Guest: Pastor Bob Oliver of New Covenant Church of Philadelphia, member of Black Pastors …

Welcome to Old School, New School, Next School with Dom Giordano, a podcast devoted to preserving your parental rights, including the right to choose the best school for your child. This podcast is dedicated to gaining the option of school choice for every parent in America.

Here's your host, educator and noted talk media commentator, Dom Giordano.

Welcome in to this week's edition of the School Choice Show, Old School, New School, Next School with Dom Giordano.

And in the past, I've talked with Azra Nomani several times about various school issues, major national issues and her group.

But we also have with Azra today, Zania Perez, who is a teacher in the school district in question. So, Azra, first of all, we've talked over the years about a parental group that you were a major cog in. What's your group now? What is the group that you are one of the leaders of? Well, you know, it's so exciting because I've returned back to my roots in journalism. And so I'm working through the Pearl Project, named for my dear friend, Danny Pearl,

who was a journalist for the Wall Street Journal with me. And my mission now is to do great investigative reporting in local communities like my Fairfax County public schools. Let's identify the Fairfax County public schools to why they were so much in the news, because I think it's apropos of our guests and this abortion story that's coming to a head. Yeah. So I was a mom like so many ordinary moms and dads in the United States.

in the summer of 2020, when I realized that my Fairfax County Public School board had just taken a turn and they had moved into this new universe of activism and ideological indoctrination. As a journalist, I started reporting on it. And as a parent, I saw it from the classroom to the PTA meetings and Fairfax County, Virginia and our neighboring Loudoun County, Virginia, became windows into the

a wider battle over parent rights and the overreach of school systems and school boards.

Yes, I would say just to bring back to emphasize to listeners to an extreme.

You've been on the Bill Maher show.

He seems to recognize you even when you differ.

Wall Street Journal, things of that nature.

So it was to our benefit during those times that we talk with you about it.

Which were the schools?

Was it Loudon or Fairfax that had the number one rated school in America and now not so much? Yeah, that was my son's high school, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County, Virginia. As you know, I'm an immigrant from India. Our family came with no so-called privilege in the United States. And my son entered into the school through an admissions test. But in the summer of 2020, this activist school board decided that they were going to be a school.

They removed the merit admissions test. And guess what? Our number one ranking. Try to guess where we've plummeted to now. I think I saw 14, but it could be worse. That's right. It made headline news. You saw it reveals how important this issue is because we know that education is what makes a nation competitive, right? It not only builds like the individual security of a child, but the security

of a nation.

And so what happened is they put a hit on our number one high school in America.

And what we're going to talk about today is how they also put a hit on children,

you know, just using children, using children as the petri dish for their social experiment.

And it's just so painful to me, a child of public schools myself,

to see where we have come as a nation. Exactly. And we have with us a teacher from the

Centerville High School in the district, Zania Perez. Zania, just an update before we, I'll give it just a little

preamble, and you can tell us where we are now when we're taping this, just so I have an idea.

This goes back to allegations that a school social worker, where you are in this school district we're talking about,

and funded a student's 2021 abortion. That's the central thing. So where are we right now in this? I've seen various headlines. My producers have too. Where are we at this moment? Because you have tried to bring this forward for years and it's finally burst a bit, I think. Yes. Well, based on this article that was published on August the 5th, the superintendent,

CPS public school superintendent denied having any kind of knowledge about that situation. But that is absolutely not true, because I was always bringing that to the attention of different administrators from Centerville High School and then administrators and high executives from Fairfax County Public Schools. I brought it to the attention of the principal that was in charge at Centerville High School.

In 2022, on May the 16th, 2022, I had a meeting with him. I brought it to his attention verbally. And then he did not make any comment about the statement that I knew that the social worker was facilitating pregnancy solutions and that I had the name of one of the students who had received that kind of support. He did not respond to that statement, neither in writing or verbally.

Then later on, when I returned to school in the fall of 2022, in November, I approached him again and I recorded that conversation that has been exposed as well in the media. And I asked him, what did you mean when you make the statement to me in 2022, on May 2022, that I brought to your attention this situation about the pregnancy tests and the social worker facilities?

