A teacher in Fairfax County Public Schools is urging students to walk out of school next week in protest of new statewide policies for transgender students from Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA).
The teacher, a history and social studies instructor at West Potomac High School in Alexandria, Virginia, said in an email to students that the new policies, which require schools to obtain a written parental request before treating a student as a new gender identity, were discriminatory to the “LGBTQIA+ community.”
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The email, which was obtained by the parent activist group Parents Defending Education, says that the Pride Liberation Project is organizing a student walkout on Sept. 27 to protest the new policies. The teacher urges students to “come show your support.”
“In the draft [policies], it states the staff should use the name that appears in the official record and use the pronouns that are appropriate to the sex that appears in the official record,” the email says. “The policy as written may cause students to be outed given the parameters.”
In a statement to the Washington Examiner, Parents Defending Education Director of Outreach Erika Sanzi said the teacher was engaging in “blatant political activity” and did not understand that teachers are “hired speech.”
“It is not their role to pressure students to attend school walk-outs to protest policy changes by a Governor or state Department of Education,” she said. “Would this same teacher be comfortable with colleagues who disagree with him using internal school communication systems to invite kids to walk out in support of these recent policy changes?”
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Sanzi also said it would be “a major problem” if parents were not made aware that a teacher “was urging their children to walk-out of school to protest the state government.”
The Washington Examiner reached out to Fairfax County Public Schools for comment
