Loudoun County Public Schools
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
Updated – January 4, 2024
Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) reported 12 suspected student illicit drug overdoses since the beginning of the 2023-24 school year; eight were students at Park View High School.
In October 2023, Park View High School experienced seven student drug overdoses within a 3-week period. Four of the overdoses occurred on school grounds and three of those students were revived with naloxone, also known as Narcan. Additionally, two of the three revivals required CPR by school staff.
In an October 17 email to central office administrators, Park View High School Principal Jason B. Jefferson wrote:
“Twice within five days, my staff has had to view the lifeless body of a student who was in distress due to the effects of an ongoing epidemic in our larger community. This challenge causes individuals like myself to question if we are capable of doing the jobs we signed up to do. It is one thing to hear of an overdose of a student, but another to feel that you could possibly be the cause of not bringing a life back when it is nothing that you can control.”
He further claimed the school received “limited support” from the district when similar overdoses occurred in the past:
“My deepest fear is that one of my students will unalive (death by suicide or homicide) themselves in my building because we are not able to respond quickly to the overdose or they have taken too much fentanyl to be saved by school staff.”
“We are in need of assistance! We need drug enforcement dogs in our school. We need a more directed substance abuse plan to appropriately address students who are suffering. We cannot expect students who are suffering to be fully engaged in the instructional program of our district.”
Loudoun Times-Mirror obtained emails on November 27 through a public records request that show some Loudoun County school board members were shocked to learn about the overdoses. In one email, Board Member Jeffrey Morse said to Superintendent Aaron Spence:
“Aaron – I’d like to know the timeline of the incidents, the school’s ‘family message’, the first indication that the sheriff or local media was inquiring into this, and who made the decision not to provide the board notification of 8 (?!!) student OD’s, four of which were reportedly on campus.”
Morse said the school board was unaware of the extent of the problem within the district until their student rep told them “drug abuse, particularly fentanyl” was a problem at the school. He explained, “Our Park View school board rep mentioned this and the school board was completely unaware of the extent. When are we going to learn the hard lessons of transparency?”
In response, Superintendent Spence wrote:
“There was not a decision made to withhold information, but I accept responsibility for your lack of awareness as I did not decide or direct my team to make you aware specifically. I intend to ensure that the Board is made aware of any overdose as a matter of course.”
The overdoses were only made aware to the public after the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office issued a press release. Thomas Julia, communications director for the sheriff’s office, said they felt the need to draw more attention to the issue.
“Normally we allow the schools to take the lead in this, but in all honesty, we felt that there was not enough public information being put out there of what was actually happening.”
On November 1, 2023, Governor Glenn Youngkin passed Executive Order 28 which requires school districts to notify all parents of a “school-connected student overdose” within 24 hours. Youngkin stated:
“Transparency and community awareness are essential to ensuring the safety and well-being of Virginia’s children. The Loudoun County Public Schools division reportedly waited more than 20 days to inform parents despite clear evidence of numerous incidents of overdoses among the students. Failure to promptly notify parents endangers the health and welfare of their children and limits parents’ fundamental right to make decisions concerning the upbringing, education, and care of their children.”
Updated – December 8, 2022
On December 7, 2022, NBC 4 Washington News reported the firing of Loudon County Public Schools (LCPS) Superintendent Scott Ziegler. Ziegler\’s dismissal was allegedly due to him withholding information on sex crimes that occurred on school grounds.
NBC 4 said, “The Loudoun County School Board voted unanimously to immediately fire [Ziegler] during a closed session Tuesday, a day after a special grand jury report detailed failures with how the school district handled two sexual assaults involving the same student.”
NBC 4 continued, “A student sexually assaulted a female student at Stone Bridge High School in May 2021, but was allowed to transfer to Broad Run High School [BRHS], where he abducted and sexually assaulted another female student in October. The teen was later convicted in juvenile court.”
“The sexual assault occurred in the female restroom while the assailant was wearing a skirt…National outrage focused on Loudoun County because the student was labeled as gender fluid, LCPS had recently passed a transgender policy to conform with the Virginia Department of Education’s model policy…”
The report overview states,
“We believe that throughout this ordeal LCPS administrators were looking out for their own interests instead of the best interests of LCPS…There were several decision points for senior LCPS administrators, up and including the superintendent, to be transparent and step in and alter the sequence of events leading up to the October 6 BRHS sexual assault. They failed at every juncture.”
The report also said it did not find a coordinated effort between administrators to cover up crimes, but that School Board members were “deliberately deprived of information regarding these incidents until after the October sexual assault.” Ziegler failed to openly communicate details in his emails to administrative staff.
