Virginia School District Apologizes After Elementary Students Asked to Role-Play as Slaves, Landowners

The Fairfax County Public Schools building in Merrifield, Va., on March 4, 2019. Matthew Barakat/AP Photo

FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va.—Parents of fifth-grade students at a school in Fairfax County, Virginia, learned on Jan. 12 that their children were asked to role-play as slaves and landowners during a classroom activity.

“This activity was inappropriate and not part of our approved division curriculum,” wrote Josh Douds, principal of the Centreville Elementary School. “During the activity, students participated in a simulation where they acted as slaves and a landowner.”

The Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) said in a statement that the school apologized directly to the families of the affected students for “this regretful lapse in judgment made by an inexperienced trainee teacher who was subsequently counseled on the inappropriateness of the lesson.”

The student teacher conducted the classroom activity to teach the “economics of slavery” under the supervision of an FCPS teacher while being observed by a university supervisor, according to the statement.

School district officials also reiterated their commitment to teaching with dignity and providing professional development support for all employees.

The students weren’t assigned roles based on their races, FCPS spokesperson Julie Moult told WUSA9. It was unclear whether the observing teacher would receive any disciplinary measures, according to the WUSA9 report.

A family whose child was involved in the role-play classroom activity told Fox5 that the simulation was unnecessary for learning.

“Anyone who sort of sits with it and thinks about what it means to be enslaved, it’s a horrible thing,” the child’s mother said. “It’s like asking someone to role-play the holocaust.”

The slave-landowner simulation occurred at a tumultuous time for FCPS. It has recently been in the news for several high schools delaying their students’ National Merit award notifications, making this potential differentiator unavailable to hundreds of students’ college applications.

Students who score among the top 3 percent in Preliminary SAT tests obtain this accolade, which opens doors to special scholarship programs. However, high schools are the only recipients of award notifications because the National Merit Scholarship Corp. program, which runs the test, relies on the schools to relay the news to their students.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin authorized Attorney General Jason Miyares to investigate the matter. On Jan. 4, Miyares kicked off an investigation of the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology—ranked No. 1 in the nation, and the first high school found with the issue—and expanded the probe to the entire FCPS a few days later.

At the press conference on Jan. 4, Miyares said that if the withholding of merit awards was based on race, national origin, or any other protected status under the Virginia Human Rights Act, it was unlawful.

Fairfax County Public Schools superintendent Michelle Reid (R) listens as Glenn Miller (L), a father of a Langley High School student, asks a question at the school cafeteria in McLean, Va., on Jan. 10, 2023. Terri Wu/The Epoch Times

FCPS Superintendent Michelle Reid met with parents of affected students in three high schools in separate meetings this month. Reid told parents that she was pulling central office staffers to call college admissions offices in an attempt to add the merit awards to the affected students’ applications. On Jan. 13, four more FCPS high schools were reported to have discovered the same problem.

Last week, neighboring Loudoun County announced that three high schools in its school district discovered the same issue: withholding students’ Merit Award notifications.

“What started off as allegations of one of our most prominent schools has revealed a systematic problem,” Youngkin said in a tweet on Jan. 14. “Now, there are news reports that seven schools in NOVA [northern Virginia] have delayed notifying Virginia students of their academic achievements. This is unacceptable.”