Virginia’s Fairfax County School Board is poised this month to approve a new sexual-education policy overwhelmingly opposed by parents, teachers and students throughout the county.
The school board conducted a survey to gauge approval for a new policy that would combine sex-ed classes for boys and girls in fourth through eighth grade.
But when the survey showed 85% of parents, 85% of teachers and 62% of students oppose the new policy, the school board buried it and pushed for a vote anyway.
The school board’s message couldn’t be clearer: Parents only matter if they help the county accomplish its ideological agenda.
That’s activism, not education.
Unfortunately, those who’ve paid attention for the past two years aren’t surprised by Fairfax County Public Schools’ behavior.
FCPS has been Ground Zero for the education culture war sweeping the country.
For two years, it has advanced a radically progressive agenda across racial and sexual lines.
Its school curricula teach students they are both different from and biased against each other because of their skin color.
They’ve spent $455,000 on a consulting firm committed to “equal outcomes, without exception,” promoted the book “Woke Kindergarten” to 5-year olds and suspended students whose parents sent them to school without masks, even after Gov. Glenn Youngkin lifted a state mandate thereof.
But they don’t only divide students against each other.
They also divide them against their parents.
Fairfax County schools instruct teachers to transition a child’s gender without parent consent or even parental notification.
Schools won’t distribute ibuprofen to students without their parents’ consent, but they will help them assume an entire new social identity.
FCPS is so committed to this ideology that when Youngkin issued new guidance, requiring schools to obtain parental consent before transitioning students and separate school sports teams by biological sex, the county publicly defied him.
At one school, a teacher even encouraged students to walk out of school to protest the governor’s guidelines.
Put differently, the teacher sent the message that attending school was less important than political activism, particularly activism opposing parents’ rights.
The county’s defiance towards Youngkin is striking enough on its own.
It is especially egregious, however, in light of new reports showing FCPS’ top public school, Thomas Jefferson High School, cooperated with Chinese-military-linked organizations to improve Chinese schools.
When confronted, school officials defended their actions as “not unusual.”
Apparently parental notification is outrageous, but China’s well-documented human-rights abuses are palatable.
While FCPS may be a good example of such radical activism, it is hardly alone.
States across the country are filled with such policies and activism.
Parents Defending Education this month documented 169 districts, almost 6,000 schools, where teachers are instructed to hide student gender transitions from parents.
We’ve found instances of racial and sexual ideology in every state, and we receive new tips and emails from parents every day.
This is a national problem.
The good news is while these problems do exist, the tide is turning — and victories are occurring in district after district across the country.
School-board elections are ousting incumbents, schools are revamping curriculum, and contracts with equity consultants are being canceled.
And while these discrete wins over the last two years aren’t being reported by CNN or the networks, make no mistake: They’re happening.
My colleagues and I are tired of talking about Fairfax County Public Schools.
We look forward to the day when we won’t have to look over our children’s shoulders at their homework, scanning for words like “equity” and “gender identity” or graphic descriptions of sex acts.
And we know thousands of parents across the country feel the exact same way.
As long as activists are determined to turn our schools into cultural battlegrounds like they have in Fairfax County — enlisting our children as foot soldiers in their war against America — we will fight.
Because as the saying goes, “If not me, who? If not now, when?”
Nicole Neily is president and founder of Parents Defending Education.