Loudoun County, Virginia, schools Superintendent Aaron Spence has refused to sign off on forms that require schools to eliminate “illegal” diversity, equity and inclusion curriculum or risk losing federal funding.
In a letter to the community posted on the Loudoun County schools’ website, Spence said that the U.S. Department of Education called on Virginia’s education department to collect certification forms from all school districts by April 24, but that he would not be doing that.
In its Feb. 14 “Dear Colleague” letter, Education Department Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor wrote that some programs in schools discriminate in “insidious ways.” DEI programs, the letter continued, “frequently preference certain racial groups and teach students that certain racial groups bear unique moral burdens that others do not.”
Spence said the refusal to sign off on the certification being collected by the Virginia Department of Education is not political or ideological.
“We’re not putting ourselves out to intentionally poke somebody in the eye,” he said.
Spence said the problem is that the directions to school systems were “vague” and “overly broad.”
“They say things like ‘illegal DEI’ practices, but they don’t define what they view to be illegal,” he said. “We teach an African American studies course in Loudoun County that’s approved by the Virginia Department of Education, but we’re not clear whether or not the federal department would view that as an illegal DEI practice.”
Spence said many teachers are fearful about coming in conflict with the federal education directive by teaching examples of systemic racism, such as the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II or redlining practices in the 20th century. He said they’d need more guidance on what would and would not be allowed in order to comply with what’s in the certification letter.
“We comply with federal and state law when it comes to nondiscrimination, but we’re not going to put ourselves in a position of agreeing with something that we don’t even know what we’re agreeing to,” he said.
Spence said the school system applies for federal grants each year.
“There’s a grant application packet that we submit to our school board; our school board approves it, and then we send it to the federal government through the Virginia Department of Education. And we certify, when we sign off on that grant application, that we do not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, gender and other protected classes,” he said.
Those are in effect throughout the grant cycle, “so that’s essentially a continuous certification that we comply with all laws related to nondiscrimination,” he added.
Kris Countryman, the president of the Loudoun Education Association — the union representing all county educators — said she supports Spence’s decision, calling DEI programs “a vital tool in making sure that our public schools provide the kind of opportunities that every student deserves.”
Spence said he was not sure whether there are other school districts in Virginia that had declined to sign the certification, but that as far as he knew, he was the only superintendent in Northern Virginia who did not sign off on it.
“We stay focused on doing the right thing all the time, and we stay focused (on) doing what’s right for kids,” he said. “We have 82,000 students — 82,000 beautiful, diverse, wonderful kids.”
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