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In what is seen as a win for government accountability and transparency, a Virginia judge has granted the request of parents to have a special prosecutor appointed in the recall hearing of a school board member in Loudoun County.
Quick Facts
A recall effort in Virginia got a boost from a judge when he removed the county’s prosecutor from the case. In Virginia, petitions to recall officials do not trigger new elections but instead are adjudicated in a court hearing in which a prosecutor argues for the removal of the official. In Loudoun County, however, the effort to recall school board member Beth Barts hit a snag.
Barts drew the ire of many after engaging in activism against parents, including participating in a large and secret Facebook group to dox, harass, and hack Loudoun County parents who disagree with Critical Race Theory (CRT).
A recall effort garnered more than enough signatures to trigger a recall hearing, but it turned out that the county prosecutor, Buta Biberaj, assigned to argue the case against Barts was also a member of the same secret Facebook group—and did not recuse herself. Biberaj narrowly won the race for county prosecutor in 2019 by one percent after receiving funding from left-wing activist George Soros.
Loudoun County Circuit Court Judge Jeanette A. Irby sided with parents and ruled that she will appoint a special prosecutor. Irby also granted a motion for Fight for Schools, a political action committee that helped gather recall signatures, to be a plaintiff in the case.
Biberaj, who is also the subject of another recall effort by the group Virginians for Safe Communities of which Ian Prior is a board member for her leniency on criminals, responded to the judge’s ruling by saying that she does not have an issue with the appointment of a special prosecutor.
Ian Prior, executive director of Fight for Schools, said, “Parents had been wanting a seat at the table for really over a year and a half in ensuring accountability with their school board, elected officials, and I think we got that today.”
Biberaj, who is also the subject of another recall effort by the group Virginians for Safe Communities of which Prior is also a board member, said she did not have an issue with the appointment of a special prosecutor in the Barts case.
The petition collected 1,860 signatures to remove Barts.
The saga in Loudoun County has gone on all year, starting with the harassment of parents and the exposure of the secret Facebook group. Since then, the school board has suspended Christian teacher Tanner Cross for refusing to comply with the school’s transgender policy; battled with parents over CRT, transgender policies, and COVID mitigation measures; shut down a public meeting; and called the police on parents waiting to voice their opinion. There have also been teacher resignations and a lawsuit filed by teachers against the school board.
The decision by Judge Irby is a big win for parents and parents’ rights. And it couldn’t have come at a better time given that the Department of Justice has announced that it will turn the full force of the federal law enforcement apparatus and the anti-terror Patriot Act against parents who supposedly threaten school officials, even as U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona testified to Congress that he will not concede that parents — not the school system — are the primary stakeholders in their children’s education decisions.
Despite the threats and intimidation, parents must stand strong and fight for their rights to control their child’s education. The left believes that children belong to the government, not families, and increasingly they are propagandizing and codifying it through secrecy, bullying, regulations, and even laws. In the nearby D.C. school system, children as young as 11 years old are now allowed by law to consent to take vaccines, including for COVID-19, not only without their parent’s permission but without their knowledge, as the law also forbids health providers from sharing these secret vaccinations on the child’s immunization record.
One unexpected benefit of the COVID lockdowns is that parents were able to see for the first time the perverted, racist, and unapproved teaching materials being forced on their children. Parents across the country are fighting back against activist school boards and school administrators for their God-given right and responsibility to ensure the mental, emotional, physical, and educational well-being of their children.
The parents in Loudoun County have established the model for exactly how to do that — and by working within the law and coordinating as one voice, these parents might actually win this battle that is being waged for the hearts, souls, and minds of their children.
