Virginia Lt. Gov. Sears calls for investigation into national merit award scandal
Heather Hunter
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Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears asked Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Attorney General Jason Miyares to investigate one of the state’s top high schools for not informing students that they had qualified for a national award until after important deadlines, a failure critics are attributing to the school leaders’ ideology.
“This is reprehensible,” the lieutenant governor wrote on Twitter Friday. “I have reached out to the Governor and Attorney General and asked for an investigation.”
PARENTS DESERVE THE TRUTH, NOT SABOTAGE BY THEIR CHILDREN’S SCHOOLS
https://twitter.com/WinsomeSears/status/1608807717073981440
In mid- to late November, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology parents discovered that their students had received National Merit Scholar certificates, but according to Asra Nomani, a parent of a TJ student, the notification was “too late to include the honor in students’ early applications for college, due two weeks earlier.”
The prestigious award helps students get into top colleges and earn scholarships, but students applying for early application college admissions packages with deadlines starting around Oct. 31 would have lacked this key recognition to boost their chances.
“Upon learning about the awards in mid-September, principals usually quickly announce National Merit Commended Students and Semifinalists with special breakfasts, award ceremonies, YouTube videos, press releases, and social media announcements,” Nomani wrote in the Fairfax Times. But at the northern Virginia high school, this was not the case.
The high school’s principal, Ann Bonitatibus, had been notified about this year’s National Merit awards in April, according to the Fairfax Times.
Nomani told WJLA that she was “shocked” to discover that the school for years had been failing to notify the families of winners, including her own son, in the fall of 2020.
One student’s mother, Shawna Yashar, called the delay in distributing the certificates to the students “theft by the state.”
Some Fairfax parents are pointing to the unceremonious delay of the awards as an effort to push “equity” in Fairfax County Public Schools. The school district recently adopted the new motto of “equal outcomes for every student, without exceptions.”
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Yashar told WJLA that when she confronted Director of Student Services Brandon Kosatka about the delay of the certificates, he told her that they underplayed the recognition because they didn’t want to hurt the feelings of other students who weren’t being honored.
“Our children’s education is not a zero-sum game. We cannot punish success in order to have ‘equal outcomes at all costs,'” said Sears on Friday.