Virginia's new transgender student policies
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Virginia has new model policies for how its K-12 schools should treat transgender students.
Driving the news: Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced the policy Tuesday — 10 months after he released a draft policy that drew criticism from LGBTQ+ advocates and sparked student protests around the state, per the Washington Post.
- The Department of Education spent the 10 months reviewing more than 70,000 public comments it received.
Why it matters: The updated policies roll back the previous administration's LGBTQ+-friendly accommodations, which required schools to use the students' preferred pronouns and allowed students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that matched their gender identities.
State of play: The finalized policies are basically the same as the September draft, per the Times-Dispatch: Students must use bathrooms, locker rooms and pronouns that match their sex assigned at birth, and parental rights are emphasized throughout.
- The changes from the draft allow students with a medical gender dysphoria diagnosis to request accommodations through a school ADA coordinator and say parents can opt their children out of using sex-segregated facilities.
Worth noting: The statewide policies don't affect local school divisions. They're meant to be the model for ones each school district creates itself.
- Many districts never adopted the policies of the last administration, including Hanover, and Richmond schools voted in October to reject this one.