In the ongoing battle between parental rights and school policies, the Loudoun County School Board voted to adopt the Virginia Department of Education’s guidelines on transgender policy, which allows transgender students to compete in sports with their preferred gender, use the restroom and locker room of their choice, and stay in rooms with children of the opposite sex on overnight trips.
In the latest episode of the struggle between parents and the Loudoun County school board, over 150 parents gathered to speak about the school system’s policies pushing Critical Race Theory and transgenderism. The new transgender policy, recommended by the Virginia Department of Education, encourages schools to promote gender-affirming policies and to eliminate many gender-specific activities and policies.
The policy also encourages schools to hide a student’s gender identity from parents who may not approve, allows transgender students to compete in sports of their desired gender, use the restroom and locker room of their choice, and stay in the same room with students of the opposite sex on overnight trips.
For months, parents and teachers have been speaking out against proposed progressive policies at school board meetings. Last spring, one teacher, Tanner Cross, was suspended after stating his opposition to the school’s transgender policy, a flashpoint among parents. Cross said he would not lie to students by telling them they can choose their gender and that it violates his religious beliefs. A circuit court judge later ordered the school to reinstate Cross, but Loudoun County is appealing.
On Tuesday, another teacher confronted the board about their policies. Laura Morris not only opposed the policies but publicly resigned. “This summer I have struggled with the idea of returning to school, knowing that I’ll be working with a school division that despite its shiny tech and flashy salary promotes political ideologies that do not square with who I am as a believer in Christ,” Morris said.
She added,
“After reading about your lack of consideration for the growing population of concerned citizens in this division clearly evidenced by this empty room tonight where you shut the doors to the public — as well as the emails sent by the superintendent last year reminding me that a dissenting opinion is not allowed, even to be spoken in my personal life, going so far as to send a form to my colleagues and I encouraging us to fill it out if we hear one another speaking against the controversial policies being promoted by this school board and adopted in this county. Not only that, but in the last year, I was told in one of my so-called equity trainings that white Christian able-bodied females currently have the power in our schools and that, quote, ‘This has to change.’
Clearly you’ve made your point, you no longer value me or many other teachers you’ve employed in this county. So since my contract outlines the power that you have over my employment in Loudon County Public Schools I thought it necessary to resign in front of you. School board, I quit. I quit your policies. I quit your trainings. And I quit being a cog in a machine that tells me to push highly politicized agendas on our most vulnerable constituents, the children. I will find employment elsewhere. I encourage all parents and staff in this county to flood the private schools.”
Despite the protests, the board voted 7-2 on Wednesday to adopt the recommended policies. “LCPS’ number one priority is to foster the success of all students and ensure they feel safe, secure, accepted, and ready to learn at school,” Loudoun County Public Schools said in a statement. “The school division will continue to do its due diligence in creating that environment and remaining open and transparent with all LCPS partners, community members, and stakeholders.”
If LCPS’ No. 1 priority was the success of students and for them to feel safe, secure, and accepted they would not have approved a policy that caters to a select few to the detriment of the majority of students. In fact, adopting this policy does not help transgender students, it harms them by perpetuating a lie that may be fueled by dysphoria, a real mental health condition.
No, Loudoun County Schools’ No. 1 priority appears to be advancing a radical political agenda. It doesn’t matter what parents think, because to the school board, children don’t belong to their parents but to the school. On a wider scale, many liberal elites believe that children belong to the collective of intellectual elites or even the government.
The undermining of parental rights across the country through inundating students with leftist ideologies and the implementing of policies that hide important information such as immunization records or a child’s gender confusion from parents is a coordinated effort to minimize a parent’s influence on his or her child and create the future citizens that the progressive collective desires.
School systems that pursue these and other radical policies, including CRT, will lose committed teachers like Morris and likely a lot of students. Parents in Loudoun County have a right to protect their children from these dangerous policies, and, if at all possible, they should take their children out of this school system in favor of an alternative that will allow them as parents to remain fully in charge of their children’s education and well-being.
