Boy strips down in front of girls in Rockingham School!
While local school boards across the state, like the Virginia Beach School Board this week, are beginning to adopt the Youngkin administration’s 2023 Model Policies on the Privacy, Dignity, and Respect for All Students and Parents in Virginia’s Public Schools, other local school systems, like Rockingham County Public Schools (RCPS), are refusing to comply. In fact, because of their inaction, young female students had their basic privacy rights violated when a male student undressed right in front of them in the girls’ locker room.
Here's what we know happened in Rockingham:
On September 20, the RCPS board members and superintendent met with the school board attorney to receive guidance on the adoption of the 2023 Model Policies, and according to one board member, Matt Cross, legal counsel said the model policies did not violate the law and could be adopted by the board.
During a school board meeting on September 25, board chair Jackie Lohr and members Charlette McQuilkin and Lowell Fulk only voted to adopt portions of the 2023 Model Policies, but voted to further review (i.e. delay) provisions related to withholding information from parents, compelled speech, bathrooms and changing facilities, and athletics (subsections D, G, and H of the 2023 Model Policies).
On September 27, at the Turner Ashby High cheer meet between multiple high school teams, a male student used the female locker room to change – in front of young girls.
Keep in mind that Governor Youngkin’s 2023 Model Policies published on July 18, 2023, restores parental rights by prohibiting schools from hiding information about students social transitioning from their parents and protecting the bodily privacy and safety of students. Also, Attorney General Jason Miyares’ August 24th official opinion clarifies that the 2023 Model Policies comply with the Equal Protection Clause, Title IX, and the Virginia Human Rights Act (VHRA), and that local school boards must adopt model policies consistent with them.
While Virginia is subject to the 4th Circuit’s ruling in the Grimm v. Gloucester School Board case, in which the court held that a school can permit a student to use the bathroom of the opposite sex if they satisfy specific requirements, the court made it clear the ruling only applied to bathroom use. Meaning, schools should still maintain sex-segregated locker rooms and changing areas where minor students could be in a state of undress.
As we’ve stated previously, reckless policies that allow students to use bathrooms and locker rooms of the opposite sex, or simply ignore the threats this behavior poses, will only result in more incidents like what happened in Loudoun and Appomattox, that inevitably result in expensive and public lawsuits.
In the case of Virginia Beach, some school board members who were holdouts quickly reversed course and approved the 2023 Model Policies this week after several parents filed a lawsuit in September demanding the district protect the fundamental and constitutional rights of parents and students.
It is time for local school boards across the state to do the right thing and adopt the model policies. We are calling on the Rockingham County School Board and other local schools boards to follow the lead of school boards like Spotsylvania, Roanoke County, Franklin City, Surry County, Virginia Beach, Isle of Wight, and Bedford, by adopting the 2023 Model Policies in their entirety.
