Walkout Over Anti-Trans Guidelines Planned At Prince William Schools

PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY, VA — Students at several schools around Prince William County plan to walk out of classrooms on Tuesday to protest Virginia's new guidelines that restrict the rights of transgender students.

The new "model policies," released Friday, will likely have to be adopted by all of the state’s 133 school districts in October. They will require transgender students to use school bathrooms and locker rooms matching the sex they were assigned at birth. The policies also make it difficult for students to change their name and gender at school.

The move was quickly opposed by local lawmakers and advocacy groups. U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-11th) referred to the Youngkin administration's policies as "a despicable display of bigotry and ignorance from the man who ran for office on the false promise of protecting Virginia students."

The Pride Liberation Project, a student advocacy group that focuses on the rights of LGBTQIA students in Virginia, also opposed the change.

"These revised guidelines will only hurt students in a time when students are facing unparalleled mental health challenges, and are a cruel attempt to politicize the existence of LGBTQIA+ students for political gain," the group said in a news release. "We call for the VDOE to revoke its draft revisions and for school boards to affirm their commitment to protect all students by rejecting these bigoted proposed guidelines."

In response to the new policies, the Pride Liberation Project helped organize walkouts at more than 90 schools around the state. The walkouts are planned for different times on Tuesday.

Walkouts are planned at the following schools in Prince William County on Tuesday:

• Battlefield High School
• Hylton High School
• Colgan High School
• Gar-Field High School
• Osbourn Park High School
• Woodbridge High School
• Unity Reed High School

Some students at Patriot High School are planning a walkout on Wednesday.

"School is one of the few places where my Queer friends and I can feel safe to be ourselves," one student from Prince William County told the Pride Liberation Project. "Turning that affirming space into a place of fear and bigotry is abhorrent and only hurts students.”

Under the model policies, if a student wants to participate in a sport or other extracurricular activities, they must only participate on teams that align with the sex assigned at birth.
Youngkin’s Virginia Department of Education also stated in the model policies that the legal name and sex of a student cannot be changed "even upon written instruction of a parent or eligible student" without an official legal document or court order.

Teachers and other school officials can only refer to a student by their pronouns associated with their sex at birth. And teachers will not be required to refer to a student's chosen names regardless of paperwork if they feel doing so "would violate their constitutionally protected rights."

Read more: Youngkin's New School Guidelines Restrict Transgender Student Rights

The public comment period on the model policies will open this week on the Virginia Regulatory Town Hall’s website.