Despite what conservatives view as a disheartening loss in Virginia on November 4, a bright spot appeared in the most notorious county in the state for education policy: Loudoun County, where a battle over liberal transgender ideology has raged for years. Independent school board candidate, Amy M. Riccardi, won a seat on the board of education in Sterling, Virginia, upsetting the liberal incumbent Arben Istrefi.

Election results posted by vpap.org show that Riccardi received 51.39% of all votes cast, prevailing against the Democrat-backed Istrefi, who won 47.76% of the vote. The Christian Post wrote that Ricardi’s campaign website highlighted her position on the controversial Policy 8040, adopted by the Sterling Board of Education in 2021 “that allows trans-identified students to use sex-segregated facilities that align with their stated gender identity as opposed to their biological sex.”

Riccardi’s website cited her support for the U.S. Supreme Court’s affirmation of Title IX, “upholding the separation of boys’ and girls’ sports and the dignity of their unique spaces in restrooms and locker rooms.” Among her goals is to revise “School Board Policy 8040 to meet federal and state requirements,” as well as to focus on “academic excellence,” championing student safety, and holding administrators accountable.

The candidate’s message was well received by students and parents weary from years of struggle over transgender and pro-LGBT ideologies in the Loudoun County Public Schools, as Education Reporter most recently described in September.

On October 21, WorldNetDaily’s Bob Unruh wrote that Loudoun County teens, fed up with school board members “who decline to believe there’s a difference between boys and girls and refuse to protect vulnerable students in private areas like restrooms and showers,” worked to persuade voters to elect school board candidates willing to support them in the weeks leading up to the election.

The online media site Twitchy.com reported that the teens took matters into their own hands by going to the polls and campaigning for school board members who would “restore girls-only and boys-only sports and spaces.” They greeted voters and asked them to vote for candidates who would protect students’ privacy.

Outgoing Governor Glenn Youngkin also urged citizens to “get out and vote” and elect conservative school board members. ABC-7 News quoted Youngkin as saying:

• The bottom line is that biological boys and biological men should not be in locker rooms with biological girls. And biological girls shouldn’t be in the same locker rooms and bathrooms as biological boys, and if you need a third bathroom, go build one. But the bottom line is, this is about the safety and the dignity and the privacy of your children..... Loudoun County, here we are. We have a chance to win this one at the ballot box. We have a chance to elect a school board who will, in fact, look out for parents and children, as opposed to their own ideology.

Unruh wrote that one campaigning teen told the local media station WJLA: “I’ve been sick of it [the LGBT agenda and policies] for quite a while. I just can’t put up with it anymore. It’s not normal. It’s not something we should be supporting.”

Unfortunately, efforts by the high school students were not enough to boost conservative school board candidates Matt Malone and Samuel Yan to victory, for whom they also campaigned. But newly elected board member Riccardi will join conservatives Lauren Shernoff and Deana Griffiths in Loudoun County. According to The Christian Post, Shernoff was unopposed in her reelection bid for a board seat in Leesburg, Virginia.

Last April, U.S. Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT) introduced H.R. 2617, the Say No to Indoctrination Act, which would “amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to prevent the use of funds under such Act to teach or advance concepts related to gender ideology, and for other purposes.”

While this legislation has stalled in the House, U.S. Senators Jim Risch (R-ID) and Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-KS) introduced the measure in the Senate in July. Risch said in a press release: “Schools should prepare our children for the future, not promote radical gender ideology. The Say No to Indoctrination Act puts an end to woke education practices in K-12 schools and makes President Trump’s common-sense policy permanent.” He was referring to Trump’s Executive Order “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” which the president signed on January 29 of this year.

Senator Marshall observed:

• As American students lag behind globally in math, reading, and writing, the last thing our taxpayer-funded teachers and schools should be doing is teaching radical leftist nonsense like so-called gender theory. I’m proud to support this legislation to codify President Trump’s executive order, and ensure our children’s education is focused on meaningful, future-ready skills, not woke ideology.

An impressive list of Senate co-sponsors includes Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Ted Budd (R-North Carolina), Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), Eric Schmitt (R-Missouri), and Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama). But time will tell if further action in either chamber will be forthcoming now that the government shutdown has ended.

Victim of indoctrination speaks out

The Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) reported on September 18 that President Trump had again highlighted the “dangers of political indoctrination in the classroom,” using as an example the first-person testimony of a child victim.

Written by Sarah Katherine Sisk, Hillsdale College alumna and master’s degree student at George Mason University, the AMAC article described how the president, speaking at the Museum of the Bible during a meeting of the White House Religious Liberty Commission in early September, called “12-year-old Shea Encinas to the podium to share his experience as a fifth-grader in a California public school.”

Encinas told the audience how he “was forced to read a book called My Shadow is Pink to a kindergartener — a story about a boy who likes ‘things not for boys.’ The book has clear LBGTQ themes and encourages children to accept the idea that they could be born in the ‘wrong’ body.” The child said he was a Christian and that “Jesus means everything to me.” He added that the book told kids they could choose their gender “based on feelings instead of how God made us. I knew this was not right, but I was afraid of getting in trouble.”

When the boy’s parents confronted school administrators, they were “treated badly.” Encinas said that afterward, he and his brother were bullied and “the school did nothing to stop it.” President Trump called the episode “proof of ‘radical gender ideology’ being pushed on students.”

Sisk’s article demonstrated that despite repeated attempts by the Trump Administration, and even the Supreme Court in Mahmoud v Taylor to remove woke propaganda and curricula from the public schools, it is deeply entrenched across the country and many schools hide the fact that it continues to be taught. (See Education Reporter, July 2025.)

Sisk described a Monroe County, New York school board meeting that “descended into chaos after furious parents discovered elementary students had been assigned The Rainbow Parade: A Celebration of LGBTQIA+ Identities and Allies.” She wrote that children as young as five were exposed to “illustrations of a naked person walking down the street, a pair of men in bondage outfits, and other adult-themed parade scenes.”

Angry parents “shouted down school officials, demanding to know how such material could possibly be considered age-appropriate.” But as has happened at numerous school board meetings in recent years where understandably outraged parents protested the inappropriateness of pro-LGBT library books and curricula, the Monroe County board members “abruptly shut down the meeting and left without hearing any official public comment.”

In echoing the many voices that have spoken out in recent months, Sisk emphasized that “schools are failing at their core mission.” The 2024 NAEP scores show “nearly 70 percent of fourth and eighth graders are reading at or below ‘Basic,’ the worst results in the test’s history.” Math scores were similarly dismal, she noted, “stuck near historic lows.” But as she pointed out: “Instead of fixing the crisis, too many school officials are pouring energy into social indoctrination while real education falls by the wayside.”

Sadly, America’s political scene increasingly appears to favor the far left, with Democrat candidates openly running and winning elections on socialist/communist tenets. The result is that the battle for parental authority over the education of children has become ever more critical, since years of unrelenting leftwing propaganda in education has doubtless contributed to the current political climate. Parents and concerned citizens and politicians cannot afford to relax their efforts, even for a moment.

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