Virginia Lt. Gov. Sears calls for investigation into national merit award scandal

Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears requested Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Lawyer Common Jason Miyares to analyze one of many state’s prime excessive faculties for not informing college students that that they had certified for a nationwide award till after essential deadlines, a failure critics are attributing to the college leaders’ ideology.

“That is reprehensible,” the lieutenant governor wrote on Twitter Friday. “I’ve reached out to the Governor and Lawyer Common and requested for an investigation.”

PARENTS DESERVE THE TRUTH, NOT SABOTAGE BY THEIR CHILDREN’S SCHOOLS

In mid- to late November, Thomas Jefferson Excessive College for Science and Expertise mother and father found that their college students had obtained Nationwide Advantage Scholar certificates, however in line with Asra Nomani, a dad or mum of a TJ pupil, the notification was “too late to incorporate the respect in college students’ early functions for school, due two weeks earlier.”

The distinguished award helps college students get into prime faculties and earn scholarships, however college students making use of for early utility faculty admissions packages with deadlines beginning round Oct. 31 would have lacked this key recognition to spice up their probabilities.

“Upon studying in regards to the awards in mid-September, principals often shortly announce Nationwide Advantage Counseled College students and Semifinalists with particular breakfasts, award ceremonies, YouTube movies, press releases, and social media bulletins,” Nomani wrote within the Fairfax Instances. However on the northern Virginia highschool, this was not the case.

The highschool’s principal, Ann Bonitatibus, had been notified about this yr’s Nationwide Advantage awards in April, in line with the Fairfax Instances.

Nomani advised WJLA that she was “shocked” to find that the college for years had been failing to inform the households of winners, together with her personal son, within the fall of 2020.

One pupil’s mom, Shawna Yashar, known as the delay in distributing the certificates to the scholars “theft by the state.”

Some Fairfax mother and father are pointing to the unceremonious delay of the awards as an effort to push “fairness” in Fairfax County Public Colleges. The college district lately adopted the brand new motto of “equal outcomes for each pupil, with out exceptions.”

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Yashar advised WJLA that when she confronted Director of Pupil Companies Brandon Kosatka in regards to the delay of the certificates, he advised her that they underplayed the popularity as a result of they did not need to damage the emotions of different college students who weren’t being honored.

“Our youngsters’s schooling shouldn’t be a zero-sum recreation. We can not punish success with the intention to have ‘equal outcomes in any respect prices,’” stated Sears on Friday.