Governor Glenn Youngkin on Tuesday urged the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) to adopt a policy requiring schools to notify parents of on-campus drug overdoses within 24 hours, which would formalize a requirement the governor previously created through an executive order in late 2023.
Drug overdoses in Virginia schools first surfaced as an issue on October 31, 2023, when the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office issued a press release confirming nine students had overdosed that month. It was later determined a total of 11 students experienced non-fatal drug overdoses at the same high school over an eight-week period in 2023.
Youngkin responded with a November 1, 2023 executive order that requires schools notify parents within 24 hours of an on-campus drug overdose.
Lawmakers eventually attempted to codify Youngkin’s executive order into law, but Democrats objected to legislation that would require notice of an overdose to be provided to parents within 24 hours, instead opting to pass a law that requires the VDOE to create its own policy for notifying parents of drug overdoses.
“You should know what’s going on in your child’s school,” said Youngkin in a Tuesday interview with ABC 7 News reporter Nick Minock posted to the social media platform X, recorded ahead of a hearing for the VDOE to receive public input as it plans its overdose policy.
The governor said that the episode including “11 overdoses in one Loudoun County high school,” followed by the administrators’ decision not to immediately tell parents, was both “wrong” and “dangerous to all the other kids in the school.”
Youngkin told Minock, “And so our executive order that I wrote, with 24 hours notification, has fundamentally impacted and made safer our school environments,” and urged parents, “Demand that a bill come to my desk that codifies my executive order and makes sure that parents are notified when there’s an overdose in a school.”
The current guidelines proposed by the VDOE are based on Youngkin’s executive order and would require parents to be notified within 24 hours of any school-connected overdose.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Image “Gov Glenn Youngkin” by Gov Glenn Younkin.
