by Kerry Dougherty
Wanted: One more member with common sense for the Virginia Beach School Board. Unfortunately, that won’t happen until the next election in 2024.
In the meantime, the narrow woke majority that did its best to keep masks on kids, keep schools closed, dumbed down the city’s public schools and pandered to special interests, will continue to virtue signal and hold pointless, anti-parent votes under the cloak of darkness.
At 2:15 in the morning to be precise.
Perhaps you heard, the Beach school board held a marathon meeting Monday night that stretched into Tuesday morning. Not because the members were desperately trying to find ways to improve academics or test scores, but to grant LGBTQ+ students special protected status that isn’t extended to any other minority, including children with disabilities.
Oh, and there is another, more insidious reason the board passed this resolution: to extend a defiant middle finger to Gov. Glenn Youngkin whose Department of Education has prepared policies guaranteeing parental rights regarding trans students.
The Beach’s ill-conceived resolution passed by a vote of 6-5.
One more member, folks, and we can put an end to this late-night lunacy.
The majority also voted down a resolution, introduced by common-sense Board member Vicky Manning, to create a list of sexually explicit materials available in middle school and high school libraries. That vote was 5 in favor, 6 against.
Sigh.
One more member. That’s all we need to restore sanity in Beach schools.
About 100 people spoke on the resolution that was supposedly aimed at preventing the harassment of LGBTQ+ kids, but in reality pretends to elevate them to some sort of privileged position.
It’s worth remembering that harassment and bullying of ANY student already violates public school policies.
This vote was the very essence of virtue signaling.
This board allows students to speak first at meetings and about 50 of them did, each parroting the speaker before in endorsing the LGBTQ resolution.
Tedious.
Most, if not all, of the children attend the legal studies program at First Colonial High School. Many of the parents, who were allowed to speak after the kids, objected to the resolution.
The vote on the nonsensical measure, proposed by Board member Jessica Owens, was conducted at 2:15 am Tuesday.
Appalling.
No public body ought to be voting on ANYTHING after midnight. It violates the spirit – if not the letter – of Virginia’s open meeting laws. They’re called “Sunshine Laws” for a reason.
Of course, by waiting until after 2 a.m. many observers had given up and gone to bed. That was the whole idea.
Virginia Beach’s woke school chief is on his way out. Time for the school board’s majority to join him.
Republished with permission from Kerry: Unemployed and Unedited.