"You said, Ms. Perez, you are going to get written up about a pregnancy test that supposedly you facilitated, but you are talking about an abortion. You are concerning Ms. Perez." And I said, "What do you mean by concerning?" He said that he did not remember that conversation. So I said, "Okay, no problem. I will resend to you."

the email that I sent you in which paragraph number four, I highlighted the statement about the social worker facilitating all the logistics and the appointments and even paying for the students to have abortions. Now you said students. Do you think this is more than one student or you just mean this one student as far as we know? Well, this is one student in particular who confided in me and she gave me all the details about the situation.

that took place when she was just turning 17 years old. Now, Azra, is there a policy here or lack of policy or you've seen this school district do stuff like this before? What do you see here is the broader thing of what these schools are engaged in, allegedly? Yeah, what Zenaida is capturing in such important detail is the war story, you know, of one teacher in the

And the details are so relevant in her own narrative because what I was able to establish is that seven times over she relayed her concerns and blew the whistle to school officials but they refused to take this seriously. And why does it matter is because it turns out in the state of Virginia, like most states in the United States, but not all states, a minor is not allowed to have an abortion.

without the consent of their parent or legal guardian. And so what's important in this case is in the November 2021, this young 17-year-old minor allegedly had an abortion without her legal guardian's knowledge. And so that would be a criminal offense. And what has now happened, fast forward, and what's so important for people, and Dom, you've been highlighting whistleblowers for all these years we've been talking,

is that through her persistence, Zaneda now has triggered the school board to start an investigation. But most importantly, the governor of Virginia last week commissioned the state police to start a criminal investigation. And what is at stake here is fundamental issues about parent rights and also the protection of minors.

Yes, the protection of minors, this show deal, but they're both interrelated.

Asra, parental rights, which then leads to choices other than the school districts.

And I know in Virginia, that's why Glenn Youngkin won in a race against McAuliffe.

McAuliffe saying we're the experts when you drop them off of the schoolhouse door.

That's it.

And particularly in these elites in quotes now, maybe not so much Fairfax County Loudoun.

There was a lot of this. Isn't this where one of the parents was dragged out at a meeting because of the trans individual or a biological male in the girls bathroom? This is a national battleground over this. What are the procedures as you were told as a teacher when you had information like this, it was to go to a vice principal or a principal and report this?

Yes.

Anytime a person, a teacher, or any employee in the school building receives documentation or information of that kind, they are supposed to tell the counselor or the administrators.

In fact, let me interrupt.

And Ezra, she would be, allegedly, this is all, we haven't proven anything yet.

She would be complicit.

If given that information, she has a duty to report, I would assume in Virginia, right?

Yeah, there's a couple things at stake here.

And this is going to just blow your mind.

But Zenaida has connected the dots on another really important fact.

And that is that that 17 year old girl had allegedly had as a father adult male.

And so, Dom, you know what that means, statutory rape.

And so these are all serious issues that never got dealt with in an effective way so that we're in this, you know, mystery even now, years later.

So basically, the social worker had a duty to report.

Then when Zenaida reported this to the principal, he had a duty to report.

You know, it wasn't stuff that was supposed to be swept under the rug.

You know, I wanted to link that to something you often hear when I do this show for both, that the public schools have so much more duty to do various things and the charter or private schools do not. That's one of the complaints. And it seems here that, yes, the public schools by law may have that, but it seems at least allegedly that this is a long road.

And it takes someone like Zaniya here to be this persistent and to go forward. And I'm sure as a teacher, it makes it difficult when you have supervisors. You know, as teachers, we can all do things that might be slight mistakes. And if they're looking to pounce on you for this because of this bigger issue that's out there, it becomes very, very difficult. So we have all these laws in place.

But allegedly, a whole chain of things might have happened here that would not move forward. Azara, you know, you've been a champion. Your child went to a great public school at that time. We talked about this. This issue of parental choice and this issue to parents, this really underscores what we're seeing a lot on both the trans thing and some other things. If a child in the school wants to go by different pronouns or whatever,

Many of these areas like New Jersey, California and all, almost by law, they're saying teachers cannot and should not reveal this to parents, this type of change, which can have real consequence. Here we have an example, a chain of things, particularly the allegation that it was an adult male that impregnated allegedly. What does that tell us about keeping true to keeping the parents?

in the forefront of this.

Yeah, you know, we are facing a societal dilemma and a societal challenge that is so existential.

Because for so long, we have understood the value of the family.

But we can now see a war on the family.

And also then, of course, the war on the child.

Dom, this is going to blow your mind also.

