The Loudoun County School Board voted to defy a U.S. Department of Education order to stop violating Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in educational programs that receive federal funds.
As a result, the school district could lose almost $46 million in federal funding, LoudounNow reported.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) found that five Northern Virginia school districts violated Title IX by allowing “students to access intimate, sex-segregated facilities based on the students’ wholly subjective ‘gender identity,’” as the Daily Citizen reported just two weeks ago.
But the Loudoun County School Board chose to pursue woke ideology and violate students’ rights rather than comply with the federal law and the OCR’s demands.
The districts’ Title IX violations began in 2021 when the board, over the objections of many parents, voted 7-2 to pass Policy 8040, “Rights of Transgender and Gender-Expansive Students.”
The policy was implemented after the state’s education department published “Model Policies for the Treatment of Transgender Students in Virginia’s Public Schools,” which required that schools allow students to participate in sports and access locker rooms and restrooms “in a manner consistent with their gender identity.”
Schools were also mandated to “incorporate regular education about transgender students into staff professional development and training.” It was considered “verbal harassment” for teachers and other students to intentionally use names and pronouns not consistent with a student’s “gender identity.”
The state guidelines trampled on parental rights, stating, “If a student is not ready or able to safely share with their family about their gender identity, this should be respected. There are no regulations requiring school staff to notify a parent or guardian of a student’s request to affirm their gender identity.”
Loudoun’s Policy 8040 followed those guidelines. They’ve been a disaster for the district, teachers, parents and students.
Shortly after the policy was implemented, the district lost a lawsuit to Tanner Cross, a teacher who was suspended for opposing it at a school board meeting. Cross had said,
“I love all of my students, but I will never lie to them regardless of the consequences. I’m a teacher, but I serve God first and I will not affirm that a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa because it’s against my religion. It’s lying to a child, it’s abuse to a child, and it’s sinning against our God.”
Even worse, the policy opened girls restrooms to boys who claimed to be female. A skirt-wearing “gender fluid” boy then sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl in the girls restroom at Loudoun’s Stone Bridge High School.
Loudoun County Schools Superintendent and Board dragged the girl’s father out of a board meeting, tried to cover up the incident and transferred the boy to another school – where he assaulted a second girl.
Also at Stone Bridge, a female student, identifying as transgender, recorded boys in a male locker room questioning her presence, with “one student expressing that he felt ‘uncomfortable’ about the situation,” Fox News reported.
Even though it is against the law to record in a locker room, the boys were investigated “for allegedly violating Policy 8040.”
The district’s transgender policy also violates new guidance from the Virginia Department of Education, which rescinded the 2021 transgender guidance and replaced it with “Model Policies on Ensuring Privacy, Dignity, and Respect for All Students and Parents in Virginia’s Public Schools.”
The new guidelines call for schools to respect parental rights and the safety and privacy of all students.
Despite a free-speech lawsuit, parental opposition, sexual assaults, invasion of students’ privacy by members of the opposite sex, violating state guidance, and now the threat of losing federal funding, the Loudoun County School Board stubbornly clings to Policy 8040.
At some point, you would think common sense and concern for the welfare of all students would prevail.
As the Department of Education’s Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said when charges were brought against the district,
“It’s time for Northern Virginia’s experiment with radical gender ideology and unlawful discrimination to come to an end. OCR’s investigation definitively shows that these five Virginia school districts have been trampling on the rights of students in the service of an extreme political ideology.”
Related Articles and Resources
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Department of Education: Schools Embracing DEI Will Lose Funding
Department of Justice Launches Title IX Task Force to Protect Women’s Sports
DoEd Finds Northern Virginia School Districts Violated Title IX
‘Equipping Parents For Back-To-School’ – Updated Resource Empowers Parents
Irate Parents Excoriate Loudoun County Schools Superintendent and Board Over Sexual Abuse Coverup
New Education Secretary Linda McMahon: ‘Send Education to the States’
Trump Signs Executive Order Protecting Women’s Sports and Spaces
Virginia School District Ignores Parents’ Opposition, Implements ‘Gender Identity’ Lessons
