The member of a school board in Virginia, who caused a stir last year when she demanded a Toni Morrison classic be banned, has been booted from a new working group on education models and “lab schools” after suggesting that it was not “sustainable” to educate English language learners in Virginia Beach.
Victoria Manning, an at-large member of the Virginia Beach school board, wrote on Facebook last week that the district had added 300 ESL students since last fall. “Most are from South America,” she wrote. “Our ESL budget has increased over $1 million in two years. Continuing to educate South Americans is not sustainable.”
The vile comment came hours after Manning had announced during a school board meeting last week that Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Education Secretary Aimee Guidera had selected her to join a new working group on innovative education models and lab schools that would explore partnering colleges and universities with K-12 schools.
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“It’s a really interesting group throwing out ideas of what we can do in innovation as partnerships with these universities,” she said at the time.
On Monday, Guidera told The Daily Beast through a spokeswoman that Manning would no longer be a part of the group.
“We wholly condemn Mrs. Manning’s comments,” Guidera said. “They are completely unacceptable and are in absolute opposition to the Youngkin administrations commitment to educate and prepare every child in the Commonwealth for success in life. Victoria Manning will no longer participate in our working group.”
The spokeswoman, Macaulay Porter, said the working group was “unofficial” and that Youngkin found Manning’s remarks “unacceptable.”
Youngkin has proposed $150 million be allotted to support the the lab school program, according to WAVY. He has also notably seized on the teaching of the nation’s fraught history with race and racism during his campaign last year and made banning critical race theory and “divisive concepts” from classrooms the first executive order of his administration.
The Democrat-controlled state Senate has pushed back on his efforts to steam roll the issue but Youngkin has nevertheless pressed forward, releasing a report last week aimed at identifying “discriminatory” and “inherently divisive concepts” in public education that included “Critical Race Theory and its progeny.”
In an interview with The Daily Beast on Monday, Beatriz Amberman, chairwoman of the Virginia Coalition of Latino Organizations, called the comments “divisive” and suggested Manning was “bullying” the children of tax-paying parents.
“Just because a person is speaking another language doesn’t mean that they don’t belong in this country,” Amberman said. “Our kids that are taking ESL classes are going to be bilingual citizens of this country. They are going to take those skills to serve our nation.”
In a statement to The Daily Beast on Monday, Manning insisted that her comments had been warped by her political enemies, and pointed to a staffing shortage that she said was causing teachers to be “overburdened.”
“I made a social media post and my political opponents twisted my words into something that I absolutely did not intend. I love all people, no matter where they are from,” she said. “The media and leftist narrative and cancel culture that paints everyone with whom they disagree as a racist needs to end.”
“I believe it is our duty to provide an appropriate education to ALL students who reside in our city and I do fully support our ESL program and our wonderful ESL teachers. There is a teacher shortage and without teachers and proper funding, the current path is unsustainable,” she added.
When asked whether or not she believed Manning should apologize for the remarks, Amberman said the damage was done.
“Our concern—it is not the apology of one person that obviously doesn’t have a clear mind about how to serve the public. We know already what she thinks by the statement that she made,” Amberman said. “It is basically a knife thrown in the direction of children.”
Manning’s comments swiftly generated criticism from school board leaders.
“We personally do not condone nor support our colleague’s comments about our ESL program,” Virginia Beach School Board Chair Carolyn Rye and Vice Chair Kim Melnyk said in a joint statement. “Individual Board members do not have authority to act nor speak on behalf of the Board. Our community should rest assured we will continue to teach and embrace every child who walks through our doors.”
On Monday, Manning accused the school board leaders of attacking her because she opposed their agendas on a number of issues, including disciplinary problems, underprepared graduates and library books that she believed are either biased or “pornographic”—all talking points that she details on a personal website that once featured a “wokeness checker” to monitor CRT in Virginia Beach schools.
According to the school district, 2,084 students qualify for ESL services, an increase of roughly 300 students since last fall. The most common first languages spoken amongst ESL students are Spanish, followed by Tagalog, Mandarin Chinese and Vietnamese, the district’s director of K-12 and gifted programs Dr. Nicole DeVries said.
DeVries shared the figure—which makes up roughly 3 percent of the district’s student enrollment—during a briefing about the district’s ESL programs at last week’s meeting. In response, Manning had inquired about whether the students were “primarily coming from South America.”
“Various countries, but I can tell you we do have a large population coming from our Central American countries,” DeVries replied.
The district employs 43 ESL teachers and Superintendent Aaron Spence has requested a budget increase for eight additional full-time positions for the upcoming school year.
Natalie Allen, the school district’s spokeswoman, told The Daily Beast in an email on Monday that while the district’s ESL population has grown in recent years, “it is worth noting we are not seeing a large increase of students from South America.”
“We serve and welcome families from all over the world, including NATO families and refugees, amongst others,” she wrote, adding that the district wasn’t having issues budgeting for its ESL program.
Manning’s comments on Facebook were not the first time she has generated outrage.
In October, she railed against Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye after learning second hand about the books “pornographic” content. She later pressed that five other books be purged from school library shelves for similar reasons after “skimming” them and demanding that the teachers be punished.
The debacle over Manning’s divisive comments about ESL programs comes nearly a year after she accused others of dividing kids based on race during an appearance on “Fox and Friends.”
“Our students and our teachers are being taught that our country is innately racist, and students and teachers are being pitted against one another based on their skin color,” she said at the time.
