It’s the best high school in the country. Success there means success later in life. Parents go to extreme lengths to get their children into it.
So it’s no surprise that when the newly woke Department of Education under Sec. Atif Qarni decided that there were too many Asian students at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, and parents were upset.
Until this year, admission was done on merit alone. There was one test, and those who scored highest were admitted. But that let the wrong kind of people into TJ, as it is known in Fairfax County. As many as 65 or 75 percent of the student body was Asian, with roughly 20 percent white.
Democrats, including members of the House of Delegates, argued that the student body at TJ should look more like Fairfax County. It wasn’t fair that some parents spent lots of money to prepare their children for the entrance exam, or that other students didn’t have the same help at home that Asian students had.
And so after much cajoling, the race-blind, merit based entrance policy was changed to allow school staff to consider other factors, including a student’s background.
The impact was immediate. The number of Asian students at the school dropped to just 54 percent in the incoming class.
The parents of TJ students didn’t just roll over when all this began. And the powers that be were not happy about it.
Parents organized and won a majority of the PTA’s Board. Rather than roll over and go along with the new mandates coming from the Department of Education and the Fairfax County School Board, the new PTA board resisted.
That simply would not do, so the School asserted that the principal of TJ was a member of the PTA board, and could vote. That would effectively end the PTA’s resistance by deadlocking the board. Again, parents weren’t having it, and pushed back.
That was the final straw for the powers that be. Last week the Virginia PTA — the parent body of every PTA in Virginia — told the TJ PTA that their charter was being revoked. Why? See below:
Over the last several months the TJHSST PTSA’s commitment to creating a collaborative relationship between the principal and the PTSA has been compromised by the following actions:
• A letter issued on April 21st by the TJHSST PTSA Diversity Committee calling for disciplinary action and resignation of the principal.
• During the week of June 14th, some members of the newly elected Executive Committee (EC) advanced a false narrative to the press claiming that the principal was trying to assert authority over the PTSA.
• The newly elected EC is actively discussing stripping the principal of the voting rights granted under the bylaws adopted by General Membership and seeking to remove the principal from the TJHSST PTSA Executive Committee. Historically, the TJHSST principal has participated in EC meetings by providing reports, collaborating on initiatives to support students and staff, and contributed to the development of general PTSA meeting agendas.
• Attacking the principal, calling for her resignation and then attempting to restrict her participation in the PTA is a direct violation of the values and principles cited in our bylaws and directly impedes the ability of this EC to build critical partnerships between school and home.
For anyone who wants to dig into the bylaws, they can be found here. The relevant section is permissive, not mandatory (emphasis added).
The principal of the school or his/her designee and a staff representative or his/her alternate, appointed by the principal or elected by the faculty, also may serve on the executive board.
“Shut up,” they explained.
The fight isn’t over yet, and lawsuits are pending. But the trend from the Department of Woke Education in Richmond is clear: social engineering will continue to be applied until the world looks and thinks just like the bureaucrats in Richmond want it to.