Lisa Rowan

The board rejected a $10,000 award that the Gender and Sexuality Alliance planned to use to create a quiet room at E.C. Glass High School, citing concerns about where the money came from: The It Gets Better Project, a nonprofit that seeks to prevent suicide in the LGBTQ+ community.

Free tuition programs might entice students to enroll in community college, but they don’t cover gas or child care, or put food on the table. Here’s what two schools in rural Southwest Virginia are doing to meet students’ needs.

The Gender and Sexuality Alliance at E.C. Glass High School won $10,000 from the It Gets Better Project to create a quiet room and provide free menstrual products. About 125 grants have been awarded; Lynchburg is only the second school division to reject the funding.

Martha Hooker claims she was terminated from a part-time position in the school division in retaliation for a vote she made on the board of supervisors to change how school funding is allocated.

Roanoke County’s school board retained its conservative majority in last week’s election. Fifteen-year-old Keely Meadows wants to keep LGBTQ+ rights in the spotlight.

Conservative school board candidates succeed in Roanoke, Pulaski, Bedford counties but appeared to be shut out of close contests in Montgomery County.

After arrests at a July school board meeting, the U.S. Department of Justice offered to mediate discussions about new transgender student policies in Roanoke. The school system rejected the offer, but continued to add more police to meetings.

The reduction will be available for new and returning students in an ongoing effort to attract a shrinking pool of potential applicants.

The state military college announced in August it would handle an investigation of its relationship with The Cadet internally, after the nonprofit that operates the independent publication called for an external review of the fraught relationship between VMI and the newspaper.

In-state undergraduate students with a household income of less than $100,000 will be eligible for the Radford Tuition Promise program.