender-issues/], 47% of 18-29 year-olds say society hasn't gone far enough in accepting transgender people (compared to 31% who think we've "gone too far"). Trans people also have more supporters than rivals among 30-49 year-olds according to that same survey. Our culture already accepts trans people, but the 2022 Model Policies are trying to turn back the clock, live in denial, and cause harm to trans kids. As recently as the day before submitting this comment, a study in The Lancet re-confirmed a well known statistic: 98% of "people who had started gender-affirming medical treatment in adolescence continued to use gender-affirming hormones at follow-up" 6 years later, as legal adults over 18 years old. [https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4642(22)00254-1/fulltext] Children know who they are. Subjecting them to denial, danger, and humiliation by violating their privacy and proactively protecting their bullies is child abuse. Transphobes, the ignorant, the malicious, and the willfully misinformed commit that abuse to the detriment of the whole of society.

There are also no grounds to push this hateful guidance on the basis of religious freedom. Religions have no "freedom" to infringe on the rights of others. Religion may not be used as an excuse to demean, degrade, or dehumanize others, nor does it give anyone a license to cause or to increase the suffering of any person or people. The prevention of hate speech (i.e. intentional, repeated, malicious misgendering) is not a compulsion to speak against one's religious beliefs. People who wish to cause harm through misgendering do not need protection, and they must not be permitted to hide cravenly behind the utterly transparent lie that their hateful intentions have a basis in religious belief. Religious freedom is intended to be a shield to protect religious communities from hate, but this guidance uses it as a weapon to forcefully subject children to hate in schools, where they literally are compelled to be by law.

What we need from schools is to prepare children with the intellectual tools required to thrive in an uncertain future. That requires a modern curriculum to be different from whatever the current generation of parents learned in school. It requires uncomfortable truths about history, about people and cultures you don't know, about science that seems scary because it's not what you were taught. Children's ability to thrive in the future is dependent upon giving them the best information society has, the lessons learned from the past, and the ability to discern fact from fiction on their own. Learning requires being exposed to ideas outside of your bubble and interrogating them with genuine curiosity, not fear, and certainly not while being subjected to psychological torment or watching as classmates are tormented.

As a final point, if the 2021 Model Policies for the Treatment of Transgender Students are withdrawn or otherwise rendered less effective, then I will not do any business in Virginia nor with Virginia-based businesses.

CommentID: 192001