Loudoun County Public Schools has agreed to make a number of reforms based on allegations of racial discrimination throughout the school system.

The resolution agreement — between LCPS and Attorney General Mark Herring — directs Loudoun schools to invest in outreach among minority communities in Loudoun, submit to monitoring by the attorney general’s office, and generally promote equitable access to education.

The school system includes more than LCPS serves more than 81,000 students in 95 schools and educational centers, according to its website.

LCPS has long been under the scrutiny of the county’s NAACP chapter, which filed an official complaint with Herring’s office in May 2019, alleging that incidents of racism, harassment, and discrimination proliferated the public schools. The chapter said the school system failed to admit Black students to the Academies of Loudoun, LCPS’s advanced STEM program, on the basis of their race.

This prompted Herring’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) to begin an investigation in October 2019, marking the office of the attorney general’s first official investigation into claims of racial discrimination within a Virginia school system. Through extensive interviews with students, families, and employees and a review of internal documents, the OCR revealed that the school system’s policies and practices did, in fact, discriminate against Black and Latino students.

“Discrimination has no place in Virginia, but especially not within our school systems,” Herring said in a press release. “Our children deserve equal access to a quality education no matter what they look like or where they live. I hope other school systems throughout the Commonwealth will use this agreement as a lens through which to take a look at their own policies and procedures to make sure they are affording each child an equal opportunity.”

Loudoun schools agreed to a number of changes, including: providing Herring’s office with written revisions to its outreach, recruitment plans, and admissions criteria for its advanced programs; providing additional information at the OCR’s request; seeking input from the local NAACP branch on its advanced programs; revising its nondiscrimination policies and submitting those changes to OCR before the school board approves; annually reviewing its protocol for handling incidents of hate speech and slurs; and hiring an OCR-approved third-party consultant to monitor their compliance.

In a statement, LCPS said that while it did not agree with all of the OCR’s findings, administrators chose to negotiate with the OCR to make reforms and that those negotiations “were successful.”

Michelle Thomas, president of the NAACP’s Loudoun branch, enthusiastically praised the agreement in a Facebook post, writing, “Never settle for a seat at a table where others are on the menu, next they will be eating your family for dinner!”

“We are making history in Loudoun that is single-handedly dismantling LCPS’ 80 year reign of systemic and structural racism,” she continued. “This is more than LCPS lip service of the past, this covenant agreement guarantees that real change and equity in education will be fully integrated into LCPS.”

The agreement will be in effect through June 30, 2024.

Previously:
Loudoun County Public Schools Experience Racist And Pornographic Incidents In Virtual Classrooms
Loudoun NAACP Provides Terms For Conciliation For Systemic Racism In County Schools