How a Princeton scholar used FOIA to poke holes in a controversial Virginia program

What happened when an education scholar takes on Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin’s email hotline.

By Greg Toppo 

Margaret Thornton, a Princeton University education researcher with a PhD in educational leadership and policy, has spent the month of February making waves in Virginia education and media circles.

In late January, just two days after Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin opened his “Help Education” email hotline, which gave Virginians a way to report teachers who expose kids to Critical Race Theory, among other ideas, Thornton sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the resulting tips, which she maintains are public records.

Her reply from Youngkin: Sorry, they’re privileged.

“The requested records are being entirely withheld pursuant to Section 2.2-3705 as working papers and correspondence of the Office of the Governor,” the reply said.

Youngkin later told reporters that constituents’ phone calls, letters, and emails are confidential, though he didn’t say why he couldn’t simply release them with names redacted.

So Thornton, a Virginia native, wondered out loud on social media what the emails looked like.

“People just sort of found me,” she said in an interview. “I think it was sort of a cathartic action to email me.”

“People just sort of found me,” she said in an interview. “I think it was sort of a cathartic action to email me.”

She’s now in the process of sorting through her collection – to what end she’s not yet sure – but so far she has released, with the writer’s permission, just one “tip,” an email that she says was too good to keep to herself: it’s a complaint about a son’s physical education teacher, a Mr. Miyagi, who “keeps making him wax his cars and paint the fences around his school.”

It continues: “When will my son be taught what matters, sweeping the leg?!?! You promised me parent’s (sic) rights would matter!”

The writer signs off: “No mercy!”

Karate Kid jokes aside, Thornton said she’d gotten more serious responses as well. “The more heartfelt ones right now I’m just kind of sitting with because I felt like people sent them to me just because they needed to feel like someone was listening to them.”

Others have pushed against Youngkin’s move. The Virginia Education Association last month urged educators and parents to flood the hotline with positive teacher stories. So have Gen Z TikTok users.

To be fair, others have pushed against Youngkin’s move as well. The Virginia Education Association last month urged educators and parents to flood the hotline with positive teacher stories. So have Gen Z TikTok users.

And area news outlets have pursued the results of Youngkin’s tip line – The Roanoke Times columnist Dan Casey earlier this month noted that one of the newspaper’s own reporters had also sought the files.

But Thornton seems to have been faster than most to realize the FOIA possibilities.

Like Thornton, Casey got readers to send him their hot tips about teacher behavior. One recalled an anonymous teacher from New England who found himself teaching U.S. history in a rural Virginia high school – in 1967.

“Being from way up yonder, he did not know he was supposed to teach how much slaves loved their owners,” the tipster revealed. “His teaching incorporated truth, deductive thinking skills, common sense, and fine manners.”

The letter writer urged Youngkin, “I hope you will not try to find him now (55 years later) to punish him for causing our small rural minds to accept divisive theories of honesty in teaching.”

“Being from way up yonder, he did not know he was supposed to teach how much slaves loved their owners,” the tipster revealed. “His teaching incorporated truth, deductive thinking skills, common sense, and fine manners.”

Thornton comes by her curiosity naturally – a former high school teacher, she said her father is a journalist who has worked throughout Virginia. She said she’s continuing to pursue tip line responses and advised journalists to be bold.

Many journalists, she said, “don’t realize just how easy it is to make a FOIA request, particularly in this day and age. In Virginia, it’s just an email to the appropriate office.

“I think it’s a great and often overlooked tool to kind of peel back the curtain around some of these decisions that public officials are making about schools.”

She recommended contacting state FOIA Advisory Councils for help. “You can be a journalist or just a concerned citizen like me, and they can help you think through, ‘OK, this is really the information I’m after, so how can I tailor my request to get that information?’”

Many journalists, she said, “don’t realize just how easy it is to make a FOIA request, particularly in this day and age. In Virginia, it’s just an email to the appropriate office.”

FOIAs will likely be powerful tools for journalists as more state lawmakers apply public pressure to educators. like Virginia’s. In West Virginia, a Republican lawmaker this month proposed a similar CRT tip line.

Though she and her husband, an attorney, live in Philadelphia, Thornton remains fiercely loyal to her birthplace. “I have a tattoo of Virginia on my back,” she admitted. “I’m very invested in the state of the Commonwealth.”