The school board for Virginia’s largest city has adopted controversial guidelines announced by the Youngkin administration.
Under the new rules, teachers and students have the right to call transgender students by their birth name and the pronouns of their biological sex.
The Virginia Beach School Board initially opposed the governor’s order but reversed course on Thursday amid a lawsuit brought by two parents.
As The Virginian-Pilot reports:
For the past year, the school board and community have been embroiled in a debate surrounding these policies, with LGBTQ advocates arguing the model policies could put transgender and nonbinary students in danger by forcibly “outing” them to unsupportive families or hiding their gender identities.
A spokesperson for the school system said the board’s decision to approve the regulations regarding the model policies “was not related to an impending lawsuit.” Board chair Trenace Riggs said the board had been working toward adopting the model policies “for months” and for “many hours at a time” when the lawsuit was filed. Riggs wrote in a statement that “the allegations in the lawsuit did not accurately reflect the School Board’s intent” and the time the board spent reviewing and revising its policies and regulations. Now that the suit has been dropped, she wrote the school system can “direct limited resources back to educational services.”
The division’s statement read: “The VBCPS School Board grappled with the Model Policies since their approval in mid-July, working diligently to reach consensus on how best to meet the unique needs of our community while blending the policy and regulation of VBCPS to be consistent with the Governor’s model policies.”