The 2022 Virginia DOE Model Policy mentioned in the report focuses on “the treatment of transgender students in Virginia’s public schools.” This updated policy was established to correct issues in the 2021 model that “disregarded the rights of parents and ignored other legal and constitutional principles that significantly impact how schools educate…transgender students.”
NBC 4 said, “The school board voted to terminate the employment of Dr. Ziegler…without cause…Termination ‘without cause’ is significant because Ziegler’s contract with LCPS stipulates that he receive one year of severance totaling $337,000 if he is fired without cause.”
LCPS Chief of Staff, Dr. Daniel Smith, is the leading candidate for interim superintendent.
Updated – July 29, 2022
According to ABC-7, The Loudon County Superintendent, Scott Ziegler, will receive a $28,000 raise for the 2022-2023 school year. It is one of the largest pay raises in county history for a public official.
The school board approved Ziegler’s salary, which will reach $323,000 yearly. It further includes a $1,000 vehicle allowance.
The raise comes in spite of allegations that Ziegler covered up multiple sexual assaults within the district.
Updated – July 8, 2022
America First Legal (AFL), through its Center for Legal Equality, has filed a lawsuit against Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) for “the district’s systemic and egregious moral corruption of children and its deliberate, and almost gleeful, violations of parental rights to control the upbringing of their children,” Fox News reports.
On June 29, AFL stated in a press release:
“Parents across the country will be shocked and horrified to see a once-respected school system systematically destroyed in the name of woke orthodoxy… The delusion that public school bureaucrats–not parents–have the right, the authority, and the power to decide what’s best for a child is a sickness that has spread across the country to schools in all states.”
The case was filed against Superintendent Scott A. Ziegler, the school board as a whole, and each member on LCPS Board of Education. Eleven parents of LCPS students are named as plaintiffs, some of whom have also joined a previous sexual assault lawsuit against the school board late last year.
Below, a list of accusations against LCPS includes:
— Filling classroom libraries with books that encourage children to question their gender as early as Kindergarten.
— Forcing students to publicly provide their pronouns in front of class.
— Making it virtually impossible for parents to remove the pornographic books available to children in libraries.
— Refusing student’s requests to go to the water fountain or restroom as a form of retaliation for not wearing a mask.
— Hiding information from parents by charging exorbitant fees or claiming legally deficient exemptions of Freedom of Information Act requests.
AFL Senior Advisor, Ian Prior, told Fox News Digital:
“I think that LCPS has really been the poster child across the country for…epic mismanagement and violation of parental rights and commitment to… really what has become almost a state sponsored religion of wokeism.”
The civil lawsuit asks the court to find that the school district violated the constitutional and other legal rights of the 11 Loudoun parents; to have a special master appointed to monitor the school district; to require the county to pay for the plaintiff\’s children to receive a “constitutionally compliant education” at another school; and a minimum grant of $1.5 million in damages.
Updated – June 15, 2022
Two Loudoun County teachers were fired after speaking about sexual assaults that happened in two different Loudoun County schools. The two spoke at a school board meeting describing the school district’s “repeated retaliation” for speaking out about sexual assaults at their schools and the board’s subsequent inaction.
This comes as the Loudoun County School District is under a grand jury investigation surrounding the apparent coverup of a sexual assault by a boy wearing a dress. One teacher said:
Upon her firing, the teacher said that her principal told her, “It didn’t have to look like this, but you made choices.”
Another teacher gave a similar story and spoke out as well. After describing details about a sexual assault by a student after another person spoke to the school board about their unresponsiveness to sexual assault issues, the teacher said, “your response was to launch a smear campaign against me and move the student to another classroom–.”
While in the middle of her testimony, she was promptly cut off by a board member who asked her to watch her statements when speaking about students. After this, attendees yelled at the member’s interjection. The teacher continued her story saying, “I have been labeled by you as unacceptable.”
At the end of the meeting, the teacher finished her remarks and pleaded to the school board saying, “Please stop with the intimidation, stop with the defamation, stop trying to cover this up. Face the issues head-on.”
The speeches come as Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, under the direction of a day-one executive order signed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, empaneled a grand jury to investigate the apparent sexual assault coverup of a student who was assaulted in the girl’s restroom by a boy wearing a dress. The coverup appears to have been an attempt to ensure no bad PR came with the new transgender guidelines allowing boys into girls’ restrooms and locker rooms.
The Loudoun County Public Schools serve over 83,606 students in 95 schools and is the third-largest by enrollment in the state of Virginia.
