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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10/24/22 6:54 pm

Commenter: C Jones

I oppose this policy as a parent, educator and thinking person...

I am a teacher, a person of faith, an engaged community member, a voter, and most importantly, a parent of a transgender child. I believe that hard data is not up for anyone's opinion and should not be tossed out based on someone's political affiliation or a change of political party, meaning who is in power in any given time.

I am ashamed and shocked that the Department of Education has chosen to bow to the will of a governor who seeks only to advance his career and therefore has chosen to yield to the will of a group of people who have decided that their children "belong to them." I know this is a real belief amongst far-right conservatives to whom Youngkin has espoused himself because this is a phrase I heard over and over at one of our local school board meetings from adults who support this new policy. These misdirected, angry parents asserted that finding out that their children might not feel safe enough with them to share this information with them FIRST must mean that others are trying to take their parental rights away. How absurd of a notion is this? Children are not property! The last time I heard white men and women raging about other humans belonging to them was in the context of slavery. These parents need a reality check. Birthing a baby out of my body does not mean that that child BELONGS to me. It means I have been entrusted with a gift. I guide. I teach. And yes, I let my children fall down. This is how they learn and grow and develop empathy and resilience. I offer advice that they may or may not take. But most of all, I LOVE. I tell my daughters that they can tell me anything or do anything -- but I WILL LOVE THEM STILL. My daughter who is transgender is a PERSON who I am raising to be a thinking adult who does not BELONG to me. She belongs to herself, to the divine, to this world, and to the community she entrusts herself to, which I hope will always include me, IF I earn that place in her life. And if she does not feel safe enough with me to trust with information she is not ready for me to know, then I have taught her to seek out people in her life that she can trust. Because I know that I will not always be with her. THAT is my job. It is not to own her, to dictate her life. It is to love and guide and nurture and fight like hell for her rights to exist as the person she wants to be -- whether I fully understand it or not.

I assert that these policies fly in the face of real data and scientific evidence that gender-affirming practices in the home, our school, our medical system, and workplaces are proven to improve mental health outcomes and reduce suicides rates in LGBTQIA+ populations. I could cite the sources that report this data all day if I thought they would be helpful. But we all know this is not about data. This is about power. Who doesn't have it. Who wants it. And who abuses it.

I did not have to find out that my child went by different pronouns and a different preferred name by her teachers or her school. She knew that our home was a safe place to be herself, and she told us before any adults at school knew. We made a plan together on when she could feel safe to share this information at school, and this happened on her own time, not mine. But if it had happened any other way, that would have been 100% fine with me. Do you know why? Because I've gotten to know her teachers. Always have. I know that most of them are going to have her back and her best interests at heart. Just like they will continue to do so, whether these policies pass or not. Because real educators make decisions based on data, not politics.

Do you know why else it would have been fine with me? Because alive children are better than dead children. And affirming adults, whether it's me or someone else, mean that my trans daughter may just make it in this life without attempting to end her life because of policies like this one and the people who write them. Shame on them for putting their own political aspirations ahead of the lives of children! It is pathetic!

In case it is not clear, I don't care if these adults feel like their rights are being taken away. I really don't. What I want is for my children, AND their children, to survive this dystopian, post-Trump nightmare we're living in. And if they need to whine about how they were out of the loop on something they would definitely already know if they knew their kids AT ALL, then all I feel for them is pity. Their lives, and the lives of their children, would be greatly improved if they spent their energy on developing that precious relationship instead of trying to deny the existence of anyone who doesn't look, sound and act just like them.

CommentID: 195743