Virginia AG Announces Investigation of Top High School Over Withholding Student National Recognition

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares (C) announces investigations on Thomas Jefferson High School's delay in informing students of national recognitions and the school's admission policies in Alexandria, Va., on Jan. 4, 2023. Terri Wu/The Epoch Times

ALEXANDRIA, Va.—Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares announced on Jan. 4 that he will investigate the delay by a Virginia high school in informing students of national recognition they received in a scholarship competition, a day after Gov. Glenn Youngkin formally asked him to do so.

“The National Merit award is a recognition and such a valuable tool in our college application process for earning merit-based scholarships to pay for the ever-increasing costs of college,” Miyares said.

He noted the impact of such a delay, calling admissions to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST)—which regularly ranks as one of the best schools in the country—“a pathway to the American dream” to many, especially immigrants.

“To the extent that withholding of any of these awards at Thomas Jefferson High School was based on race, national origin, or any other protected status under the Virginia Human Rights Act, that is unlawful.”

Each year, about 1.5 million high school students in the United States take the Preliminary SAT, and about 50,000 highest scorers—about the top 3 percent—would become “commended students” under the National Merit Scholarship Corp. (NMSC) program. The accolade opens the door to special scholarships and enhances students’ competitiveness in college applications. However, high schools are the only recipients of award notifications because the program relies on the schools to relay the news to their students.

During the current school year, administrators at TJHSST didn’t notify its 261 NMSC award recipients until mid-November 2022; the early application deadlines for some colleges had passed on Nov. 1.

TJHSST is a state-chartered magnet high school in Virginia. Students in northern Virginia counties and cities are eligible to apply. The high school is located in Alexandria in Fairfax County and is operated by the Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) division.

Education activist Asra Nomani in Fairfax County first reported the delay on Dec. 21, 2022. On Dec. 30, 2022, the Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), the school division that runs TJHSST, acknowledged the delay and said it had started its own investigation of the matter. The delay was “a unique situation due to human error,” according to the FCPS public statement.

In another press statement on Jan. 3, FCPS said it was aware of Youngkin’s authorization of an investigation and that “FCPS stands ready to work with our partners at the state level” if the investigation would be launched.

“As a reminder, once this error was brought to light, school staff reached out to colleges to update records where commended scholars had applied,” the FCPS stated.

Parents Don’t Think Delay Was a 1-Time Error

Nomani disagreed that the delay in 2022 was a one-time error.

“I have found TJ students from 2019, 2020, and 2021 who never knew they were Commended Students,” Nomani wrote in a Jan. 3 tweet.

Her son, who graduated from TJHSST in 2021, was one of them. According to Nomani, NMSC told her that it informed the TJHSST principal of the award in a letter dated Sept. 10, 2020, but the principal didn’t notify parents or make any public announcements. Now two years later, Nomani said she and her son learned he had earned the “commended student” recognition, an award that could be used for obtaining a scholarship.

Shawna Yashar, whose son is currently a senior at TJHSST, said the school’s director of student services, Brandon Kosatka, told her that he and the principal withheld the national accolades because they didn’t want to hurt the feelings of those who didn’t earn the recognitions. The Epoch Times has contacted TJHSST Principal Ann Bonitatibus and Kosatka for comment.

She said her son called the college admissions office to add the award information to his applications, to no avail. TJHSST initially refused to call the colleges on behalf of the students but agreed later after the matter received media attention. However, she said there is no guarantee that such add-on information will be included in the original student application.

In a Jan. 3 statement, Youngkin said, “We need to get to the bottom of what appears to be an egregious, deliberate attempt to disadvantage high-performing students at one of the best schools in the country.”

He said the delay might have caused “material harm” to the students and their parents and authorized a full investigation based on a potential violation of the Virginia Human Rights Act.

Investigations Welcomed

Yashar attended a meeting with FCPS superintendent Michelle Reid on Jan. 3. She said that she appreciated that FCPS was launching an internal investigation and said that the meeting was conducted by a Richmond law firm.

She thought the additional attorney general investigation was “the right thing to do.”

“This can’t possibly just be a one-time human error as FCPS is claiming,” she told The Epoch Times.

Nomani welcomed the governor’s initiative.

“We have been waging a civil rights battle for two years against a school board that is engaging in systemic injustice against our families, and now we see through the withholding of National Merit Commended Student awards that this systemic injustice has very real consequences on the in the wallets of families and the futures of children,” she said in a Jan. 3 statement.

She referred to the two-year battle of a group of FCPS parents over the revised TJHSST admission policies that eliminated the magnet high school’s entrance exam, allocated admissions for every school in TJHSST’s covered areas, and reduced Asian students from 73 percent to 54 percent in the class of 2025.

Nomani and other parents sued the Fairfax County School Board to halt the revised admission policies, arguing that the racial balancing in the new policies disproportionally harmed Asian American students. While the parent group obtained initial legal success, the Supreme Court’s decision (pdf) in April 2022 ultimately allowed those policies to stay. The court didn’t explain its reasoning.

Investigation of TJHSST’s Admission Policy

On Jan. 4, Miyares also announced an investigation of TJHSST’s admission policies. “Using race, national origin, or any other protected class under Virginia’s Human Rights Act as a factor to determine admission to one of our top high schools is wrong. It is unjust.”

He said his investigation would be based on Virginia state law, namely the Virginia Human Rights Act.

“Racism and race-based government decision-making in any form is wrong. And it’s against who we are as a people and who we are as a nation. And I intend to get to the bottom of this through my office of civil rights’ investigation.”