Virginia schools assure compliance with parental rights laws
(Photo by Getty Images)
Under the looming threat of federal consequences for inaction, all 136 local education agencies in the commonwealth — including public schools, the Virginia Juvenile Justice Center and Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind — have officially assured the Virginia Department of Education that they're complying with parental rights laws.
On March 28, the U.S. Department of Education directed states to provide evidence that schools are complying with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA) by April 30. These laws ensure parents have the right to inspect and review education records and student safety standards, and to be notified annually about their rights, military recruiter access to their child, and the school's overall compliance record.
The federal agency sought the information after explaining that it has been 'overburdened' with reports of FERPA complaints that claim schools nationwide have been hiding information from parents, including gender transition records.
'As any mother would be, I have been appalled to learn how schools are routinely hiding information about the mental and physical health of their students from parents,' said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon in a March 28 letter. 'The practice of encouraging children down a path with irreversible repercussions — and hiding it from parents — must end.'
The agency warned schools that if they failed to comply, they would face an investigation and loss of federal funding.
The Virginia Department of Education, which provided the school compliance list to USDOE, stated all of the education agencies in the commonwealth 'exceed' federal FERPA expectations by following state law, which sets 'higher standards' for the disclosure of certain student data, such as contact information including addresses, email addresses and telephone numbers.
Under FERPA, the contact information may be designated as 'directory information' and may be disclosed without the consent of a parent or eligible student, unless such person has opted out of such designation.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and his Republican colleagues have made parental rights a cornerstone of his administration and legislative efforts, repeatedly asserting that 'a parent has a fundamental right to make decisions concerning the upbringing, education, and care of the parent's child.'
Youngkin's administration has enacted several measures to reinforce these rights, including policies requiring parents to be notified about drug overdoses and making mask-wearing in schools optional. The governor also adopted legislation mandating that parents be informed about sexually explicit instructional materials in school libraries.
Last month, the governor tried to amend a bill by adding language from Sage's Law, a bill which would have required public school principals to notify at least one parent if a student questions their gender identity or requests the school's participation in social affirmation or transition to a different sex or gender.
However, Youngkin's amendment was rejected.
During the regular legislative session earlier this year, House lawmakers failed to take up the proposed Sage's Law bill, carried by Del. Nick Freitas, R-Culpeper, for a second straight year. Freitas carried the bill that was first introduced by then-Republican Del. Dave LaRock during the 2023 General Assembly Session. The bill died in the Democratic controlled Senate that year, after passing through the House controlled by Republicans.
Last session, the General Assembly failed to consider the same bill, which Youngkin said 'allows parents to be informed of the decisions relating to the mental health of their child.'
The failure of the Sage's Law bill was one of the reasons why the governor last week vetoed a bill, carried by Democrats, designed to encourage school boards to remind parents about the safe storage of firearms and prescription drugs.
He also added that the bill as passed by the legislature mainly concentrates on those two parental responsibilities, 'omitting other legal obligations, like providing an environment free of abuse, neglect, and exploitation.'
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Epoch Times
7 minutes ago
- Epoch Times
California Lawmaker Leads Voter ID Ballot Initiative Signature Campaign
A California lawmaker is leading an attempt to place an initiative on the 2026 ballot to require voter ID as a statewide constitutional amendment. Republican Assemblyman Carl DeMaio of San Diego is seeking volunteers to help gather signatures and raise funds to let voters decide on two issues: whether citizenship should be verified at the time of voter registration and whether IDs should be required when casting a ballot. The
Yahoo
14 minutes ago
- Yahoo
The sequel to Trump's so-called travel ban is not an improvement on the original
Ahead of the Republican presidential nominating contests in Iowa and New Hampshire in 2016, Donald Trump was looking to solidify his position as the likely GOP nominee. To that end, the future president came up with a stunning proposal: As 2015 neared its end, Trump declared his support for 'a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States' until such time that he was satisfied that U.S. officials understood 'what the hell is going on.' As regular readers know, it was a bigoted applause line — which his base eagerly embraced. It also turned into a campaign promise the Republican was eager to keep. On only his seventh day in the White House, Trump signed a policy that became known as the 'travel ban,' sparking outrage, bureaucratic chaos, family hardships and a series of messy legal fights. On the first day of Joe Biden's term, the then-Democratic president undid his predecessor's policy, signing a proclamation titled 'Ending Discriminatory Bans on Entry to The United States.' More than four years later, Trump is not only restoring his old policy, he's also adding to it. NBC News reported: In a return of one of the most controversial policies of his first term, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation Wednesday banning nationals from a dozen countries. ... Nationals of 12 countries will be barred from entering the United States: Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. It's difficult to summarize all of the granular details of the White House's latest move in a blog post — Team Trump published relatively detailed overviews online overnight, and NBC News' report is thorough — but in addition to the