On Wednesday, Aug. 6, the Pride Liberation Project, a student-led 501(c)4 organization in Northern Virginia advocating for inclusive schools, emailed a letter to the Virginia Department of Education and copied Jillian Balow, Superintendent of Public Instruction; Elizabeth Schultz, Assistant Superintendent of Public Instruction; Dr. Leslie Sale, Director of the Office of Policy at the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE), Jim Chapman, Regulatory and Legal Coordinator, VDOE; Charles Pyle, Director of Communications & Constituent Services, VDOE; and Adria Merritt, Director for Diversity, Opportunity, and Inclusion Pathways, VDOE.

“As of 10:30 a.m., Monday, Aug. 8, 707 students have signed the petition, 627 of them being Virginia students,” said Rivka Vizcardo-Lichter, student advocate and president of the Pride Liberation Project. 

The students request that  “for the sake of our education and our safety,” VDOE develop guidelines around the Virginia 2022 General Assembly law, Senate Bill 656, to clarify that “the LGBTQIA+ community is not inherently sexual.” The letter said that making guidelines that don’t clarify that LGBTQIA+ topics are not inherently sexual would have a “chilling effect on their education.”

Click here to read the full article by Mercia Hobson in the Great Falls Connection.