Decade-Long Legal Battle Concludes with Mandate for Schools to Teach Virgin Islands and Caribbean History; Implementation Deadline June 2025

In a case that has been pending for over a decade, the Superior Court of the Virgin Islands has ruled that the Department of Education is not following the law when it comes to teaching local and Caribbean history in schools. Judge Alphonso G. Andrews Jr., in a declaratory judgment dated June 20, has given education officials until June 2025 to fix the issue.‌ The mandate that public schools in the territory teach Virgin Islands and Caribbean History (VICH) came from a 1983 law – Act 4844. Three decades onward, two plaintiffs sued the government, claiming that education officials had, for thirty years, been failing to comply with the stipulations of the act.‌ The Department of Education, and Board of Education had failed to develop an adequate VICH curriculum for all grades, and failed to promulgate rules and regulations for the teaching of VICH in public schools, the plaintiffs claimed. The original lawsuit named then-governor John DeJongh Jr. and then-acting Education Commissioner...