Following reports of Virginia schools failing to promptly notify National Merit Award recipients, Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears called out "rogue educators" and teachers unions for trying to "remake education."
"We have a group of rogue educators. You've heard it's not just one school, nor five schools, nor 10 — 17," Sears said Saturday on "Cavuto Live." "Count them, 17 schools who have made decisions that they are going to remake education in their own image, and they are using our children to do it."
Seventeen schools reportedly delayed notifying students who received National Merit Awards, despite claims it was originally a clerical error at one of the schools in Fairfax County. The controversy expanded to Loudoun and Prince Williams Counties.
"That's why parents are waking up," she continued. "You talk about woke. They are awakening because COVID policies — policies, not COVID, but COVID policies that forced our children to remain home and look at a computer screen for public education — showed parents all is not well."
VIRGINIA SCHOOL AWARDS SCANDAL DEEPENS, DRAWS OUTRAGE FROM GOVERNOR, AG: ‘THIS SHOULD BE ILLEGAL’
"So we're going to do things differently here in Virginia. Accountability is a must. We have pulled the curtain back, and it ain't pretty. So things are going to change."
Sears also blasted comments from the school districts since the discovery, particularly the Fairfax County Public Schools superintendent saying the delay was due to a clerical error.
"Don't snow us with this idiotic statement that, well, it wasn't intentional. Well, one is a mistake," she said. "Maybe five, but 17 schools? You think that we are fools? No. We have come to understand what's going on."
Youngkin, who has been an outspoken supporter of parental rights in education and keeping woke policies out of schools, blasted the "trifecta" of problems plaguing the education system in his state.
Sears echoed Youngkin's concerns about Virginia's education system, highlighting efforts of "rogue educators" to bring woke ideology into schools.
"The only thing that these rogue educators will understand is when the money is taken from them and given to the child… so that competition will change things," she said. "The teachers union is behind this. Make no mistake. You follow the money and these rogue educators get their talking points from them."
Sears also lamented the state of education in the country where many progressives are pushing to play "color games."
"We have played these color games in education before. In fact, it affected people who look like me," she said. "And that was called Brown v. Board of Ed and all of these other ones, and it was called redlining."
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"We are in the year 2023, but make no mistake about it. It's actually 1984 happening right before our eyes."
