Middle and high school students across Virginia will soon be excused from school to participate in a protest or civic event thanks to a bipartisan group of students from Virginia Young Democrats and Virginia Teenage Republicans who joined forces to successfully lobby for the new law, which started as a school board policy in Fairfax County.
The policy, which goes into effect July 1, grants students an excused absence from school one day a year to “engage in a civic or political event.” School districts in other states have passed similar policies, but Virginia is the first to pass one statewide.
“There’s this misconception that it’s only about protests, that it’s only about walking out,” said Virginia Young Democrats Teen Caucus Chair Matthew Savage, 17. “But it’s also about just getting a sense of what your government is and trying to make a difference — meeting with legislators, attending protests — it’s much more.”
Savage strategized with other Young Democrats and began reaching out to lawmakers, including Democrats Del. Sam Rasoul and state Sen. Jennifer McClellan, who committed to introducing it.
“It’s critically important for us not to just encourage the youth to vote, but to actually empower them and have them involved in the civic process and what better way than to have them help draft bills — which is what happened here — help them lobby and then help them actually pass these bills,” Rasoul said.
McClellan said she chose to sponsor the legislation to stoke the students’ interests.
Future failures in the workforce cuz if they try this in private industry….YOU’RE FIRED!!! HAHAHAHAH
Does this remind anyone of HITLER’S BROWN SHIRTS? Same thing COMMUNIST CHINA, IRAN and all other non-DDEMOCRAT governments are doing today.
I know no one will admit they know about the SOCIALIST / COMMUNIST INDOCTRINATION of HITLER’S INDOCTRINATION into COMMUNISM.
HISTORY REPEATING itself in another example.
I applaud young people learning about politics, but an excused absence is unnecessary – they need to stay I. school. While the intention of this was likely honest, I think we all know it just became a senior skip day.