Under the leadership of Glenn Younkin, Virginia continues to act more and more like a red state, despite its recent reputation as a toss-up. The most recent example of this trend comes with the state’s Department of Education backing parental rights in the state’s public schools. Under a recently enacted policy, schools will be prohibited from recognizing a child’s request to use a different name or pronoun as part of a “gender transition” unless the child’s parent or guardian provides written consent for the change. The policy doesn’t go so far as to forbid such gender-bending accommodations but keeps the parents involved in what may be an alarming mental health situation for their child. The new policy further stipulates that children must use the bathrooms and other facilities appropriate for their actual gender and bans cross-sex participation in school athletic programs. Leftists in Virginia are, of course, up in arms.

The Virginia Department of Education honored parental rights in new model policies on how schools should respond to children who claim to identify as transgender .

The new policies, which must be adopted by all of Virginia’s public school districts, prohibit schools and school staff from accommodating a student’s request to use a different name or pronoun at school unless the child’s parent provides written permission. The finalized policy released Tuesday also requires students to participate in school athletics programs and use bathroom facilities consistent with their biological sex.

“The VDOE updated model policies reaffirm my administration’s continued commitment to ensure that every parent is involved in conversations regarding their child’s education, upbringing, and care,” Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) said of the new policies. “The Department of Education has delivered policies that empower parents, prohibit discrimination, create a safe and vibrant learning environment by addressing bullying incidents immediately, and protect the privacy and dignity of all students through bathroom policies, athletic procedures, and student identification measures.”

The Virginia chapter of the ACLU promptly declared that they were “horrified” by the common-sense ruling. But those complaints will largely fall on deaf ears.

It’s worth remembering that Glenn Younkin ran for Governor on a platform that highlighted parental rights as a chief concern. That was one of the issues that analysts largely credited in his historic victory and it’s been cited as a model that has now been followed in other states around the nation. Virginia now joins Alabama, Arkansas, and Florida, along with many other states that have either enacted similar policies or are in the process of implementing them.

Some states, including Idaho, have passed similar laws but had them put on hold by judges. In Kansas, the Republican-dominated legislature passed a nearly identical law, but the state’s Democrat governor vetoed it. North Carolina came close to passing its own law, but it was eventually set aside until the next session.

It’s probably easy to lose sight of the fact that this issue runs far deeper than just rules applying to gender transition. That’s clearly an important aspect, of course, since it applies to not only the welfare of children but the protection of girls’ and women’s sports. But the larger battle deals with the fundamental rights of parents to guide the development of their children along the path to adulthood and instill the values they deem important in them.

This is a concept that was once nearly universal and fundamental across society. But the modern left has gone in a completely opposite direction, arguing that “it takes a village” and, as Joe Biden famously claimed, children should generally be considered the property of the state, not the family. They believe that once a child sets foot in a public school, parents should be locked out of whatever happens in the classroom or anywhere on campus.

This is one of the most alarming aspects of the left’s battle to indoctrinate children and capture their minds while they are still developing and vulnerable to such influences. Not all parents are perfect, of course, and far too many will wind up infecting the minds of their own children with these warped ideas. But as parents, that is their prerogative. (Unfortunately.) But having the nation’s schools converted into factories for wokeness is a far greater threat. That’s why school choice needs to be a major issue in upcoming elections and better resources for homeschooling should be made much more widely available. The public schools have long since turned into laboratories designed to breed a new generation of communists while abandoning their focus on educational fundamentals such as literacy and mathematics or the sciences. This needs to end.