Virginia Mother and father: Complicit Faculty Board Members ‘All Must Resign Now’

Faculty board members in Loudoun County, Virginia, took a beating from dad and mom Tuesday evening throughout an particularly fiery public assembly.

The assembly was dad and mom’ first alternative to specific their displeasure since a 92-page particular grand jury report, launched Dec. 5, described how Loudoun County Public Faculties egregiously mishandled two instances of sexual assault that threatened to disrupt implementation of the college district’s transgender lavatory coverage.

“Each considered one of you that stood and guarded Ziegler, you guys all must resign now,” declared Scott Smith, a dad or mum whom the Loudoun County Faculty Board had arrested when he first tried to talk out in regards to the lack of penalties after his daughter’s assault in a women’ restroom in school.

Smith was referring to Faculties Superintendent Scott Ziegler, who the college board just lately terminated with a beneficiant severance bundle. Based mostly upon the grand jury report, Ziegler was indicted Monday on one rely every of false publication, prohibited conduct, and penalizing an worker for a courtroom look.

The Loudoun faculty district’s former public data officer, Wayde Byard, additionally was indicted on one rely of perjury.

The grand jury report concluded that Loudoun County Public Faculties directors “had been looking for their very own pursuits as a substitute of the most effective pursuits of LCPS” and consequently confirmed “a shocking lack of openness, transparency, and accountability each to the general public and the particular grand jury.”

But the college board mentioned it was “happy” that “in depth investigation discovered no proof of legal conduct on the a part of anybody inside LCPS, and never a single indictment was filed on account of this prolonged course of.”

That was earlier than costs in opposition to Ziegler and Byard had been filed.

One Loudoun County dad or mum expressed the sentiment many felt.

“To make an announcement—a proper assertion no much less, an official assertion—indicating that you just’re ‘happy’ is disgusting. It’s so disgusting,” Elicia Model-Leudemann advised the board. “My 7-year-old was suspended for carrying a masks. You didn’t even droop the rapist. Do the precise factor. Resign.”

Model-Leudemann added: “Extra indictments will come down, and you might be all compromised. Disgrace on you, [school board Vice Chairman] Ian Serotkin, to your untimely, victory-lap put up celebrating no indictments.”

Members of the college board hoped to make use of the assembly to suggest insurance policies to extend transparency. However dad and mom had been skeptical.

“Everyone is aware of that is simply extra cover-up, extra of the identical, till there’s a cleaner home and extra indictments and extra individuals held accountable,” Smith mentioned. “We’re mainly right here tonight doing the identical factor we had been doing a 12 months in the past. Nothing has modified.”

“Why wasn’t this achieved earlier than?” grandparent Chris Hodges requested. “It’s after the actual fact, and these are simply commonsense suggestions that ought to have been commonsense a 12 months, or two, or three years in the past.”

Mom Cheryl Onderchain mentioned: “I’m not assured this faculty board, nearly all of them, are going to take any actions which can be going to make a distinction.”

Faculty board member Tiffany Polifko, who gained a seat within the 2021 election with a pro-parent platform, additionally was skeptical.

“Cleansing up the language” wouldn’t deal with “the true issues right here and the elephant within the room,” Polifko mentioned. “We’ve got to speak in regards to the elephant within the room, which is the failure of Loudoun County to satisfy [the convicted student assailant’s] wants to start with.”

“No one goes to belief Loudoun County Public Faculties so long as the seven members of the college board that had been in workplace final 12 months when this all occurred, and all through the grand jury course of, are nonetheless sitting on that dais,” mentioned Ian Prior, a Loudoun County dad or mum who’s govt director of Struggle for Faculties.

“You hitched your wagon to a political agenda and Scott Ziegler, the person who would implement that agenda, your lightning rod,” an impassioned Prior advised the board. “And regardless of an impartial assessment, regardless of the information and proof that we laid at the doorstep, you stored him on, and also you praised his integrity. You gave him a $30,000 increase and a $300,000 golden parachute.”

In a letter printed Tuesday, Struggle for Faculties known as for the superintendent’s termination to be revised from “with out trigger” to “with trigger.” The letter additionally known as for the dismissal of faculty district lawyer Robert Falconi and the discharge of an impartial report performed by the college board as “a essential first step to reestablish belief and confidence on this board.”

“Disgrace on you for all of your wickedness and duplicity,” dad or mum Meggan Jenkins mentioned. “Two women turned sacrificial lambs to additional your political agenda.”

Prior additionally advised the board: “You and your allies tried and fail[ed] to discredit us. You and your allies tried and didn’t discredit and impede a grand jury, and then you definately spiked the soccer by yourself 20-yard line.”

“You selected to be historical past’s villains,” he mentioned. “There is no such thing as a escape from that legacy. You might have a selection: unconditional give up or unconditional give up.”

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