LEESBURG, Va. — A jury returned a split decision in the trial of a former Loudoun County Public Schools superintendent Friday. Dr. Scott Ziegler was found guilty of retaliating against a special education teacher for talking to a parents' rights activist about how the school district was handling a student's inappropriate touching, but not guilty of penalizing her for testifying in a special grand jury investigation into separate sexual assault allegations.
Jurors deliberated for more than six hours before returning their verdict Friday afternoon following three days of testimony. Ziegler served as superintendent of Loudoun County Public Schools until December 2022, when he was fired by the board following the release of a special grand jury report into how the district handled sexual assaults at two county high schools. Ziegler was charged with making a false statement and unlawfully retaliating against special education teacher Erin Brooks.
Brooks served as the key witness in the case, which was prosecuted by Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares’ office. Governor Glenn Youngkin, who campaigned on platform heavily focused on parents’ rights in schools, signed an executive order directing Miyares to open an investigation into the district as one of his first acts as governor.
Brooks was a teacher at Rosa Lee Carter Elementary School during the spring semester of 2022 when, she told jurors this week, one of her students in a self-contained special education classroom began repeatedly and inappropriately touching her and her teaching assistant, Laurie Vandermuelen. Brooks said the touching escalated to such a frequency and degree that she became distraught at school administrators’ inability or unwillingness to help her. She filed a Title IX complaint with the district and eventually reached out to Ian Prior, the executive director of the right-wing parents rights group Fight for Schools, to make a statement during a public school board meeting on her behalf.
Prosecutors Theophani Stamos and Brandon Wrobleski argued that angered Ziegler, who was already under the “white-hot light” of public scrutiny due to the ongoing special grand jury investigation. Stamos said Ziegler subsequently made it clear he wanted Brooks fired and employees below him began hatching a plot to fabricate a disciplinary cause not to renew her contract.
Ziegler’s attorney, Erin Harrigan, argued Brooks was not renewed after she failed to implement a plan designed to correct the special education student’s inappropriate behavior. Harrigan called Diane Mackey, the principal at Rosa Lee Carter Elementary School who recommended Brooks’ contract not be renewed, to rebut the commonwealth’s argument.
Mackey told jurors she was shocked when she learned Brooks had described the unwanted touching as sexual assault, saying the student in question was a 10-year-old non-verbal student with autism and the cognitive development of a toddler. Mackey said after a meeting with Brooks she immediately decided to remove the student from her classroom. She later wrote a year-end evaluation saying Brooks had created an “unsafe, unproductive” classroom for her students.
During the commonwealth’s closing arguments Thursday, Wrobleski told jurors Mackey and other LCPS employees had invented their criticisms against Brooks whole cloth and had failed in their duty both to her and her students.
“If the school system had actually helped Erin Brooks we wouldn’t be talking about any of this,” he said.
Ziegler was scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 4 by Loudoun County Circuit Court Judge Douglas Fleming Jr. He faces up to a year in prison. Ziegler is also scheduled to begin another trial in February on on count of making a false statement for claiming during a televised school board meeting that he was unaware of any reports of sexual assaults at Loudoun County Schools.