Youngkin Policy Ends Parent Deception
After two long years of parents making their voices known and showing up at school boards, as well as the ballot box, today Governor Youngkin’s administration released the 2022 Model Policies on the Privacy, Dignity, and Respect for All Students and Parents in Virginia’s Public Schools, which provides better guidance to Virginia school boards about “transgender” issues that is more in alignment with statutory provisions and legal precedence affirming parental rights. We are thrilled that Governor Youngkin has listened to the voices of concerned parents across the Virginia and remains committed to upholding their fundamental right to oversee their child’s education and well-being!
For two years we led a state-wide Protect Every Kid campaign to encourage parents to urge their school boards to reject the Transgender Model Policies created by the Northam Administration that embraced a radical gender ideology which jeopardizes the privacy and safety of students, violates free speech, and creates a wedge between parents and their children. This month, we also started collecting petition signatures to urge the Governor to re-write the harmful policies to protect the bodily safety and privacy of all students, and to respect parental rights.
Now, in response to so many parents who accepted the challenge to stand up and speak out, we have model policies that appear to promote a much safer learning environment for all students by ensuring that schools defer to parents about how best to direct the education of their child.
The re-written draft of Youngkin’s 2022 Model Policies offers a substantial improvement to the existing policies that were written by the Northam administration. Here are some of the improvements included in the revised model policies:
Eliminates the entire listing of subjective gender terms and clarifies that “sex” refers simply to biological sex
Provides statutory and legal references that support policies retaining protections for parental rights and students' privacy and safety rights
Prohibits school districts from encouraging or instructing school personnel from withholding gender-related information about a student from their parent or legal guardian
Ensures that students must participate in the athletic program or activity that corresponds with their biological sex
We anticipate that the policies will be posted on Virginia’s regulatory TownHall website for public comment in the coming weeks, during which time we’ll offer additional suggestions we think would make the 2022 Model Policies even stronger. Among the potential areas that could be addressed include a narrower definition of “transgender student”, as well as ways to further bolster free speech protections for teachers and students.
Of course, this is just the beginning. It is sure to ignite a firestorm of backlash from the radical LGBTQ groups, like Equality Virginia which just yesterday published their School Board Policy and Meeting Tracker intended to show which localities have not adopted the 2021 Model Policies created under the Northam administration.
Last month, Governor Youngkin, when speaking about gender expansive policies in Fairfax, boldly said this: "progressive liberals [are] trying to push parents out of their children's lives” and “push parents out of any decision that’s material in their child’s life.” The Governor through his statements and today’s release of his administration’s 2022 Policies, has firmly taken a stand for parental rights.
