Dive Brief:
- Five large school districts in Northern Virginia were put on high-risk status and told their federal funding would only be distributed by reimbursement from the U.S. Department of Education Tuesday.
- The announcement comes after the Education Department last month found the five districts had violated Title IX through their policies allowing transgender students to use restrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity.
- As the Trump administration advances its agenda to exclude transgender students from sports teams and bathrooms aligning with their gender identities, LGBTQ+ advocates and Democratic lawmakers warn that these funding restrictions are unprecedented and will cause financial hardships to the districts.
Dive Insight:
Collectively, the five Virginia districts impacted have about $50 million in federal formula funding, discretionary grants and impact aid grants that will need to be processed through reimbursements, according to a Tuesday statement from the Education Department.
The districts — all located near Washington, D.C. — are Alexandria City Public Schools, Arlington Public Schools, Fairfax County Public Schools, Loudoun County Public Schools, and Prince William County Public Schools.
"We have given these Northern Virginia School Divisions every opportunity to rectify their policies which blatantly violate Title IX," said U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon in the statement.
Under the Trump administration, the Education Department has maintained that transgender student inclusion in school facilities and on athletic teams encroaches on cisgender girls' Title IX rights. The 53-year-old Title IX law prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded education programs.
"Today’s accountability measures are necessary," McMahon said, because the five districts "have stubbornly refused to provide a safe environment for young women in their schools.”
After finding the districts in violation of Title IX in July, the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights offered a proposed resolution agreement to the districts. The districts were asked to voluntarily agree within 10 days or risk imminent enforcement action including referral to the U.S. Department of Justice. However, the districts rejected those efforts.
The proposed resolution agreement would require the districts to rescind policies that allow students to access facilities based on their “gender identity” rather than their sex and issue a memo to each school explaining that any future policies related to access to facilities must separate students strictly on the basis of sex. The memo would have to specify that Title IX ensures women’s equal opportunity in any education program including athletic programs.
In addition, the agreement would require the districts to adopt "biology-based" definitions of the words “male” and “female” in all practices and policies relating to Title IX.
Fairfax County Public Schools, which has nearly 183,000 pre-K-12 students and is one of the country's largest school systems, said in a Wednesday statement that the district is reviewing OCR's letter about the district's high-risk status and will then respond to OCR. In the meantime, the district is maintaining its policies that it said align with Virginia law and rulings from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
"FCPS remains dedicated to creating a safe, supportive, and inclusive school environment for all students and staff members, including our transgender and gender-expansive community. Any student who has a need or desire for increased privacy, regardless of the underlying reason, shall continue to be provided with reasonable accommodations," the district said.
The two Virginia senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine — both Democrats — condemned the action against the five districts, saying the Education Department "wants to punish high-performing, award-winning schools districts in Northern Virginia.
"You can’t have a strong economy without strong schools, so add this to the list of President Trump’s disastrous economic policies," the senators said.
Denise Marshall, CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, called the action a "direct assault on schools" in a Tuesday statement. The administration's efforts to withhold "critical" funding are unlawful and amount to "political warfare" and "continue to do significant harm" to schools," Marshall said.
She added the announcement "is part of the Administration’s pattern to exhibit explicit hostility towards LGBTQ+ students and students of color whose identity often intersects with and includes disability."
But America First Legal — the organization that filed a complaint with OCR against the five districts earlier this year, sparking the Education Department investigation — condemned the five districts' defiance of a "federal directive to end illegal 'gender identity' policies and choosing to follow extremist ideology over federal law while jeopardizing millions in federal funding." The AFL had asked the department in its February complaint to "cut off all federal funding" if necessary.
Ian Prior, senior counsel at America First Legal, said in a statement Tuesday that the districts are "proving that they are deliberately indifferent to the safety of schoolchildren and are perfectly willing to sacrifice millions of dollars" in funding that he says supports low-income and special needs students.
Prior added that the "grim reality is that these school districts are merely delaying the inevitable — these policies will soon be dead and buried.”
Dive Awards
