Virginia Regulatory Town Hall
Agency
Department of Education
 
Board
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.
Previous Comment     Next Comment     Back to List of Comments
10/26/22  10:05 pm
Commenter: Ian

Discriminatory and unfair proposed policy change
 

The 2022 “Model Policies” are out of touch with reality and will harm the psychological wellbeing of transgender students. The policies would be as helpful to transgender students as the military’s failed and now foregone “don’t ask don’t tell” was to non-heterosexual service members. That is to say it does not help or support them, but rather harms them. There is so much to address in the proposed policies, but the following are a few. While the “Description of Proposed Guidance Document Changes” proclaims that the 2021 policies forced certain beliefs and viewpoints; removing discriminatory practices or the vehicles for such practices to exist is the opposite of forcing a certain viewpoint. The 2022 proposed policies, on the other hand, remove the protections against potential discriminatory practices {generally, the entirety of section D of the sample policy} thus creating an environment where specific social viewpoints and religious beliefs will be imposed all other students, including transgender students. Here one must remind that since all or most religious groups proclaim that all the others are wrong, then by logical conclusion, they are all wrong, and no religious faction’s beliefs should be used as the basis for creating public policy that will be enforced on other groups and will lead to detrimental consequences for some. Section {F.2} of sample policy misrepresents Virginia 22.1-279.6 which clearly declares regarding the matter of a dress code in subsection {I.iii} that a dress code policy must “not have a disparate impact on students of a particular gender;” The proposed 2022 Model Policies will do just that in representing a viewpoint and a religious belief that only acknowledge the male/female birth sex of a person with complete disregard to that person’s gender identity; and would disparately force students with a gender identity that is different from their birth sex to abide by a dress code that contradicts their gender identity which the above subsection {I.iii} protects against.

CommentID: 202335