‘We Still Have an Uphill Battle’ to Return Parents Their Rights: Virginia Beach School Board Member

Critics liken the new transgender policy to “segregation”

Victoria Manning, a Virginia Beach school board member, in an interview with NTD's Capitol Report on Sept. 19, 2022. NTD/Screenshot via The Epoch Times

Despite Virginia’s new policy that now requires parental consent for gender affirmation by schools, and bathroom and locker rooms assigned by biological gender, a school board member says there is still a long way to go to give parents back their full rights.

Victoria Manning, a Virginia Beach school board member, is urging people to pay attention to school board elections to ensure that parents win the current fight for rights over what their children are taught in school and the environment in which they are taught.

“We still have an uphill battle here. We have a Department of Education that stands with parents, but we have many local school boards who don’t. So people have to pay attention this November, and pay attention to who’s on the ballot and make sure that you elect people who are going to stand shoulder to shoulder with parents,” Manning said during a Sept. 19 interview with NTD’s Capitol Report.

While campaigning last year, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin championed giving parents back the right to determine what their children are taught in public schools, making curriculum transparent, and removing discriminatory curriculum that divides students by race, like critical race theory-based lessons.

Virginia’s new guidelines state that public schools cannot affirm a student’s gender without parents’ written request. In addition, bathroom and locker room use is to be based on students’ sex, defined as the biological sex at birth. Student sports participation should be sex-based as well unless federal laws require otherwise.

The new policies are a complete reversal of the previous guidelines, which define transgender as a student’s “self-identifying term.” Those rules, which took effect in March 2021 under former Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, ask schools to consider not disclosing a student’s gender identity to parents “if a student is not ready or able to safely share” it with their family.

In 2021, the state legislature passed a policy allowing the Department of Education to make model policies for transgender students, so, theoretically, someone could decide to be a boy on one day and a girl on another day and use the corresponding bathrooms, said Manning.

While some celebrate the policy shift, critics say the new policy will make schools less safe for students who identify as transgender and non-binary.

“Hundreds of thousands of transgender students received a clear message: the law was not on their side. This policy is painful and resembles the history of segregation in restrooms and other public accommodations, and history is at risk of repeating itself,” Robert N. Barnette Jr., president of the Virginia NAACP, wrote in a Sept. 19 press statement.

The new guidelines will enter a 30-day public comment period around Sept. 26 and take effect after the state superintendent approves the final version.

A Loudoun County resident holds a sign of Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) Superintendent Scott Ziegler’s email on May 28, 2021—notifying the school board of a sexual assault case in a high school bathroom—outside the LCPS administration building in Ashburn, Va., on Nov. 9, 2021. During a June 22 school board meeting discussion on LCPS pro-transgender policy, Ziegler said he wasn’t aware of sexual assaults in school bathrooms. Terri Wu/The Epoch Times

Manning said families have had to suffer because of the previous policies, including a father whose daughter was molested in the girl’s bathroom by a boy dressed as a girl.

Scott Smith alleges that a boy raped his daughter, a 15-year-old freshman at Stone Bridge High School in Loudoun County, in a bathroom at the school.

“I’m thankful for [Smith] for standing up and fighting for all parents. I’m sure it was so difficult for him to deal with what he went through and what his daughter went through,” said Manning.

Manning said most school boards are run by people who believe children and teachers are more informed and should make the decisions about the child’s gender.

Virginia Beach school board just signed a resolution saying the school district and parents are “equal partners” in the upbringing of children, which is “horrific” to Manning because she thinks parents are the principal authority for their children, she said.

Heritage Foundation fellow Jay Richards said Virginia’s new transgender student policy is good but echoed Manning, saying it is a “modest” first step to fixing the larger problem of schools having too much power over students and the indoctrination of students with transgender ideology.

“If people are just looking at headlines, they may think it’s this enormous change. What it actually does is it requires schools to get permission from parents before they socially transition the kids in school,” Richards said during a Sept. 19 interview with NTD’s Capitol Report.

Terri Wu contributed to this report.