Virginia Gov Youngkin Seeks New Elections for Loudoun County School Board for “Accountability”
Virginia Gov.
Glenn Youngkin
is trying to force the Loudoun County School Board to face an early election, citing a need for accountability for the board, which over the past year has been embroiled in controversies over its handling of school reopenings and a high school sexual assault case.
The governor proposed an amendment to a bill passed by the
Virginia
General Assembly that would require all nine members of the school board to stand for election a year earlier than they were initially scheduled.
The original bill, which WTOP
reported
was requested by the Loudoun Board of Elections, sought to schedule the board’s elections in November 2023 with four members elected to four-year terms and five members to two-year terms. Youngkin’s amendment would instead schedule the elections in November 2022, forcing the embattled school board to face voters a year earlier.
The Loudoun County School District has been the epicenter of a national grassroots movement of parent activism motivated largely by the failure of school districts to open for in-person classes amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the incorporation of critical race theory and gay and transgender ideology into classroom instruction.
The northern Virginia school district was further
drawn
into the national spotlight after it was revealed that the school board allowed a high school student who had committed a sexual assault at a district high school to attend a different high school where he committed a second assault. Several board members are facing recall efforts over their handling of the assaults.
In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson for Youngkin directed the Washington Examiner to comments the governor made during a Tuesday
interview
with ABC 7 in which he directly alluded to the school board’s recent controversies in justifying his effort to schedule a new election. In the remarks, he said that the amendment would allow parents to elect a school board that would reflect their will.
Youngkin, who was only elected in November 2021 and is barely three months into his four-year term, made parental education rights a central theme of his campaign and referenced the Loudoun School Board’s botched handling of the sexual assault in numerous campaign ads.
In a day one executive order, the governor directed state Attorney General Jason Miyares to investigate the board’s handling of the assault.
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