Posted on 05/13/2015 9:27:11 AM PDT by wagglebee
FALLS CHURCH, VA, May 12, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Hundreds of parents accused Fairfax County School Board (FCSB) members of endangering their children and caving to the Obama administration as the school board voted to allow transgender teens to use the locker rooms and bathrooms of the opposite sex.
The new policy may also allow transgender teachers to show their gender dysphoria openly in the classroom.
The motion to add "gender identity" as a protected class– which passed 10-1, with one abstentation – was sparked by the Obama administration's threat to deny the district $42 million in federal funding.
According to FoxNews.com and The Washington Post, that would amount to 1.7 percent of the education budget in the nation's largest school district.
The blackmail and the council's apparent secrecy led to outrage among parents who attended the school board's meeting last Thursday, where opponents outnumbered supporters at least eight-to-one.
Several school board members argued that there was no attempt to go around parents, with one member saying that the board acted within its normal routes of communication – a notice three weeks before the vote, discussion at the board's normal meeting two weeks before the vote, and then a vote last week.
Board member Megan McLaughlin said that there was no need for a larger debate, because this was an update to the protected classes of the school system, and not a new policy creating favored groups. McLaughlin also said that school operations would not change in any way as a result of the new policy.
The change was oreceded by a legal opinion from Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, a Democrat, who in March said that school boards have the authority to include sexual orientation and gender identity as special classes. But it was the threat of a loss of federal education dollars that provided the impetus for several school board members.
President Obama's threat to deny children federal money was in keeping with his administration's new interpretation of the 1972 Title IX law.
Last April, the U.S. Education Department's Office for Civil Rights decided that gender identity is a protected class, and that Title IX, which only bars sexual discrimination, will now be treated as though it “extends to claims of discrimination based on gender identity or failure to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity.”
The FCSB meeting was often heated, with numerous comparisons made to race-based discrimination, including slavery, by board members. After the vote, LGBT activist and Equality Virginia board member Catherine Read told LifeSiteNews.com that "if people really clung to these things, we'd still have slavery, women still wouldn't have the vote, and this would still be a black high school." Read said the issue is "about civil rights."
Multiple board members accused parents who opposed the change of acting out of "fear."
The only board member to oppose the measure, Elizabeth Schultz, argued that implementation costs could harm the school district, which is running a deficit of hundreds of millions of dollars. Its supporters countered that losing federal money would also hurt students.
Supporters frequently noted that adding gender identity to protected classes would change "nothing" at schools, to which Schultz and many parents asked, if that were true, why the change was necessary.
Schultz – who made a motion that the gender identity change be pushed back until October so that the board could investigate the costs associated with the change, as well as whether such a change is necessary, and how schools could adjust if the board backed the gender identity addition – walked out of the meeting when the final transgender recognition measure was passed without such consideration.
Schultz told LifeSiteNews.com that the board was wrong to postpone analyzing the regulations until the policy went into effect.
"Well, [implementation] happens at the end of September," Schultz told LifeSiteNews. "What difference does it make if you say you want to look at the regulations then?"
Many parents reminded school board members that last week's vote would be remembered when the board members ran for re-election.
The full school board meeting can be seen here.
NO! This is about DESTROYING six thousand years of Judeo-Christian culture.
A teenage girl not wanting to disrobe in front of a group of teenage boys who have decided to say that they are "transgender" has NOTHING to do with racism.
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Perhaps this is a sign that these transminded liberals have bitten off more than they can make society chew, even with lies.
Bump
A lawsuit waiting to happen, and it won’t take very long. I would predict that the school board members’ tenure will be ended the next election. They may be forced out before the next election.
First give them federal funds. Then they hire people and buy things. Pretty soon they can’t operate without the funds. Now they have to do whatever they are told, or they have to pay off a bunch of people and stop buying things. Pretty smart for the government.
If, in the near future, there are well-publicized incidents of boys in girls’ bathrooms - because nobody really cares about the opposite case - then the school board members are toast.
If nothing happens before people’s attention wanders, then it’s “the new normal.”
“OK, you say you are transgendered and have a right to be here ... but if that thang pops wood, it’s coming off at the root.”
I meant to say lay off but my phone thinks it knows better than me what I want to say.
The homostapo have got nearly all of what they want and now are going for the cross dressers and equating them with right.
I live in Fairfax County and have three school-aged children. I opt to send them to Catholic School however I have been following this item closely. Many (most of really) friends and neighbors send their kids to the local public schools which are touted as some of the best in the nation. Most of these friends and neighbors are left-leaning and spout for LGBT stuff and pull the lever for the dems. But now this is cutting too close to home. The typical democrat “Not in My Backyard” response will take over and the people are very upset! Because so many people want their 15 minutes of fame, I can’t wait to watch stuff come up in every school, at all ages, how little Joey is now Josephine and wants to use the girls’ bathroom... Pass the popcorn...
I just copied out a different, but essentially the same .. article, and the words used said there were two heated debates, parents vastly outnumbering the board and proponants and that the board had "overwhelmingly" voted for the change
I've SEEN this shit in action, and we are in our own homosexual battle in my school district and I have started the community uprising.
THIS topic has not been addressed (yet?) because I'm still trying to find out when and who snuck in the GSA club (gay/straight alliance) in 2012
Reading THIS article is SO like the 'debates" that happen in our board meetings (but not in executive session where I become the biggest pain in the ass I can possibly be)
I;n incoherent right now ... I'll go settle down
True, True, wagglebee.
And, this whole sordid affair is a clear example of Federal blackmail; potentially withholding funding unless the local school board acquiesces in the perverted demands of the Socialist-in-Chief, and his criminal enterprise minions.
Time to close down the Dept of Education, along with most others, and return this nation to its Constitutional roots.
Superintendents (f'rinstance) are under contract ... as are teachers not tenured ... etc.
I was at the meeting. Parents and taxpayers were furious at the belligerence of the Democrats on the School Board and at the Obama administration. The large auditorium was packed and another 100 people in the lobby. Those wearing purple and indicating their support of the measure could be counted on one hand.
In all of this, I have a new hero, one of the two female Republican members, Elizabeth Schultz.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=elizabeth+schultz
I hope you attend the board meetings ... your insight will help youo formulate thought and language to assist in correcting youor friends and neighbors
Good for you to fight this locally. These battles are more important than many national ones in my opinion
Unfortunately, there is no free market in K-12 schooling. Government schools are price-fixed cartel giving a service away at tuition-free. They are compulsory attendance for students whose parents can not ransom them and compulsory funded by the tax-payer. This guarantees customers and funding. They are also a socialist-entitlement. Finally, they are tax-paid minor leagues for the biggest professional sports.
Government schools suck the oxygen out of the room of the free market.
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