Comment RICHMOND — A high school senior in Riner County, Va., has reported his English teacher to state authorities over the way she taught “Beowulf.” “All my teacher wants to talk about is how the book is sexist because it portrays warriors as men and not women,” the student wrote Jan. 30 on the teacher tip line that Gov. Glenn Youngkin had just created ( R). banish “divisive concepts” from public education. “I believe my teacher is violating Governor Youngkin’s Executive Order prohibiting the teaching of ‘divisive topics.’ “ The student’s email was one of 350 released by the Youngkin administration this week to settle a lawsuit that the Washington Post and a Dozens of other media outlets were brought in in April after the governor refused to release submissions under Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act. Media files lawsuit over Va teacher tip line. Gover. Youngkin The 350 emails – many of them duplicates – are believed to represent a small proportion of the tips, although the total number submitted remains unknown. Youngkin’s office referred a question about the set to Attorney General Jason S. Miyares (R), who represented the state in the trial. Miyares spokeswoman Victoria LaCivita declined to comment. Youngkin claimed that the tip line’s submissions fall under the FOIA exception for a governor’s “working papers and correspondence.” Under the terms of the settlement, his administration released only those tips that were also sent or forwarded to a Virginia Department of Education email address. Filed in Richmond Circuit Court by a media coalition that included the Associated Press, Tribune Publishing and NPR, the suit argued that the exemptions for work papers and correspondence did not apply to the tip line’s submissions — in part because, according to lawsuit, the submissions were shared with people outside the governor’s office, including the American Enterprise Institute, a skills think tank. “We are pleased that the attorney general’s settlement with several media representatives preserves the principle that a constituent’s communication with a Governor is protected by law and exempt from FOIA,” said Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter. “The Governor wants constituents to be able to contact him without fear that their communications will not remain confidential.” The nonprofit ethics watchdog group American Oversight, which also sought copies of the tips, is still suing over them in a separate case filed in August in Arlington County Circuit Court. Management quietly pulled the tip line in September as tips dried up, Porter admitted Thursday, hours after Axios reported that messages the news outlet sent to the address had returned as undeliverable. Shortly after taking office in January, Youngkin announced that parents should report teachers who discuss “divisive” concepts in the classroom by emailing [email protected] “We’re asking people to send us reports and observations,” Youngkin said in a radio interview at the same time. “Help us know that … his child is being denied the rights that his parents have in Virginia, and we’ll make sure to document it all. … And that gives us further, further opportunity to make sure we root it out.” Critics called the initiative an attempt to intimidate teachers and suggested the line be flooded with complaints, such as the sarcastically dire warning that Virginia schools teach “Arabic numerals.” None of the tips released this week took that tone, though one woman used the tip line to draw the governor’s attention to distinguished physical education teachers across the state. Shed sent a copy to the teachers as well. “I know the tip line wasn’t designed for compliments, but I’ve used it that way for the past 34 days in my recovery [from] hip and back surgery’ Sheila J. Jones, who is on medical leave from her job as K-12 health and physical education coordinator for Virginia Beach schools, wrote to a Loudoun school official. “Answers [from teachers] they range from ‘you made my day/my spirits were low and it got me’ to ‘you made me cry tears of joy’. “ None of the tips — he sent 35 in as many days — yielded a response from management, “not even an automated response,” Jones wrote in an email to The Post on Wednesday. But some fellow educators applauded her approach. “I like that you’re using ‘tip’ for this purpose,” Ashley F. Ellis, Deputy Superintendent of Loudoun, he wrote back in an email included in those released by the state. “We’ve had a few emails from parents who have ‘reported’ the wonderful things their teachers have done to help their students. I hope these emails don’t go unread. It’s really hard to be an educator in Virginia right now, so anything we can do to celebrate our teachers is important.” Much of the advice released this week reflects the K-12 culture wars that were central to Youngkin’s closing argument in last year’s campaign, when he criticized Democrats for prolonged school closures and mask mandates amid the coronavirus pandemic and blamed school authorities that they try to “indoctrinate” students on racial issues. One parent complained about a reading assignment that was “nice” to immigrants. Another sounded the alarm about a free online course offered by a local school district, calling it “a potential pathway for unknown perverts” to prey on students. Some expressed concern that the concept of “gender identity” was included in the family life curriculum. A Spotsylvania mother called for seven books to be pulled from school libraries, writing, “These books, in my opinion, make children desensitized to healthy sexual relationships and are pampered in nature.” Several parents were upset that some schools required masks earlier this year, at a time when the courts were still considering whether Youngkin’s executive order attempting to ban mask mandates was legal. (The General Assembly eventually passed a law giving parents the right to opt their children out of school mask mandates.) Youngkin urges calm in his call to ban mask mandates, but also division In most cases, the name of the sender was corrected. But that wasn’t the case for dozens of emails from Kandise Lucas, a disability advocate who represents families of special education students involved in a variety of disputes with local school districts. Lucas — no relation to state Sen. L. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth), one of Youngin’s fiercest critics in the Legislature — referred to the governor’s campaign rhetoric in some of her emails. In March, for example, as he sent the tip line information about a family that had been denied their student’s school records, concluding with “when will parents matter?” In an interview, Lucas said the administration did not respond to any of her “advice” — a disappointment, she said, because at the request of Yungin’s campaign, she hosted a town hall meeting on special education at a Chesterfield church with first lady Susan Youngkin before last year’s election. (Youngkin’s office could not immediately confirm the town hall event.) “We were told the money was going to follow the child, the parents matter,” said Lucas, a political independent who voted for Youngin. “I thought they were listening.”
