Why the threat of Governor Youngkin should not stall much-needed change for RPS students
There was a lot of fear-mongering about what Governor Youngkin would do if the RPS School Board fired the Superintendent and/or rescinded our current EL (English Language Arts) and Eureka (math) curriculum within the next school year because of our 2017 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the State Department of Education (DOE) prior to the RPS School Board’s Emergency Meeting in late August.
To be clear from the outset, the overreach by Youngkin to the DOE and the state Board of Education is concerning and worrying. We do not need Trump-ian priorities impacting local public education at all. But pro-Kamras folks are misrepresenting what the DOE and MOU requires under the above circumstances. Youngkin would not gain effective control of RPS if we needed to hire a new superintendent.
In fact, from a political perspective, using Youngkin as a policy bogeyman pushes RPS into a defensive posture that prolongs failed strategies, such as the purchase of these curricula. If the mere threat of Youngkin prevents us from making much-needed changes, that too is a form of political control that centers Youngkin in all of RPS’ decision-making — almost as a form of shadow governance. That is a de facto giving up local control of education that is enshrined in the Virginia Constitution.
Our first priority as concerned critics of the Youngkin administration should be to fight his state-level overreach, not to withdraw from enacting progressive policies that will protect us on a local and state-wide level — and help RPS students. For instance, applying the threat-of-Youngkin-logic means never acting in case Youngkin may intervene: it is unacceptable to not fight for expanded abortion access out of fear that Youngkin will try to intervene and restrict abortion access (as he’s trying to do). Similarly, it is unacceptable to not fight for the rights of trans students simply out of concern that Youngkin will try to imitate harmful policies enacted in Texas and Florida. This acquiescent train of thought grants Youngkin tacit approval over the governance of RPS, and that is simply an unacceptable way to push forward an agenda in RPS.
Turning to the facts alleged in the Youngkin fear-mongering, all the MOU states is that if the division did hire a new superintendent,RPS will submit its top 3 top candidates (with their qualifications) to the DOE prior to making an offer to a preferred candidate. This is so that DOE can assess whether a candidate has the correct qualifications/licenses. Plainly, this is NOT handing over the power to Youngkin to select our next Superintendent. Again, I don’t want to minimize Youngkin’s worrying approach to public education, but there is a big difference between the DOE finding a candidate does not hold a required license to serve as superintendent versus Youngkin straight up picking a Superintendent.
For what it’s worth, the DOE already has to approve every high level hire in RPS under the guidelines of our MOU, and we have not been taken over by Trump-ian senior officials yet (we don’t have many of those left, but that is a different story). In early 2021, under Youngkin’s term, the DOE actually assisted RPS in making sure the district did not hire a CWO candidate without the proper licenses. This was a candidate that the Superintendent had already offered the job to without mandated approval from the DOE and the School Board.
As to the curriculum, some pro-Kamras supporters said Youngkin would require us to use an anti-CRT curriculum if RPS has its teachers develop in-house curriculum over the next year to replace our expensive, ineffective off-the-shelf curriculum (that cost/is costing MILLIONS).
But the MOU only states that any new/modified instructional program must be aligned with the results of a division/ school-specific asset mapping exercise. There is a big difference between getting DOE approval for a curriculum versus Youngkin forcing us to teach an anti-CRT history curriculum.
The fight in the Board of Ed to sanitize state history standards is a separate issue — and certainly one to fight, instead of sitting back out of concern that Youngkin will intervene further. Any change to state history standards would impact any history curriculum taught in RPS — and any public school district in Virginia.
What a motion to develop in-house curriculum in RPS would do is give teachers the power to develop curriculum based on their expertise — and suffice it to say, it is hard to imagine any RPS teacher successfully pushing for a curriculum with a Trump-ian view of history. The resolution from the emergency board meeting gives teachers — who have been retaliated against for not implementing our scripted curriculum in lockstep — the autonomy and power to develop their own curriculum (as many, many districts do, including our neighboring districts). Our math curriculum is aligned with Common Core rather than SOL’s, and teachers have already had to work to make sure that what they are teaching is helping our students.
Let’s not let the hyped up fear of Youngkin’s long shadow keep our district from pushing forward with non-privatized curricula that teachers support — along with leadership that is held to the same high standards outlined in our MOU. Rather than surreptitiously ceding power over our governance to Youngkin based on threats of what he might do, RPS should continue to put forward policies that protect our students, our staff, and our local democratic power.
