School's Plans to Excuse Students to Protest Meeting with Backlash

A Northern Virginia school district's plan to allow students time off to participate in protests is being met with some backlash from conservative critics.

"It's a dawning of a new day in student activism, and school systems everywhere are going to have to be responsive to it," Fairfax County Public Schools District Board member Ryan McElveen, who presented the plan, told The Washington Post.

Beginning on Jan. 27, the Fairfax district will allow students in grades 7-12 one excused absence each school year to participate in "civic engagement activities," according to school system spokesman Lucy Caldwell.

Marches, sit-ins, or trips to lobby legislators in Richmond could count as such activities, said McElveen, adding that he thinks the district is "setting the stage" nationally with its new rule.

The district has approximately 188,000 students, making it among the top 12 largest systems in the United States, and experts say it is likely the first district to recognize the growth of student activism.

McElveen said he's already facing online backlash from conservatives who say the policy is more coddling of too-liberal students, which is not surprising, said Harvard University professor Meira Levinson.

“Each side is so suspicious of the other that it’s become very hard for adults to trust what’s happening in schools is legitimate if the other side seems to be ‘winning,'" she said.

Further, Levinson said conservative-leaning students don't typically skip school to take part in large-scale protests, but instead show their activism through preparing to run for school board or finding work as legislative aides.

A Maryland school district was criticized last year when it explored a similar policy, said Montgomery County Schools board member Patricia O'Neill, who devised the proposal.

She said she was slammed by hundreds of emails, letters, and calls from conservatives and invited to discuss the program on Fox News, which she declined because she didn't want to involve her district in a political battle.