Loudoun County School officials fire superintendent for failure to protect students from sexual assaults

Loudoun County Public Schools fired Superintendent Scott Ziegler one day after a grand jury report blasted the district’s handling of two sexual assaults by the same student.

The school board in Virginia voted unanimously during a closed-door meeting Tuesday to fire Ziegler, Wayde Byard, a spokesman for the school board, confirmed to WTOP. Ziegler will be paid his $323,000 annual salary and will receive other compensation for the next year.

The grand jury report found that administrators at the Northern Virginia school district “failed at every juncture” to protect students who had been sexually assaulted in an incident that drew national attention.

Last year, parents previously accused school officials of covering up a sexual assault by a gender-fluid student after they assaulted a female student in the girls’ bathroom. The student was then transferred to another school where they sexually assaulted another girl.

The grand jury report found that school officials failed to protect students and instead of disciplining the student, they allowed them to assault another student at a different school.

The grand jury report found that, despite multiple school officials being made aware of the first assault, none of them did anything about it.

“We believe that throughout this ordeal LCPS administrators were looking out for their own interests instead of the best interests of LCPS. This invariably led to a stunning lack of openness, transparency and accountability both to the public and the special grand jury,” the report said.

The report added that no “coordinated cover-up” was found between the school and members of the school board, as some have alleged.