Some Democrats at the national level seem to recognize that their extremist positions on so-called “transgender rights” at the expense of all others have cost them significantly. But Fairfax County’s public school officials, including Superintendent Michelle Reid and the district’s 12 Democrat-endorsed school board members, are continuing their efforts to force gender ideology indoctrination at increasingly earlier ages. Fairfax County Public Schools (one of the highest-ranked districts in the U.S. in 2022) and other districts like it demonstrate the continued importance of local activism and litigation nationwide to combat the transgender activist agenda in our public schools.
The Majority of Americans Hold Common-Sense Beliefs
Opinion polling shows that the majority of Americans object to transgender surgeries for minors and further believe that “gender is determined by sex at birth.” Indeed, the American public continues to wait with bated breath for the Supreme Court’s decision on United States v. Skrmetti, a decision likely to support Tennessee’s state law banning transgender interventions for minors.
Even some left-leaning commentators agree that the extremist positions Democrat elites have taken on transgender ideology contributed to the party’s catastrophic election losses in November.
Meanwhile, at the state level, Gov. Glenn Youngkin, R–Va., recognized the Virginia public’s discontent with issues such as shared-sex bathroom use and the lack of parental notification regarding children changing their “gender identities” at school. He therefore revised the state’s model policies governing public education, which were meant to be implemented in Virginia’s schools in the 2023-24 academic year.
Leftist School Districts Ignore the Law
But leftist school districts exist in their own bubble, seemingly oblivious to state law, and sometimes even the Constitution. In a letter to the community dated Aug. 15, 2023, Superintendent Reid announced that Fairfax County Public Schools, the largest district in Virginia (and ninth largest in the country), would not abide by Youngkin’s model policies. Instead, students’ social “gender transitions” continue to occur in secret from their parents, preferred pronouns are mandated under penalty of suspension, and bathroom and locker room usage in Fairfax County’s public schools continues to be based on students’ perceived “gender” rather than sex.
Despite Reid’s attempts to ignore the law, America First Legal is currently litigating a case (full disclosure: this author is involved in said case) to challenge Fairfax County Public Schools’ policies on mandated pronouns and bathroom use based on a student’s self-proclaimed “gender” rather than sex.
Meanwhile, the district’s school board members not only support Reid’s transgender activist position but continue to pass initiatives that go even further. This isn’t particularly surprising given that one of them swore his oath of office not on religious texts, but rather on pornographic and pedophiliac books.
Selecting Ideologically Homogeneous “Advisory” Committees
These elected officials push this agenda, in part, by appointing known transgender activists to the school board’s Family Life Education Curriculum Advisory Committee (FLECAC). Conservatives who apply for this committee have been rejected. In the past, one was even kicked off the committee for her dissenting viewpoint. Meanwhile, the extremists on FLECAC advise school board members to adopt policies that counter parents’ and taxpayers’ interests. School board members tend to vote in favor of this committee’s recommendations while commending their “expertise.”
One of FLECAC’s recent recommendations was to force shared-sex spaces for sex education in elementary schools by educating boys and girls together on topics that adult men and women blush to discuss in shared company. The rationale for such a measure remains questionable. Not surprisingly, 84 percent of the district’s survey respondents objected to the radical initiative. At a work session after these survey results were made public, Reid replied, “Honestly, the majority doesn’t always dictate, right?”
Reid said out loud what many of us already know. The district’s administrators and elected school board members disregard survey results that are counter to their predetermined decisions and political inclinations.
Attempts to Indoctrinate the Young
In June 2024, following FLECAC’s recommendations, the school board unanimously passed “gender identity education” for seventh grade students, despite significant parental objections.
But seventh grade is simply not young enough for the appointed members of FLECAC — an activist committee that harbors what appears to be the sole intent of indoctrinating our young children in transgender ideology. During the last three FLECAC meetings, which occur monthly and notably are not recorded for public observation, conversations have centered around pushing “gender identity” lessons in early elementary school. Some members have insisted the lessons begin in first grade, but others have pointed to the “problem” of parental pushback and proposed that they should instead recommend that the lessons begin in third grade.
When the committee puts forth its annual recommendations this spring, if recent history is an indicator, school board members are likely to wait to vote unanimously in favor of them until late June or July 2025, when families have left the area for summer vacations and are the least likely to be paying attention to local school board activism.
The same kind of extremists who hijacked the Democrat Party at the national level are the ones pushing transgender ideology indoctrination at early ages in public schools and running Fairfax County’s once flagship district into the ground. And these types of extremists are embedded in public school districts across the country.
Stephanie Lundquist-Arora is a contributor to The Federalist and the Washington Examiner, a mother in Fairfax County, Virginia, an author, and the Fairfax chapter leader of the Independent Women’s Network.
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