School buses remained at the depot; Some, an open hood, take advantage of a revision. On the beaches of Atlantic Avenue, children taste the first sea baths of the season and make sand castles along the plates of Oceanfront. With 450,000 inhabitants, Virginia Beach has the tunes of gigantic Grande-Motte. The schoolchildren of the 86 schools in the largest city in Virginia are on vacation. Unlike local policies.
200 kilometers south of Washington, they have just offered Donald Trump a victory. The City’s School Board voted to abandon the policies of diversity, equity and inclusion, known under the acronym. It was one of the promises of the Republican: Virginia Beach has just taken the plunge by suspending this symbol of well-thought.
Did they have a choice? The local elected representatives of the school board fell under the threat of a directive issued by the Trump administration promising to suppress federal funding from school districts which would refuse to eliminate their Dei program, for Virginia Beach, more than $ 74 million to save, in particular, subsidies from canteens. But this abandonment does not only have financial motivations. Virginia, in terms of inclusive delirium, returns from afar.
Replace the instruction with ideology
At the local Republican Party, we welcome this success. Coming to pay for her subscription, Sarah, mother of two, seems relieved: “It was time to turn the page on this madness!” It seems crazy to have to say that the school is made to teach the bases – read, write, count. »» Behind the desk to take the checks, Marie Dottino seems relieved of her concerns. “I have a 5 year old granddaughter. Her parents had enrolled him in the public in kindergarten. A few days after the start of the school year, she played to reconstruct her family with figurines. There was the doll that represents the mother … We asked her: ” And where is the dad? ” And there she replied: “Dad, it’s a bad word, the dads are mean”, tells this grandmother. Needless to say, you have registered it in the private Catholic after only a week. But now, that’s the state of mind: replacing the instruction with ideology and, if possible, make sure to depreciate our history and our values. »»
“It seems crazy to have to say that the school is made to teach the bases – read, write, count”
The Virginie Commonwealth had, under Biden, the annoying habit of defraying the column. In 2021, the parents of public schools in the county of Loudoun, not far from Maryland, had demonstrated against the teaching of the critical theory of the race … White children learned that their ancestors had been oppressors. Which is not nothing in Virginia, epicenter of the American civil war, where all traces of the history of the Confederates is meticulously erased. In this same county, transgender activism had been a source of a resounding conflict, the school board having attempted to hide a sexual assault committed by a transgender adolescent in the toilets of a school.
In 2022, the School Board of the City of Fairfax, not far from Washington, had voted a resolution excluding students from the age of 9 for “misuse of pronouns”, an offense called “megenrism »». Clearly, if a child believed that he was a girl, his little comrades could no longer talk about it using the pronoun “Il”. In the name of the fight against discrimination based on “gender identity” or “sexual orientation”, Virginia’s most progressive school boards ended up intimidating the parents themselves. In Roanoke, on the occasion of LGBTQ festivities in 2023, the schools had decorated with rainbow flags the classes and the playgrounds.
There too, some parents had resisted, going so far as to file a complaint against the local school board. In this Purple State (a state that can vote democratic as well as republican), these school wars have a huge impact. Virginia will vote for a new governor in 2025, the Republican Glenn Youngkin unable to stand out after his only three -year term. Kamala Harris, popular in the chic and black suburbs of Washington, had done better than Trump. Better also on all Virginia Beach where she was ahead of 2 %.
Destroy the family unit
In this seaside town, the Republicans are well aware that the Maga Movement won a round, but could lose the next one in September, that is to say at the start of the school year. “I don’t worry so much for my grandchildren who are mentally equipped with an anti-connecting shield. But rather for the nation, testifies Roland Weaver, a former 66 -year -old US Navy soldier, lookalike of John Wayne and member of the local Republican Party. All this is communism. We start with abortion and then with these diversity and inclusion programs and we end up destroying the family cell. What the Dei introduces in the heads of young people spoils their lives, spoils our country. They will never become truly productive and ambitious, capable of marrying, raising children and making a good living. For a nation to be strong, it is necessary that its backbone, the youth, therefore, too. »»
“Times have changed, you have to cut the fat directly on the bone. And Trump does it “
The Maga movement would dose to do what other Republicans did not dare to accomplish. “I liked Reagan, he was a polite, measured person. But times have changed, you have to cut the fat directly on the bone. And Trump does it. This is how we will come back to sources. »»
A new school department
The educational community and parents of students from Virginia Beach are not naive. The DEI has certainly been removed but the members of the school board gave birth in place of a department of opportunities and success, without really knowing what teachers will put it. The 2022-2025 equity plan is, a priori, thrown in the trash. This guide to good intentions, with objectives, graphics and photos worthy of Benetton advertising from the 1980s, provided in particular to highlight “The successes of minorities and different genres”. The powerful national association for the promotion of people of color (NAACP) and the American Union for Civil Liberties multiply meetings and appearances in municipal council, fearing that “This measure harvested with multicultural programs and sends a negative message to students from minorities”. The School Board has locked itself in silence, taking advantage of this Pascale period to be forgotten.
If American students maintain an honorable row in reading (the 6th according to the PISA classification), their capacities in calculation have collapsed in recent years, classifying them 26th from the OECD countries. Back to school should favor fractions to pronouns.
