A year ago, Loudoun County, Virginia, was launched into a political maelstrom after a private Facebook group named “The Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County” was exposed by the Daily Wire for plotting against parents who were speaking up at school board meetings.
Six school board members, various school administrators, teachers, and Soros-backed Commonwealth Attorney Buta Biberaj were all a part of the group.
The activities of this online mob led to a successful campaign against the school board members who were involved. Parents gathered more than 25,000 signatures for their removal in court. One member has already resigned, and two more will appear in Loudoun County Circuit Court on May 23 for motion hearings in their removal cases.
But that was just the beginning. Throughout the summer of 2021, the school board and county administration ignored community outcry and introduced Policy 8040, which compels teachers and students to refer to other students by their preferred pronouns and allows students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their “gender identity.”
LCPS began its push for the policy in late spring when most parents weren’t paying attention. However, they began to realize what was happening when LCPS unlawfully suspended teacher Tanner Cross for speaking out at a school board meeting in opposition to the proposal of Policy 8040. Much of the outrage and activism that successfully pressured LCPS to suspend him was from — you guessed it — the same group that had plotted against parents in March: The Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County.
The Loudoun County Circuit Court eventually ordered LCPS to reinstate Cross, but his suspension had at least one benefit: It motivated hundreds of parents to show up to the next two school board meetings, including the June 22 school board meeting, during which the board discussed the policy Cross had opposed.
In attendance were parents Scott and Jessica Smith. They had a very good reason to be concerned about the bathroom safety issues Policy 8040 presented. On May 28, 2021, their daughter was sexually assaulted by a boy wearing a skirt in a high school girls’ bathroom.
When Scott Smith was confronted by another attendee claiming that she did not believe his daughter, he understandably lost his cool and was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct.
Superintendent Scott Ziegler claimed that “he was unaware of any records of sexual assaults in bathrooms,” even though he had emailed the board about the May 28 sexual assault on the day it happened. Neither Zeigler nor any other school board member has attempted to correct the record, which is a gross neglect of duty.
Had they corrected the record to confirm that the assault did, in fact, take place and that school officials were aware of it, it is probable that Policy 8040 would never have passed 7-2 on Aug. 11. It is also possible that, had the public known about what happened on May 28, LCPS would not have been able to transfer the offender quietly to another high school, where he was able to commit a second sexual assault on Oct. 6, 2021.
After passing the policy, the administration quietly implemented Regulation 8040, which reads: “A student’s gender identity or transgender status should not be shared without the student’s consent, even internally among school personnel except to those with a legitimate educational interest or need to know.” (Emphasis added). The effect of this regulation was to allow school officials to hide information about a student’s gender status from parents, a major violation of parents’ rights under the U.S. Constitution and Virginia law.
An August 2021 teacher training confirmed this was the intent of the regulation: ”Privacy and confidentiality are critical for transgender students who have families that do not support or affirm their gender identity,” it reads. (Emphasis added).
During the school board meeting on Aug. 11, 2021, when Policy 8040 was passed, school board member Jeff Morse expressed serious reservations about parents not being notified about their students’ gender status. School board member Denise Corbo mentioned that she had discussed these concerns via email with the superintendent. When I sent a FOIA request for those emails, it was denied based on “correspondence of the Chief Executive Officer of a Political Subdivision of the Commonwealth of Virginia.”
Interestingly, the “Chief Executive Officer” title was drafted on Dec. 9, 2021, and was approved by vote on Jan. 25, 2022. Given parents’ success in exposing Loudoun County Public Schools via FOIA in 2021, it stands to reason that this change was made specifically to allow LCPS to exercise a FOIA exclusion to withhold public records from the community.
In an even more striking example of blocking transparency and accountability, after Attorney General Jason Miyares announced on Nov. 4, 2021, that his office would investigate LCPS for its handling of sexual assaults, Superintendent Ziegler announced that the district had commissioned its own “independent review” to look into the matter.
As it turned out, the lawyers brought in to do the “independent review” were already on retainer with LCPS, casting doubts on both sides about whether this would really be an independent review. Those doubts were bolstered in January when LCPS refused to release the results of the “independent review” based on attorney-client privilege. Fight for Schools, the organization that I lead, has filed a lawsuit to force the release of that report, and we will argue that case in Loudoun County Circuit Court on April 20.
Still, parents in Loudoun County should have hope. Last week, Loudoun County Circuit Court scheduled further hearings on May 23 in the removal cases against two school board members. It was also revealed last week that a special grand jury has convened to investigate Loudoun County Public Schools.
And Gov. Glenn Youngkin recently amended a bill that, if passed, would allow Loudoun County residents to vote for new school board members in 2022, a year earlier than scheduled. Those who oppose that amendment will have to explain why more elections are a bad idea, especially after everything that has happened in Loudoun this past year.
One way or another, the battle of Loudoun County is fast approaching a resolution. Will special interests, activism by the social media mob, and the rights of the woke bureaucracy win the day? Or will parental rights, transparency, and accountability prevail?
Go ahead and put some money down on the latter.
Ian Prior is a senior adviser at America First Legal, executive director of Fight for Schools, and a former Trump Justice Department official.
