Virginia’s recently-elected Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin will ban transgender students from using bathrooms that don’t match their birth certificates and stop teachers from having to use children’s alternative pronouns.
The Republican, who beat Democrat Terry McAuliffe in a surprise win last November, is now reversing many of the woke policies enacted by his Democrat predecessor Ralph Northam defeat.
The new model for schools was released by the Department of Education on Friday with the emphasis that ‘parents have the right to make decisions with respect to their children and the government can’t ‘require individuals to adhere to or adopt any particular ideological beliefs.’
Transgender students must show official paperwork confirming their gender has been changed if they wish to access facilities that correspond to their gender identity.
And teachers cannot be forced to address students by an alternative pronoun after Youngkin’s office ruled that doing so would violate their First Amendment rights.
The rules will come into effect by the end of September, after a ‘commentary period.’
‘The Department hereby withdraws the 2021 Model Policies, which shall have no further force and effect, and hereby provides these 2022 Model Policies, which are effective immediately,’ the new policy reads.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) reversed woke school policies of his predecessor that previously allowed Transgender students to use restrooms based on their gender identity – and required teachers to use pronouns
Schools were also required to allow students to participate on sports teams based on their gender identity and required teachers to call students by their preferred pronouns.
The previous guidelines were enforced by the school board last year after Northam and other legislators passed anti-discrimination legislation in 2020 – and pushed educators to adopt specific LGBTQ policies for student protection.
Youngkin’s guidelines walk back Northam’s 2021 policies that required public schools to develop rules to allow transgender students to use restrooms and locker rooms that corresponded with their gender identity.
Similar rules have been enacted across many Democrat-run states, with the GOP winning many centrist and liberal parents by pushing back against them.
Northam’s rules sparked fury in 2021 after a boy in a skirt in Virginia’s Loudoun County raped a girl in a girl’s bathroom. During a campaign debate in September 2021, Youngkin’s Democratic challenger McAuliffe said he thought parents had no business telling teachers what to teach.
The remarks, made amid a firestorm of parental anger over critical race theory and gender identity lessons, are widely credited for helping Youngkin win.
The new model for schools was released by the Department of Education on Friday with the emphasis that ‘parents have the right to make decisions with respects to their children.’ The policies revoke the enforced 2021 guidelines approved by former Gov. Ralph Northam
Parents in Loudoun County became furious as the new guidelines for schools were drafted in passed. Amy Jahr, a parent, was seen in June 2021 singing the Star Spangled Banner after the school board meeting stopped when the crowd became too loud
Gov. Ralph Northam enforced the 2021 policies after he and other legislators passed anti-discrimination legislation in 2020
Youngkin won Virginia’s gubernatorial election in 2021 by a landslide with more than 60,000 votes in comparison to his Democratic opponent Terry McAuliffe.
The governor has since attempted to reverse some of Northam’s woke policies, allowing parents to have a say in school guidelines.
Educators said the new school policies were outlined after the department took into account more than 9,000 comments received when the previous model was being drafted during the Northam era.
The Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution and Virginia Constitution was a core influence on the guidelines – which cites parental rights to the ‘care, upbringing, and education of their children.’
Del. Marcus Simon, a co-sponsor of the 2020 legislation, said the new policies will ‘harm Virginia children.
‘These new policies are cruel and not at all evidence-based – they don’t come close to complying with the spirit of the law,’ Simon wrote on Twitter. ‘Stop bullying kids to score political points.’
Democratic Sen. Jennifer B. Boysko added: ‘When we passed this initial legislation to create the model policies to protect our trans and non-binary students in school, Democrats and Republicans supported it. Parents, teachers, students, and the public were involved in creating the 2020 model policies.
‘[Governor Youngkin] should stop using children to score political points. You are hurting vulnerable children. Outcomes including homelessness and mental health crisis are real consequences for the children you are playing with.’
Meanwhile, the GOP backed the Republican governor in his decision.
‘Thank you to [Governor Youngkin] and his staff for their work to protect kids and defend parental rights,’ Del. Glenn Davis tweeted. ‘This new standard ensures all students have the right to attend school in an environment free from discrimination, harassment, and bullying.’
Youngkin’s administration also echoed support for the new policies.
‘The 2022 model policy posted today delivers on the governor’s commitment to preserving parental rights and upholding the dignity and respect of all public school students,’ Youngkin’s spokesperson told The Washington Post.
‘It is not under a school’s or the government’s purview to impose a set of particular ideological belief on students.’
Democrat leaders pushed back against the new policies and said leaders are only harming Virginia Children
Meanwhile, some members of the GOP spoke out in support of the Virginia governor
Youngkin’s administration also echoed support for the new policies and said, ‘It is not under a school’s or the government’s purview to impose a set of particular ideological belief on students’
Virginia’s pullback on former policies comes after a girl was raped by a 15-year-old boy in a public school restroom – after he donned a skirt to get inside and take advantage of the lax transgender policies in May 2021.
Scott Smith’s daughter was attacked by the unnamed student at Stone Bridge High School in Ashburn, Virginia – spurring school officials to deny the girl had been sexually assaulted after she reported it.
The victim admitted she’d previously had sex with the boy in the bathroom and that they’d arranged to meet there again that afternoon.
He followed her into a stall, where she told him she was not in the mood for sex, but he threw her on the floor and forced her to perform sex acts.
Scott Smith, the father of the first female victim, was pictured with a bloody mouth, being dragged out of a school board meeting on June 22 – a month after the attack – after listening to school officials say no one had been sexually assaulted in the bathrooms when that’s what his daughter had reported the previous month
Smith was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest for the June outburst
The case became the searing tip of a raging debate in Loudoun County over transgender students’ rights and parents’ freedom of speech
A month later, the school board of Loudoun County held a meeting, during which officials reiterated that the school’s gender-fluid bathrooms – where the rape took place – were not problematic.
Smith reacted with fury, in scenes that were filmed and went viral, as he was dragged out of a school board meeting by police, bloodied, after teachers falsely asserted they had not received reports of sex assaults in the girls’ toilets.
The 15-year-old attacker- who DailyMail.com is not naming because he is a minor – has since been found guilty of sexually assaulting Smith’s daughter, who was also not named due to her age, as well as another girl in a different school in October.
Smith, meanwhile, was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest for the June outburst, which saw him allege the school board was engaging in a cover-up of the assault, which was proven in court to be a rape.
The boy was then moved to Broad Run High School with the support of liberal prosecutor Buta Biberaj, where he is said to have molested another student.
Jessica Smith, the mother of the teenager girl, previously told DailyMail.com that she and her husband were pressured to remain silent about the attack.
She added: ‘When I learned there was a second victim, I was dumbfounded. I didn’t believe it because I was under the impression that he was at home with an ankle monitor, not at school.’
‘We were silenced for many months,’ Jessica Smith said in 2021.
Later on, it was revealed the teenager was not transgender, and used the skirt to get entry to the gender-neutral bathroom.
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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk