How Loudoun County grew to become the epicenter of the parental rights motion

For the dad and mom of Loudoun County Public Faculties, the swift and sudden downfall of former Superintendent Scott Ziegler was a vindication two years within the making.

Ziegler was unceremoniously fired final week by the Loudoun County Faculty Board, hours after a particular grand jury report detailed that he and different directors had "failed at each juncture" in responding to 2 sexual assaults that occurred in Might and October 2021 in two separate excessive faculties within the northern Virginia college district. And earlier this week, a decide ordered the unsealing of three misdemeanor legal indictments in opposition to Ziegler.

However the former superintendent's fall from grace was hardly the catalyst for establishing Loudoun County because the epicenter of the grassroots parental rights motion that has swept the nation over the previous two years. Certainly, it solely represented the newest growth in a collection of tragic episodes that finally gripped nationwide headlines, influenced a governor's election, and culminated in legal prices in opposition to two senior officers within the college district.

ANGRY PARENTS CONFRONT LOUDOUN COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD AFTER GRAND JURY REPORT

Roughly a 45-minute drive sans site visitors from Washington, D.C., Loudoun County, Virginia, ranks among the many wealthiest localities within the nation. With sprawling suburban housing in its jap portion, giving option to a extra rural and exurban neighborhood with wineries and breweries to its west, this county of simply over 500 sq. miles counts many lobbyists, politicians, political activists, attorneys, authorities workers, and contractors amongst its inhabitants of over 420,000.

For a lot of of its residents, Loudoun represents a area completely suited to household residing: spacious properties in pristine white-picket-fence suburbs, a plethora of native companies and facilities, and a well-funded and extremely rated college district, all inside cheap commuting distance from main hubs of commerce and authorities.

However the path the varsity district on this extremely prosperous suburb took to the nationwide highlight started in the summertime and fall of 2020, when a nationwide battle over the reopening of colleges to in-person instruction after pandemic closures was being waged on the native stage.

Regardless of being among the many most well-funded within the nation, Loudoun County Public Faculties was considered one of hundreds of college districts nationwide that did not open full-time till after the calendar had flipped to 2021. Within the meantime, a cohort of fogeys had organized out of anger on the district's failure to supply in-person instruction, they usually had been infuriated over growing proof of vital race principle at school curricula.

Teams corresponding to Dad and mom In opposition to Essential Principle had been established to oppose the district's leftward flip. And the political motion committee Struggle for Faculties, led by Ian Prior, a seasoned political activist, started a yearslong effort to oust members of the varsity board for taking part in a Fb group referred to as "Anti-Racist Dad and mom of Loudoun County" that compiled an inventory of names of fogeys who had opposed the district's "fairness" initiatives.

However whereas related guardian teams had sprung up at school districts everywhere in the nation and confronted related opposition, a seminal second for Loudoun County occurred on Might 25, 2021. On that day, Tanner Cross, a fitness center trainer at Leesburg Elementary Faculty, addressed the varsity board throughout its public remark interval to oppose proposed coverage 8040, which might enable college students to make use of rest room amenities similar to their said gender id.

Three days later, Cross was suspended from his job. However that very same day, Might 28, 2021, a male scholar, reportedly carrying a skirt, sexually assaulted a feminine scholar within the woman's rest room of Stone Bridge Excessive Faculty in Ashburn, Virginia.

The Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative authorized group, sued on behalf of Cross, searching for a court docket order to have the fitness center trainer reinstated, which was later granted.

On June 22, 2021, the varsity board assembly descended into chaos as speaker after speaker referred to as on the board to reject coverage 8040. At that assembly, Ziegler, who was then superintendent, mentioned that to his information, there had been no sexual assaults at school loos regardless of having beforehand been knowledgeable of the Stone Bridge incident a month prior.

The enduring picture from that June assembly was Scott Smith, the daddy of the Stone Bridge Excessive Faculty sexual assault sufferer who was hauled away by legislation enforcement after a bodily confrontation.

In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Prior, the chief director of Struggle for Faculties, mentioned that Cross's suspension and the June 22, 2021, assembly finally proved to be a "twin catalyst" for Loudoun's place because the epicenter of the parental rights motion.

"As soon as that occurred, they [the school board] weren't simply coping with a bunch of kind of unorganized dad and mom which might be coming collectively for the primary time," Prior mentioned. "They're coping with ... a well-oiled machine that had come collectively over the previous yr."

Whereas the board finally accepted coverage 8040 in August 2021, Smith's arrest on the June 2021 assembly was cited by the Nationwide Faculty Boards Affiliation in a September 2021 letter asking the Biden administration to invoke the Patriot Act and examine dad and mom protesting at college board conferences as home terrorists. The group later retracted and apologized for the letter, which was reportedly solicited by senior Biden administration officers, however not earlier than Lawyer Common Merrick Garland approved the creation of a joint FBI/Justice Division job pressure to analyze threats in opposition to college board members.

The NSBA letter and the Garland memo supplied a catalyst for conservative guardian activists throughout the nation to decry the Biden administration for what they mentioned amounted to weaponizing federal legislation enforcement in opposition to dad and mom involved in regards to the state of their native public faculties.

Days after the Garland memo was launched, the identical scholar who had assaulted Smith's daughter within the rest room of Stone Bridge Excessive Faculty, now transferred to Broad Run Excessive Faculty by order of the varsity district, assaulted one other feminine scholar in an empty classroom.

As the main points of the assault made nationwide headlines, then-gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) and legal professional basic candidate Jason Miyares (R-VA) vowed to analyze the varsity district's conduct in response to each assaults in the event that they had been elected.

On Nov. 2, 2021, each Youngkin and Miyares defeated their Democratic opponents and had been sworn into workplace in January. In April, Miyares, on the route of Youngkin, impaneled the grand jury that finally indicted Ziegler, the previous Loudoun superintendent, on three misdemeanor prices and in addition indicted LCPS Public Data Officer Wayde Byard on a felony perjury cost.

Acknowledged as an essential determine within the parental rights motion on account of his work in Loudoun, Prior says the board's need to enact coverage 8040 motivated the improper response to the assault at Stone Bridge Excessive Faculty, inadvertently offering the parental rights motion with a watershed second and finally dooming the board's credibility.

"You could have a trainer go and communicate out in opposition to this coverage that no person was actually monitoring at the moment, and he will get suspended, and never solely it turns into a lawsuit within the span of every week, three days later, you have got the scenario at Stone Bridge," Prior mentioned. "[The school board] knew that this coverage was going to be a problem. However with these two occasions occurring, they knew it was going to be an explosive situation."

"The very last thing that they wanted was a second story about [policy] 8040 earlier than attempting to go it," Prior added, referring to the assault within the Stone Bridge Excessive Faculty rest room.

"As I look again on it now, even then, you would really feel a sea change in our struggle, the place the coalition obtained a lot larger and it was not about an enemies record or vital race principle," Prior mentioned. "That is when it grew to become about 'there's a rot in Loudoun County Public Faculties.'"

Prior and Smith had been amongst dozens of fogeys who returned to the varsity board's assembly chambers Tuesday within the wake of Ziegler's firing and legal indictment to demand the members of the board who had been lively on the time of the assaults to resign and clear home.

"You have already failed this week," Smith informed the board on the assembly Tuesday. "The principals are nonetheless at each faculties. That is your job that ought to have been dealt with inside minutes of you taking [Scott] Ziegler's job. Why is not it accomplished? Why are these principals nonetheless there?"