On May 6, 2025, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin issued a post on X announcing an investigation by Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares into an incident at Stone Bridge High School in Loudoun County, Virginia.
Three boys at Stone Bridge High School are currently facing charges of harassment under Title IX for expressing their discomfort over sharing their locker room with a female student who identifies as male and who secretly recorded the boys in violation of the county’s video and audio in restrooms policy. Boys and girls are permitted to share bathrooms and locker rooms in the county because of Policy 8040, which requires students to be “allowed to use the facility that corresponds to their gender identity.”
This policy puts students in danger. In fact, in 2021, Loudon County Public Schools (LCPS) was the epicenter of a horrific sexual assault at the same high school in which a boy entered the girls’ bathroom and attacked a ninth-grade female student. This tragedy was, in large part, the reason Glenn Youngkin won the governorship in 2021.
After Youngkin was elected governor, the public waited nearly two years for him to release finalized “model policies,” reversing the insanity of shared bathrooms and locker rooms. Parents were also hopeful that these model policies would force school officials to stop keeping secrets from parents, and that there would be renewed respect for the First Amendment and the safety and dignity of children. Yet, the fight wasn’t over.
On September 29, 2022, the American Civil Liberties Union sent Governor Youngkin an eight-page document opposing the model policies. The Governor’s office made changes, including to the student bathroom policies. In the 2022 model policies, Section 2 outlined certain procedures so that schools “shall serve the needs of all students” and recognize the “distinctive needs” of individuals. In contrast, in the finalized 2023 model policies, Section 2 was changed to read that parents “should” be given the right to opt their children out of sharing bathrooms and locker rooms with kids of the opposite sex. This hardly serves the needs of ALL students and is antithetical to Youngkin’s “parents matter” platform.
Parents viewed this as Governor Youngkin bending the knee to the ACLU. One may argue that this 2023 modification was made to avoid a battle in the courts. But many parents would have welcomed a legal battle and victory instead of caving to the ACLU, which has become nothing more than a radical trans activist organization.
Did the red-leaning districts and parents across VA who were pleading with their school systems to adopt Youngkin’s model policies read them thoroughly? Did they know what they were requesting? In districts that have already adopted the model policies, do the “conservative” board members know they voted for parents to have to opt their children out of sharing bathrooms and locker rooms with kids of the opposite sex?
As it stands, the current model policies have no legal teeth. There is no mechanism in place to enforce any VA school system’s adoption of the policies. In late summer 2023, Governor Youngkin said schools must adhere to the new policies. Some did not, including Loudoun, Arlington, Fairfax, Falls Church, and Prince William County Schools. To date, there has been no consequence for the adults who continue to fail children and families by ignoring the Governor’s model policies. Parents in VA Beach had to shell out money for legal fees to challenge their school board’s decision not to adopt the model policies.
Youngkin was elected as Virginia’s governor because parents unflinchingly coalesced and pushed back on the radical left agenda being implemented in Virginia Schools. After all of the grueling work from grassroots parents who tirelessly battled to elect a governor campaigning on parents’ rights, they got more establishment, performative politics. They were delivered one paper tiger after another, a smattering of “Parents Matter” rallies with flashy yard signs, local and national news hits, and investigations that led nowhere.
Youngkin’s term is coming to an end, and Loudoun is faced with yet another heartbreaking situation where adults in positions of power are complicit as a new, avoidable Title IX claim plays out in Loudoun County Public Schools, threatening to ruin the future of several teenage boys. The school board is failing kids and families, and it appears there is nothing Governor Youngkin will do to hold them accountable short of yet another investigation and a strongly worded post on X.
This makes parents wonder: Do they and did they ever really matter?