aforementioned 12 countries, seven other countries (Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela) will face partial travel restrictions. There will apparently be some exceptions for athletes competing in international events, as well as those who've qualified for Afghan special immigrant visas. The administration's policy is scheduled to take effect shortly after midnight on Monday, but whether the White House will change, overhaul or worsen the strategy between now and then remains to be seen. As the world begins assessing the practical, geopolitical and moral implications of Trump's new — but not improved — policy, let no one say this is surprising. On the campaign trail ahead of the 2024 election, the Republican boasted about blocking Muslims from entering the country during his first term, telling voters, 'We didn't want people coming into our country who really love the idea of blowing our country up.' Months later, Trump assured the electorate that he intended to restore and expand his original policy. (He vowed this would happen on the first day of his second term, though he missed his own deadline by 135 days.) But the fact that the incumbent president is following through on a misguided promise does not make a bad idea good. Indeed, Democratic Sen. Chris Coons described the White House's gambit as 'new Muslim ban' in a written statement. 'President Trump's own statement makes it clear exactly what this new executive order is: the latest attempt to institute his unpopular and immoral Muslim ban which was thrown out time and again by the courts in his first term,' the Delaware senator said. 'Improving our national security should be a bipartisan goal, but fear and bigotry do not keep Americans safe. What this will do instead is cause chaos, inflict pain, and break apart families, just as his prior attempts did. This order should be reversed, and Congress needs to reassert our role by passing laws that make our immigration system secure, effective and humane.' To be sure, some of the countries affected by the president's directive have Muslim populations, but some do not. That said, the White House's official 'fact sheet' on the policy specifically included this quote from Trump: 'We will restore the travel ban, some people call it the Trump travel ban, and keep the radical Islamic terrorists out of our country that was upheld by the Supreme Court.' There were already some indications that some Muslim-American voters were feeling buyers' remorse after having backed Trump last fall. The Republican's latest move probably won't help on this front. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
14 minutes ago
- Yahoo
US Supreme Court makes 'reverse' discrimination suits easier
By Andrew Chung WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court made it easier on Thursday for people from majority backgrounds such as white or straight individuals to pursue claims alleging workplace "reverse" discrimination, reviving an Ohio woman's lawsuit claiming she was illegally denied a promotion and demoted because she is heterosexual. The justices, in a 9-0 ruling authored by liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, threw out a lower court's decision rejecting a civil rights lawsuit by the plaintiff, Marlean Ames, against her employer, Ohio's Department of Youth Services. Ames said she had a gay supervisor when she was passed over for a promotion in favor of a gay woman and demoted, with a pay cut, in favor of a gay man. The dispute centered on how plaintiffs like Ames must try to prove a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, religion, national origin and sex - including sexual orientation. Ames challenged a requirement used by some U.S. courts that plaintiffs from majority groups must provide more evidence than minority plaintiffs to make an initial - or "prima facie" - claim of discrimination under a 1973 Supreme Court ruling that governs the multi-step process employed to resolve such cases. These courts include the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled against Ames. They require majority-group plaintiffs to show "background circumstances" indicating that a defendant accused of workplace bias is "that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority." Jackson, writing for the Supreme Court, said that both the language of Title VII and the court's precedents make clear that there can be no distinctions between majority-group and minority-group plaintiffs. "By establishing the same protections for every 'individual' - without regard to that individual's membership in a minority or majority group - Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone," Jackson wrote. Ames, 61, sued in 2020 seeking monetary damages. She argued that she was discriminated against in her department's 2019 employment decisions because she is heterosexual in violation of Title VII and that she was more qualified than the two gay people given the job positions instead of her. "I was straight and pushed aside for them," Ames told Reuters in February. The 6th Circuit said Ames could not satisfy the "background circumstances" requirement by showing that a gay person made the employment decisions in favor of gay people. The two people who had authority in those personnel decisions, the 6th Circuit noted, were straight. Republican Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost's office in court papers defended the employment actions concerning Ames as part of a Department of Youth Services restructuring and said department leaders felt she lacked the vision and leadership skills needed for the newly created job for which she applied. On his first day back in office in January, Republican President Donald Trump ordered the dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion policies in federal agencies and encouraged private companies to follow suit. The NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund and other civil rights groups told the Supreme Court in a legal filing that Ames was asking the justices "to interpret Title VII in a way that ignores the realities of this country's persisting legacy of discrimination in evaluating disparate-treatment claims." These groups said the "background circumstances" inquiry lets courts account for the reality of historical and present-day discrimination "against certain minority groups like Black and/or LGBTQ people, and the virtual absence of widespread discrimination targeting certain majority groups like white people and straight people." The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case on February 26.
