The rot of “equity” runs deep in northern Virginia, and it has done so entirely unchecked until now.
Four more high schools in Fairfax
admitted
to withholding notifications from students that they won National Merit awards, bringing the total up to seven. That makes up 25% of high schools in the county. In neighboring Loudoun County, 14 out of 17 high schools also delayed notifying students of their awards.
Fairfax County Public Schools described these delays as a “one-time human error,” though the district didn’t elaborate on what that meant. Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares is rightly skeptical, though, given the county’s woke track record. Miyares launched a civil rights investigation that has since expanded to include the seven Fairfax schools (and will likely expand again to include Loudoun) to determine if school administrators governing by “equity” led to the award notifications being withheld.
It isn’t hard to see why Miyares is concerned. FCPS has moved toward
implementing
“equitable grading,” which would reorient grading practices to address “institutional bias.” FCPS
spent
$450,000 to have an equity consultant speak with administrators. The Fairfax County School Board
determined
that suspensions for students starting in the fourth grade were the appropriate punishment for “misgendering,” and FCPS training for teachers
instructs
them that it is not necessary to tell parents about their children attempting to transition socially while at school.
Loudoun County has had its own woke problems. In December, a grand jury indicted two Loudoun County Public Schools officials allegedly
covering up
two sexual assaults by a male “gender-fluid” student. Couldn’t let the sexual assault of two female students reflect poorly on a transgender policy that pretends that being gender-fluid is a real thing and allows boys to enter girls’ restrooms with impunity, after all?
Were it not for Virginia’s statewide elections in 2021, much of this would have flown under the radar or never been addressed. Opposing the ongoing “equity” push in schools was one of the primary focuses of Virginia GOP’s candidates. Without the victories by Miyares and Gov. Glenn Youngkin, the merit award scandal and the other woke measures taken by FCPS and LCPS would be disregarded or ignored.
Virginia is not the only state where schools are seeking to impose equal outcomes on students or spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on useless “equity” programs, but it is one of the most prominent to have reversed the woke tide. Without the GOP victories in 2021, this wouldn’t have been possible. Voters in other states must take note if they don’t want to see their children’s schools devolve into the same reckless “equity” agenda.
