Public employees in Virginia’s Prince William County are being asked to disclose their gender identity and sexual orientation in a taxpayer-funded survey.
To ensure public awareness of the survey, Vega read an email she received from a county employee into the record at the March 14 Board of County Supervisors meeting.
Regarding the question of gender identity, the employee noted that an option of “prefer not to disclose” wasn’t offered.
“So while it is counter to my beliefs that anyone can have a gender other than male or female, one’s biological sex, I must put those closely held beliefs aside in order to participate,” the employee said.
The employee was most aggrieved by “Demographic question #4.”
“This is the most offensive, outrageous, and abhorrent question asked,” the employee said. “It is not my employer’s business nor place to ask me the gender of my sexual partner. Why is my employer asking me for details of what happens in the privacy of my home, particularly my bedroom? What is the likelihood that I could bring a subordinate employee into my office, sit them down and ask them this question, and not end up embroiled in both a civil lawsuit and an internal investigation for sexual harassment or worse, with the likely outcomes of termination and an award monetary damages to that employee?”
The employee also addressed the “optional” question at the end of the survey, which “specifically directs” employees to answer an “open-ended question” addressing the importance of “inclusion” in the “performance of the firm.”
“It escapes me how this survey was approved by County leadership and how they thought this line of questioning was appropriate or acceptable,” the anonymous employee concluded, adding a request that the survey be “permanently terminated” and to have any “further inappropriate DEI initiatives canceled.”
“Based on the constant reminders” that the DEI has had to send out trying to get people to complete the survey, “we assume that there was low participation,” Vega said.
“The community is clearly upset,” she added. “This is an office that, since it has been established, has done nothing but cause further division, and it is something that people here in this county oppose. They’re not for it.”
Recalling the saying, “A fish rots from the head down,” Vega said that’s the case with Burgos’s approach, in that she has been “pushing the Marxist framework in education” for some time.
“And when she’s OK with spending nearly $80,000 on a Monkey Survey funded by the taxpayers, I feel a duty and an obligation to let the taxpayers know what this office is continuing to do and where their tax dollars are going. We’re still seeing record-high inflation, people are living paycheck-to-paycheck, and we’re looking for another increase in taxes with this new [Biden administration] budget.
Vega, who has long been a vocal critic of the county’s DEI Office, introduced a budget last year calling for its complete defunding and elimination.
A History of Equity and Inclusion Policies
In December 2020, Vega and three Republican colleagues walked out of a “Raising Awareness of Unconscious Bias to Foster Inclusivity and Equity” presentation by Burgos, shown during a joint meeting with the supervisors and School Board members. Supervisor Pete Candland said he found the lecture, which began by insinuating that board members held unconscious racial biases, to be “insulting.”
Before being hired in March 2021 to be Prince William County’s DEI Director, Burgos was supervisor of Global Learning and Culturally Responsive Instruction with Prince William County Public Schools and was appointed by the Virginia Department of Education to the “Culturally Relevant and Inclusive Education Practices Advisory Committee.”
While serving on the committee, Burgos participated in a webinar series on “Culturally Responsive Teaching,” in which she said critical race theory (CRT) was the foundational basis for the teaching.
While the video was removed from YouTube following backlash from Vega and local parent groups, an archived version of the video still exists.
Shortly after Burgos’s hire, Vega released a draft of the DEI’s office’s “Equity and Inclusion Policy” to the public. The program would have mandated “Equity Teams” in every government department, agency, and office, with no opt-out clause or protection of employment if not participating.
A FOIA request for resident feedback on the policy showed that more than 80 percent of Prince William County’s residents opposed the program’s proposed Marxist objectives and forced mandates.
In November 2021, Prince William County School Board Member Loree Williams hosted a town hall and panel discussion about “culturally responsive instruction. Burgos, who was one of the panelists, initiated discussions by explaining that “culturally responsive instruction” requires teachers to reflect upon their own biases and cultural experiences to better understand and be able to educate students from diverse cultural backgrounds.
Several speakers asked the panelists whether “culturally responsive teaching” is essentially just another term for CRT and whether CRT is being taught in county schools. However, Williams shut down those questions, saying those questions were outside of the scope of the town hall, prompting angry shouts from some attendees.
“This is not a town hall on critical race theory,“ Williams said in response to CRT-related questions at the town hall. ”We are not here to talk about critical race theory. It’s not defined in the presentation and our town hall. It’s not what we’re talking about. It’s not culturally responsive instruction.”