But I just learned of a new concept. And it is a concept of children as, quote, mature minors. It is actually a legal doctrine. And I want to use it as a connective tissue in all of this because that mature minor philosophy is what it is that has allowed the children to then self-identify by different genders, to then demand certain medical procedures in certain jurisdictions that allow it. And then

You are not going to believe this, but literally in Canada, they're debating the right of a child to assisted suicide if they are a mature minor. So we are talking about life itself on every level. And the last data point I just want to share is that I've now numbered 14 states in the United States that people may not know about that actually allow minors to have abortions without their parents' permission.

And of course, they include states like California and Oregon.

Virginia is not one of those states.

And that's why Zenaida's brave witness is so important, because it now makes it headline news on whether or not we are going to allow the state to give autonomy to children who aren't even fully developed.

Yes, and I guess the tell here is that this child went to Zaniya with this burden, with this problem associated with it. If they were a mature minor, they could figure out how an adult would deal with it around this. So I think that's a great point. And it gets to, Azra, I'm not sure you've been battling in the public schools. To me, this story is a public schools, parental rights,

But it also opens up why so many parents want to get outside that and have some help in making some other choice where it seems clear in Fairfax and Loudoun as a big picture philosophy. They are not going to err no matter what we say and what we do almost on the side of parental rights. They seem to still be dug in, in my view, unless you see some other evidence that these are mature minors.

and can make these decisions and the parents are not going to be made aware of. In fact, you could even get into trouble, as Anaya mentions here, if I bring this stuff up.

Yeah, you know, just on Friday, Fairfax County Public Schools and four other school districts in Northern Virginia said that they are going to fight the Trump administration's demand that parents be included in the conversation about gender identity and to bar children of,

an opposite biological gender from entering a restroom or locker room that is their own self-described opposite of their biological. So a transgender child. So they face loss of federal funding. And then meanwhile, they are digging in their heels on these regressive policies.

And Zenaida's example is really illustrative, I think, of how it is that an entire bureaucracy refuses transparency, you know, and refuses to actually be held accountable for wrong decisions or just to handle things well. You talked earlier about the cost to her, you know, three years of nightmares.

Like that is not what a whistleblower is supposed to experience. And the other laws that have been violated here allegedly are whistleblower retaliation laws that are barred, you know, from practice in America. Let me interrupt, Zanaya, and ask you, what about your union, your teachers' union? Are you a member? And if so, what are they doing about this? Well, here in Fairfax County, I am a member with Fairfax County Federation of Teachers.

They call it FCFT. In 2022, when the first situation happened and I learned about the abortion allegations and the victim statements and everything, I went to the union and my statement was taken and I spoke with a representative from the union and she was trying to help me. But at the end, they aligned with the administrators points and they would never

They would always support the administrators and the high executives from Fairfax County Public Schools. Even this year that the hostility increased by the day. I mean, they were so, so retaliatory and so horrible to me that I was afraid that they would fire me for some reasons that they were fabricating. And I went to the union again and my assessor

from the union. He told me that all this retaliation against me was not coming from the administrators at my school, Centerville High School. It was coming from high above the high end administrators and executives from the county. All right. Well, we'll leave it there. But thank you very much. Thanks for what you've done. Azra, thank you, too, for being a great guiding counsel to this. And again, we've hit upon so many aspects.

of why this story is important. We'd love to talk with you as the investigation. Any sense in when that will be due, Azra, the investigation around this? Well, it's going to be fast, you know, because it's a really pressing issue. And I do want to invite everyone who's listening. Like if you this is a national story. If you or you know, if you or somebody you know has been the victim of an abortion of a minor that did not have parental

Please contact me. I'm at Astra at AstraNomani.com or you can find me on any social media platform with my name. Talk to you anonymously because, Dom, this is happening across the country to very vulnerable youth. Well, thank you. Thanks very much. Zanea, thank you very much. I'm a former teacher. I don't know if you knew that. So I thank you for what you're doing in this situation very much. Thank you. Good luck. Hopefully we'll talk again soon. All right. Riveting

story here on the old school, new school, next school. We'll continue to follow this. I know Azra. I know her parental group. This Loudoun School District and Fairfax School District are big time. You heard what she said, affluent, nationally ranked. But they are in the news constantly for one outrage after another. So even all the money in the world, all the educated parents, does not mean that you're going to have control in any real realistic sense of stopping the

the values that are going into these schools. We'll continue to follow that story here with Dom Giordano. Remember, send me an email, domshow, D-O-M-S-H-O-W, at AOL.com. Read them all, respond to you, might make it into the podcast. Domshow at AOL.com is the place to go. I'll see you next week here on Old School, New School, Next School.

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