Is Virginia’s #2 Republican trying to wreck your local school? We’ve got the receipts on Winsome Earle-Sears

Here are 4 instances when the Republican running for governor of Virginia has proven she’d make public schools worse.

Worried your kid’s school won’t have enough teachers or supplies this year? Here’s one big reason why you might be: Winsome Earle-Sears is running for governor.

The Republican candidate is currently serving as Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s lieutenant governor, and she’s been part of a number of education policy decisions over her past three years in office. What’s more, she’s also been very forthcoming on right-wing media channels about how she’d change education in the commonwealth if elected governor in November. 

Here are the receipts:

Winsome Earle-Sears puts private profits over public schools.

After being signed into law by President Donald Trump on July 4, the Republicans’ “billionaire bill,” which Earle-Sears said “does so many great things,” gave the wealthy elite tax breaks that were paid for by cutting millions of low-income families off of Medicaid and food assistance. 

The bill also included the first-ever nationwide private school voucher program. 

School voucher programs use public tax dollars to help pay private school tuition. These could even be religious schools. Vouchers can look like direct government payments to parents, refundable tax credits that parents can take for tuition payments, or “scholarships” from nonprofit organizations with wealthy donors who can write the donation off and receive a tax credit.  In many cases, there are no income caps on who can use vouchers, which means rich families can use them to pay for the private school tuition they were already planning to pay for out of pocket. Private schools, on the other hand, can cap their enrollment, only take the students they wish to have attend their school, and raise their tuition. In fact, studies show that in states with voucher programs, private schools almost always raise their tuition. 

Unlike charitable donations, the voucher program under the “big beautiful bill” fully reimburses donors, incentivizing private-school funding and encouraging more families to send their students to another kind of non-public school: charter schools. 

A charter school is a school that’s run by a private group, but paid for with your tax money. They have very little accountability, have a history of being selective about which students they accept (public schools take every student, no matter their learning abilities or socioeconomic background), and use taxpayer dollars that would otherwise go towards Virginia’s public schools.

Here in Virginia, the amount of funding that a public school district receives is tied to student enrollment. So, as Virginia’s students move from public to private or charter schools, public school funding drains. 

The Virginia Education Association estimates that public schools across the state could lose between $222 million and $956 million annually due to lost enrollment from this new voucher program if the new governor opts in. Without this funding, public school districts will be forced to reduce staff and academic programs, which will ultimately impact the quality of accessible, public education in Virginia.

This isn’t the first time that Earle-Sears has publicly endorsed bills that would bring more voucher program policies and charter schools to the Commonwealth. 

In 2001, after being elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, Earle-Sears proposed a bill that would increase the number of charter schools in the state. While the bill did not pass, Earle-Sears has continued to push for private charter schools throughout her career as a public official. 

In 2023, despite the need for increased education funding and teacher pay, Republican leaders—including Lt. Gov. Earle-Sears and Delegates Glenn Davis, Michael Webert, Amanda Batten, and AC Cordoza—backed a bill that would divert public funding away from public schools. 

Related: ‘A stunning public rebuke’: When voters had the choice, they rejected private school vouchers

Winsome Earle-Sears has a shady money trail when it comes to campaign donations from charter school moguls.

A billionaire school boss gave Earle-Sears $10,000 to help push for more charter schools, after making a fortune from those schools, paid for by taxpayers.

Between 2023-2024, Earle-Sears’s political action committee (PAC) accepted $10,000 from J.C. Huizenga, a Michigander and the founder of the third-largest for-profit charter school company in the US. 

Huizenga founded National Heritage Academies in 1995, which has grown to a network of over 100 charter schools serving more than 65,000 students across Michigan. In 2021, Huizenga sold 69 charter school campuses, whose leases had been paid with taxpayer funds, at above-market rates to another corporation he set up, putting nearly $1 billion back into his own personal bank account. 

Related: In 2025, Earle-Sears accepted $40,000 in campaign donations from the DeVos family, including a $5,000 donation from Betsy DeVos, Trump’s former US secretary of education (and another Michigander). The DeVos family has a long track record of defunding and destabilizing public schools in favor of private, for-profit schooling.

Related: Remember Betsy? Michigan education leaders blast Trump for ‘abandoning’ public schools

Winsome Earle-Sears supports Project 2025 and other efforts to dismantle education oversight and funding.

Earle-Sears praised President Trump after he issued an executive order to dismantle the US Department of Education, calling it a “game-changer” and saying that “the state should have always been in total control of its education.” 

While his administration and Republican supporters continue to dismantle the Department of Education, President Trump said that he would endorse Earle-Sears in the upcoming Virginia governor’s race.

Winsome Earle-Sears is an echo chamber for the far right’s plan to put their agenda ahead of local communities.

Earle-Sears has partnered with several right-wing organizations, like the Virginia Education Opportunity Alliance, Family Foundation of Virginia, and Americans for Prosperity-Virginia, to push for taxpayer-funded private education. 

While she gained the support of many of these organizations on the campaign trail, Earle-Sears has continued these relationships well into her tenure as lieutenant governor. Over the last few years, she has spoken at several events hosted by the Virginia Education Opportunity Alliance (VEOA), an organization that supports privatizing public schools across the state—including an effort misleadingly called “school choice,” which is essentially a voucher system.

Here’s a particularly twisted bit of her 2022 speech at a VEOA event, in which she reveals how the group would reframe the narrative to shame parents into supporting her, if necessary: “If you vote against school choice, we will still win because we’re going to tell parents that you voted against their children, getting the best school opportunities so that their children can…have a future and create generational wealth.” 

Related: Abigail Spanberger: ‘It’s time to get culture wars out of our schools and let teachers teach’