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FCPS does not announce changes to bathroom policies despite order from DOE
A deadline just passed for Fairfax County Public Schools to change its bathroom policy or risk losing millions of dollars in funding. FOX 5's Sydney Persing is breaking all of this down for us.
FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. - The deadline has passed for Fairfax County Public Schools to change its bathroom policy or risk losing millions of dollars in funding. Now, it looks likely the district is now poised to lose a lot of money.
What we know:
The Department of Education said earlier this summer that Fairfax and four other northern Virginia districts were in violation of federal law claiming that the districts’ policies that allowed transgender students to use the restrooms consistent with their gender identities violated Title IX.
Fairfax, however, claimed their policy was in fact in accordance with Title IX, despite the DOE’S claims otherwise.
There’s been a lot of back and forth since: lawsuits, board votes, protests and now just on Tuesday, the Education Department sent Fairfax County schools a letter that said it would deny certification of magnet school grant money to FCPS if it did not change its policy by 5 p.m. on Friday and instead, force students to use restrooms consistent with their sex at birth.
The Department of Education has not responded to FOX 5’s request for comment about what happens now that it doesn’t appear that Fairfax County Public Schools made any changes to its policy.
Dig deeper:
Trial attorney Jeremy Rosenthal on the District and DOE’s polar opposite interpretation of which policy actually adheres to title nine.
"Title IX talks about discrimination based on sex in a school setting. When they drafted this legislation, years and years ago they didn’t understand the dialogue in 2025 would be over the usages over bathrooms for transgender students, so each side is drawing the battle lines and we’re gonna have courts that’ll decide this," Rosenthal said.
In a statement to FOX 5, Fairfax County schools said in part that "the notification from the doe regarding withholding of grant funding is the latest series of efforts to defund and diminish the tradition of excellence of public education in Fairfax County Public Schools…FCPS maintains that the doe’s decision to label the division as high risk and threaten funding is not supported by an identifiable factors or evidence."
The district also claimed federal grant money for mental health services has already been canceled, which they say will detrimentally impact students and staff.
As for how much money is at stake here for Fairfax magnet schools—$3.4 million in grant money for next year, approximately 13.7 million for the duration of the grant.