Alexandria school officials say they followed appropriate procedures, including not notifying all parents, in the handling of an alleged sexual assault in October involving students at the Minnie Howard campus, a satellite of Alexandria City High School that serves ninth-graders.
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The school system and police have drawn criticism — and spurred alarm among some Alexandria parents — in recent days for not notifying parents broadly about the incident. A recent article in the National Review about the assault alleged a coverup by the school system and police, and tied the incident to a high-profile pair of sexual assaults in nearby Loudoun County Public Schools.
Alexandria city spokeswoman Kelly Gilfillen put out a statement Friday saying “the City of Alexandria is aware of the incident, that it was adjudicated in Court, and that the defendant was acquitted.”
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Gilfillen added, “Pursuant to Virginia State Law Section 16.1 – 301, details regarding incidents involving juveniles must remain confidential and cannot be shared.”
Alexandria City Public Schools spokeswoman Julia Burgos said in an interview Saturday that the school system followed its normal protocols and worked closely with police in handling the alleged sexual assault at Minnie Howard. That, together with Virginia law, determined who the school system told about the alleged assault, when and how.
Emails quoted in the National Review story — and separately obtained by The Washington Post — show the superintendent informing the school board about the alleged assault and the school board informing the city council. That, Burgos said, is exactly how the process is supposed to work.
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She said the school system informs all parents at a school campus, in consultation with police, when there is a possible threat to campus safety. Sometimes, she noted, the school and police must together consider whether releasing information will impede law enforcement investigations.
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The school did not inform all parents about the alleged Minnie Howard assault, just the parents of those involved. In a presentation to the school board in early March, school officials — sharing a school safety data report — revealed publicly that the Minnie Howard campus saw a sexual assault allegation in October that led to an arrest.
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“Every case is very different, it’s handled according to the situation, there’s really no cookie cutter approach,” Burgos said.
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Alexandria police spokesman Marcel Bassett did not respond to a request for comment Saturday. Burgos said Friday the district was unable to provide specific information about the incident and any disciplinary consequences for the students involved.
Devon Wells, a parent with five children enrolled in the Alexandria school system, said she thinks whatever threat analysis the school did must have been “totally off.” She believes the school should have told all parents about the alleged sexual assault and should have explained how officials were responding.
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“They definitely erred on the side of protecting themselves and not our kids,” she said.
She said the school should have answered — and still needs to answer — several questions about the assault, but that does not mean it has to reveal specific details about the students involved.
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“As a parent, I don’t need to know the identity or any information about the assailant,” she said. “I need to know when it happened, where it happened, and what security measures were breached that led to this.”
Wells added, “If felony level crimes are alleged to happen on school property, then parents have a right to know, and they have a right to know what the school is going to do in response.”
The section of Virginia law that city spokeswoman Gilfillen referenced states that all law-enforcement agencies are required to “take special precautions to ensure that law-enforcement records concerning a juvenile are protected against disclosure to any unauthorized person.”
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Police cannot release their records “to the public unless a juvenile 14 years of age or older is charged with a violent juvenile felony,” the law states. Violent juvenile felonies, as defined by Virginia law, include murder, injury by mob, abduction, wounding, poisoning, robbery, carjacking, rape, and forcible sodomy, among other charges.
Police are allowed, however, to disclose to a juvenile’s school principal that a juvenile has been charged with any of the above — or with violating a law against burning or destroying buildings or with violating a law prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons — “for the protection of a juvenile, his fellow students and school personnel,” according to the law.
The school principal “in his discretion may provide such information to a threat assessment team established by the local school division,” the law states. But members of the threat assessment team are prohibited by law from disclosing information about the juvenile to the public.
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The question of how to handle and report sexual assaults that take place at school has become a hot-button issue in Virginia after the two assaults in Loudoun, which spurred a national political firestorm. In that case, school officials drew criticism for transferring a student who committed a sexual assault at one high school to a second high school, where the student committed another sexual assault.
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At the state level, the General Assembly in January passed a bill — along bipartisan lines — that requires school officials to report any misdemeanor offenses to law enforcement. Misdemeanors include sexual battery, threats against school employees and stalking, as well as alcohol or drug use.
The measure is now before Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R). His spokeswoman Macaulay Porter said in a statement Saturday that the administration is reviewing the bill’s final language. She added, “The Governor championed this Day One Game Plan legislation throughout the session because our schools must be safe for our children.”
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State law previously required that school officials report only felonies to law enforcement, and not misdemeanors. Still, that law also required that principals report to law enforcement — and to the parents of the victim of any offense — “assault and battery that results in bodily injury [or] sexual assault ... that may constitute a felony offense.”
The law making it optional for school officials to report misdemeanors to police was passed in 2020, when mainly Democratic lawmakers argued that requiring school officials to report both misdemeanors and felonies would fuel the school-to-prison pipeline.
The Democratic legislators at the time pointed to U.S. Education Department data, analyzed by the Center for Public Integrity, that showed that — of all 50 states — Virginia had the highest rate of referring students to police. In 2011-2012, Virginia referred about 16 per 1,000 students to law enforcement, compared with a national average of six referrals per 1,000 students.