A Virginia teacher is celebrating victory after fighting back over the claim she was “asked to lie to parents about their own children.”
Deb Figliola, a middle school teacher, told CBN News she felt compelled to take a stand after the Harrisonburg City Public School Board reportedly created a new policy she believes upended parents’ rights.
Listen to the latest episode of “Quick Start” 👇
“A little over three years ago, we were given a training that told us as a staff — and this training was given to all staff and all personnel within the school district — that we would have to ask students for what they wanted to be called and what pronoun they preferred,” she said. “And then we had to always refer to them that way.”
Beyond that, Figliola said teachers were told not to tell parents about the use of these pronouns. She said she took issue with the policy and the district, where she has been teaching for more than a decade.
“When I heard that training, I basically went back to my office, my classroom, and wrote … down some thoughts,” she said. “I still have the paper and I just wrote, ‘I can’t lie. I’m not going to lie to kids and I’m not going to lie to parents.'”
According to Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Christian legal advocacy group, the school district decided before the 2021-2022 school year to add “gender identity” to its nondiscrimination policy.
“It then developed and issued guidance that detailed new requirements related to students and parents that teachers were told to ‘immediately implement,'” ADF noted in a statement. “These new requirements included the directive that HCPS staff must ask for and use any name or pronoun a student requests, even if inconsistent with the student’s sex. It also required staff to hide such requests from parents unless HCPS employees determined the child’s parents were sufficiently ‘supportive’ of their child’s ‘transition.'”
Figliola teamed up with ADF and decided to join two other educators in pushing back.
Watch her explain:
“That process included a lot of prayer … a lot of consideration, and, in spending time in prayer, really feeling like God was directing me to do this with my time — that this was important,” she said. “And it was a responsibility that I had to speak up for kids and for families.”
As a parent and grandparent, Figliola said she couldn’t imagine not knowing what was happening to her family members while in school. Ultimately, her faith and commitment to the kids forced her to speak out.
“I made this decision, because I am a Christian and I followed what I felt was correct — what was right,” she said, noting there were other teachers — and many parents — who supported her moves and expressed gratitude for what she was doing.
Of course, she has had her detractors as well, with some fellow educators no longer speaking to her over the matter. The two sides became evident as her fight against the policy persisted.
Vincent Wagner, senior counsel at ADF, told CBN News that Figliola and the two other teachers who joined her to combat the policy ended up landing a big win — a decision by the school district to offer a religious accommodation for teachers unwilling to violate their religious conscience.
“Under this new religious accommodation policy, Harrisonburg schools granted them an accommodation that said, ‘We’re not requiring you to do those things,'” Wagner said. “And then that was wrapped up in this final order that we agreed to with the school board that says the school board maintains that it doesn’t … require teachers to use pronouns that are inconsistent with sex and [doesn’t] require teachers to hide information from parents or lie to parents.”
Ultimately, the attorney said this offers a “clear statement” from the district on the matter — something that might not have happened had Figliola not stepped up to challenge the matter.
Wagner said it’s inappropriate for schools to try and force teachers to “keep important information from parents” and that ADF has consistently worked to help stop such efforts.
“We represent educators across the country who are objecting to these sorts of policies — Ohio, Indiana, all over the place,” he said. “They’re popping up and it’s just pernicious, this idea that schools need to somehow get between parents and their children and make decisions without involving parents about what’s best for their kids.”
Wagner hopes Figliola’s victory can be replicated in other places across the U.S. and pledged to “continue bringing lawsuits” if and when the issue arises.
As for Figliola, she encouraged other teachers struggling with the same battle she faced to persist and keep speaking the truth.
“Don’t give up, because there are protections and there is a path forward,” she said. “There is a path forward for those of us who believe that this is wrong to stay in our profession that we are so often passionate about doing, passionate about being with kids and supporting families, and we don’t have to stop that.”
Figliola continued, “It may not be comfortable at all times, but things that are really worth it may mean that we may have to be uncomfortable once in a while. But it is so worth it. I’m so glad I did this.”
***As the number of voices facing big-tech censorship continues to grow, please sign up for Faithwire’s daily newsletter and download the CBN News app, developed by our parent company, to stay up-to-date with the latest news from a distinctly Christian perspective.***