September was not a good month for the advocates of government schools—across the nation and here in Virginia.
In Des Moines, Iowa, the city’s school superintendent was the subject of a high-speed car chase followed by a K-9 manhunt leading to his capture. Why? He’s been in the country illegally since 2000 and has been the subject of a deportation order since the spring of 2024.
That’s right, even the Biden administration was trying to deport him. Not only had Ian Roberts not been a citizen, but he had also lied about his post-graduate degree from Morgan State University.
Here in Virginia, we don’t have nearly that kind of excitement. Instead, we have to settle for school board members comparing conservatives to Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan on social media.
In Chesterfield County, one representative on the school board, Dorothy “Dot” Heffron resigned after the community learned that she posted, “Call me old fashioned, but I remember when we used to be okay shooting Nazis,” right after the murder of young conservative leader Charlie Kirk in September.
As The Daily Signal reported here, she is planning to hang around and keep voting on things until the end of December. There is currently a petition drive being led by the group Rally Virginia and supported by Gov. Glenn Youngkin and other GOP officials to have her removed immediately. We have invited representatives of Rally Virginia to visit us in an upcoming podcast, so stay tuned.
Also in September, the Turning Point USA chapter of Western Albemarle High School near Charlottesville decided to host Virginia Family Foundation President Victoria Cobb as a guest speaker to give a presentation titled “Two Genders, One Truth” (listen to my podcast interview with Cobb here).
School board member Allison Spillman took to social media and wrote in response, “As a school board member and proud parent of a trans[gender] student, I am beyond livid. In my opinion, this is not a matter of free speech, it’s hate speech and has no place in our schools. If the KKK wanted a speaker during lunch, would we allow that as well?”
The school canceled the talk, but after lawyers got involved, it reversed its decision and allowed the event to go on.
For her part, Spillman made her post private once it began to get public backlash, so we included the screen capture below.
It was only a few years ago that an actual Klan chapter held a rally in nearby Charlottesville, so one would hope that she would be able to tell the difference between the Klan and a group of conservative Christian high school students.
Many of the Left who post things like this claim they were misunderstood or are being mischaracterized or spoke “inartfully” when caught and facing backlash.
In month’s past, we have told you of the growing “microschools” movement and the growing enthusiasm for more school choice in Virginia. Considering that these school board members are the people who make the decisions on curriculum and behavioral policy, and that test scores, though climbing back up a little in Virginia, are abysmal compared to the rest of the industrialized world, can this outcome be any surprise at all?
Sixty-one counties in Virginia have at least one school board seat up for election right now. While the attention is being paid to the governor’s race, look at the people who are running for these seats and ask yourself if you are sure of what they are saying when no one’s looking.
Related posts:
- Virginia Campuses Flunk Free Speech Rankings
- Earle-Sears Calls Out Spanberger, Media After Civil Rights Complaint Against Fairfax School
- MULTI-GENDER BATHROOM? Parents Outraged Over Virginia High School’s New Layout