A deadline just passed for Fairfax County Public Schools to change its bathroom policy or risk losing millions of dollars in funding.

Fairfax County Public Schools

Fairfax County Public Schools has missed a federal deadline to alter its bathroom policy, which allows transgender students to use restrooms consistent with their gender identity. The U.S. Department of Education had warned that failure to change the policy could result in the loss of millions in federal grant funding, specifically targeting magnet school grants.

The district maintains that its policy aligns with Title IX, despite the Department of Education's opposing interpretation. Fairfax County officials report that some federal grant money for mental health services has already been canceled, and approximately $13.7 million in magnet school grant funding is at risk. The dispute is expected to be resolved in the courts.

Deadline for FCPS to change bathroom policy passes

deadline just passed for Fairfax County public schools to change his bathroom policy or risk losing millions of dollars in federal funding. Let's get right to Cindy Persing in the newsroom. Cindy break all of this down. What exactly is happening here? Yeah, well there's a lot of background here you want to understand and a lot we still just don't have definite answers to. But at this hour it looks likely the district is now poised to lose a lot of money. The Department of Education, you might remember said earlier this summer that Fairfax and four other northern Virginia districts were in violation of federal law claim that the district's policies that allowed transgender students to use restrooms consistent with their gender identities violated title nine. Fairfax though claims their policy was in fact in accordance with title nine. Despite the D. O. E. S. Claims. Otherwise there's been a lot of back and forth since then. Lawsuits, board votes, protests and now just on Tuesday, the D. O. E. Sent Fairfax County schools a letter that said they would deny certification of magnet school grant money to F. C. P. S. If it did not change its bathroom policy by five o'clock today and instead send students to use restrooms consistent with their sex at birth. That deadline has obviously passed now just about five hours ago. The D. O. E. Has not yet responded to our requests for comment tonight about what happens now. Though it does not appear that Fairfax County public schools made any change to its policy. Here's trial attorney Jeremy Rosenthal now on the district and D. O. E. S. Polar opposite interpretations of which policy actually adheres to title nine title nine talks about discrimination based on sex in a school setting. And when they drafted this legislation years and years ago, they didn't understand the dialogue in 2025 would be over the usages in bathrooms for transgender students. So each side is obviously drawing the battle lines and we're going to have courts that are obviously going to decide this now in a statement to Fox five Fairfax County public schools said tonight in part the notification from the D. O. E. Regarding withholding of grant funding is the latest series of efforts to defund and diminish the tradition of excellence of public education in Fairfax County public schools. F. C. P. S. Maintains that the D. O. E. S. Decision to label the division as high risk and threatened funding is not supported by identifiable factors or evidence. Now the district also claimed that federal grant money for mental health services has already been canceled, which they say will detrimentally impact students and staff. As for how much money is at stake here for Fairfax Magnet schools were told about 3.4 billion in grant money for next year, approximately 13.7 million for the duration of that grant.

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Breakdown