Loudoun County Public Schools in Virginia instructed teachers to eliminate all “gender based practices” to align with the district’s transgender equity policy, according to a teacher training.
Staff were instructed to “allow gender expansive and transgender students to participate in activities in a manner consistent with the student’s gender identity” and “reduce or eliminate gender based practices to the extent possible,” including gender-based school dances and class activities in which boys competed with girls, according to a August 2021 teacher training from Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS), obtained by Ian Prior, executive director of Fight For Schools and senior advisor at America First Legal, through a public records request.
The training was instructing educators on the district’s Policy 8040 regarding the “Rights of Transgender and Gender-Expansive Students.”
LCPS passed the policy in August of 2021, which requires teachers to call students by their “chosen name and gender pronouns that reflect their gender identity without any substantiating evidence” and allows transgender students to participate in sports and use bathrooms that correspond to their chosen gender identity.
The policy also eliminated practices such as “grouping students for class activities, gender based homecoming or prom courts, limitations on who can attend as ‘couples’ at school dances, and gender-based events such as father-daughter dances,” according to FAQs regarding the policy.
Just FOIA’d Loudoun County Public Schools staff training makes clear that parents do not have the right to know about their child’s gender identity. (1/3) pic.twitter.com/wJvuoBAI9f
— Ian Prior (@iandprior) April 5, 2022
Another slide of the teacher training said school administrators and mental health professionals “will need to consider the health and safety of the student in situations where students may not want their parents to know about their gender identity” which schools are instructed to address on a “case-by-case basis.”
Additionally, a student’s gender identity or transgender status “should not be shared even internally among school personnel except to those with a legitimate educational interest” such as staff providing direct support to a student, according to the training.
“Inadvertent slips in the use of names or pronouns may occur” but staff or students “who intentionally and persistently refuse to respect a student’s gender identity by using the wrong name and gender pronoun” will be in violation of Policy 8040, according to another slide. (RELATED: ‘We’re Still Here,’ Loudoun Parents Say, ‘We’re Not Spiking The Ball Because Youngkin Won’)
Parents and community members have expressed outrage over the policy, especially after they found out that a ninth-grade girl was raped in May 2021 by a boy wearing a skirt who entered a girls bathroom at LCPS’ Stone Bridge High School. The same student was then transferred to Broad Run High School, where he allegedly sexually assaulted another girl on Oct. 6.
LCPS did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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