Some of Virginia’s largest counties have been a major focal point in the national debate over the underlying values behind public school curriculua.
Now, parents in Fairfax County, Virginia, one of the nation’s largest school districts, are sounding the alarm about an invasive survey that is being distributed to students this week probing about sexual activity, gender identity, and substance use.
The “Youth Survey,” which will be distributed to students in 8th, 10th, and 12th grades unless their parents opt out, bluntly asks children if they have “ever had sexual intercourse,” the age that they “had sexual intercourse for the first time,” and how many people they have “had sexual intercourse with” in their young lives.
The survey also asks if the children used drugs or took contraceptives prior to these sexual encounters, and also asks about oral sex, The Christian Post reports.
The county justifies the administration of the survey as part of an effort to determine “the effectiveness of prevention and intervention programs,” but critical parents are not convinced.
Explain it to us as if we are Kindergarteners, @fcpsnews. How exactly does knowing how many sexual partners a student has improve your ability to educate? Are you providing interventions based on the information? Are the programs race based? Tie it all together, please. https://t.co/FXv2UAGc5n pic.twitter.com/ZasZcURrAz
— Do Better FCPS (@DoBetterFCPS) November 10, 2021
“Is it the school’s role to know whether our children are sexually active, how many partners they’ve had?” Sue Zoldak, the founder of the parents group Do Better FCPS, asked. “How does that connect to a positive educational outcome?”
In October, the district superintendent Scott Brabrand told parents in a letter that they had a right to preview the survey before it was given to their children and that they also had the right to opt their children out of taking it.
“If a student is uncomfortable with any question on the survey, the student does not have to answer that question or may elect to discontinue the survey,” he wrote.
A spokesperson for the county also explained that students will not provide their names with the survey, which is entirely voluntary and reiterated a vague assurance that it’s part of how the district determines students’ “needs” and how to “develop programs.”
“The current survey questions were selected from nationally recognized surveys that follow rigorous testing and validation procedures,” they said. “The survey is an important tool to assess youth needs and strengths, develop programs, monitor trends, measure countywide outcomes and guide countywide planning of prevention efforts.”
Earlier this year, a Fairfax County mom went viral after she read aloud from sexually explicit books that she’d found in her son’s high school library, which included references to sexual relations between an adult and a child that the book’s character portrayed as favorable.
As we reported last week, this mom was told by her son’s high school that she has now been banned from the school library.
She plans to attend the next school board meeting to finish reading from the graphic books.
If you appreciate the work we are doing for faith, family, and freedom, please consider a small donation to help us continue. Thank you so much!
