The Dispatch Podcast - What’s Happening In Loudoun County?

Episode Date: October 29, 2021

On today's podcast, Sarah and David talk with Ian Prior, executive director of Fight for Schools, to discuss what exactly is happening in Loudoun County, Virginia. Critical race theory in schools? A sexual assault controversy? And how will this all affect the race for governor in Virginia? Show Notes: -Prior “More Va. Public Schools Using Kids As Guinea Pigs For Critical Race Theory” -French Press “When the State Kinda Sorta Parents Your Child” -The Sweep: Down to the Wire in Virginia Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgir, and we've got a special podcast for you today. So I'm joined by David French because we are talking to Ian Pryor. Ian is the founder of an organization called Fight for Schools based in Loudoun County, Virginia, a place that many of you, I suspect, have heard about. And we're going to talk about critical race theory in schools, the sexual assault controversy that was brought in a national attention. And we're going to talk about critical race theory in schools, the sexual assault controversy that was brought in a national attention. And we're going to talk about. And we're going to talk about critical. And we're going to talk about the Virginia governor's race, but something that comes out of this conversation that I found really fascinating was the reemergence of the concept. Maybe all politics really is local. Let's dive right in. So before we get started, a couple disclaimers, One, Ian, you and I work together at the Department of Justice. We go way back now and have spent many a long hour working together. So definitely a pre-existing relationship. I am not unbiased when it comes to Ian Friar.

Second disclaimer, Ian has two wonderful girls who are home for fall break today. So if you hear joy in the background, it is coming from them. but let's just jump right into Loudoun County. So Loudoun County's been in the news a lot. Not a lot of people know a lot about Loudoun County. Can you explain the politics, the COVID history? Just what is Loudoun County? Yeah, so absolutely.

And thanks for having me. You know, Loudoun County is considered an excerpt of Washington, D.C. So it's about 50, 50 minutes, 60 minutes outside of Washington. The best way I could describe it is, you know, it's rural farmland in sort of the western area, but in the eastern area, it's grown massively. And there's a couple of reasons for that. There's a lot of data centers out here. So that's attracting a ton of work. But it's also, you know, a place where people that lived in Arlington or Alexandria or Fairfax that wanted to get a house with a yard where their kids could

play or go for, you know, better schools could move out there and have more space. And, you know, your money goes a lot further when you're looking at property, rental purchasing houses in Loudoun County than it would in Alexandria. So that's kind of the Loudoun County story. It had primarily been, you know, mainly Republican, certainly at the local level. You know, it is obviously trended the other way as far back as, you know, 2013. But locally, you know, 2019 is where you saw a big flip on the board of supervisors and at the school board level. Now, you know, a lot of people out here will say, well, you know, you voted for the school board. I mean, you clearly, you know, agreed with their policies, but it's not quite that simple.

I mean, as you know, you're looking at 2016, Trump is elected. 2017, the traditional, you know, break pedal starts. And we have a gubernatorial election here and, you know, Northam wins. By the time you get to 2019, that's still going on. So even at the local level, you started to get that natural pushback from Democrats. That's the other part of it that's interesting is school board elections out here are nonpartisan. And so when you're going down the ballot in 2019, you know, you may be Republican and you get to the school board level. And you probably have never heard of these people.

And if you have heard of these people, maybe you read one article, one place that said, this guy wants more school buses. This lady wants more recess. And like, okay, sure. Yeah, great. Sounds fantastic. There is certainly nothing along the lines of. We are going to completely politicize your schools. So that's kind of the framework of what Loudoun County looks like in probably March of 2020 when, you know, COVID hits.

And then what happens in COVID? Because obviously for large, for lots of counties around the country, public schools shut down for some amount of time. And then when they reopened was really different based on where you lived. Yeah. So, you know, COVID hit in March, Loudoun County public schools immediately shut down. switched to a distance learning program, you know, really trying to get a hold of it. And I don't think anybody during those first few months was, you know, everyone was no idea what's going on, right? How it affects kids, how it affects adults. I mean, there was so much we didn't know.

So there was no real issue in that first spring of 2020. But then you get into the summer and that's when we started to learn that, you know, we're not going to go back to full-time in-person learning in the fall. Now, I wasn't really involved at this point. But this is, you know, learning from everybody else that was. And there was a big push to get schools reopened. And so what you had was a lot of parents that started organically organizing these groups that were pushing for schools to open. They protested an announcement. I think it was in June or July of 2020. They started going to school board meetings, trying to get schools reopened. And as that happened, you know, you build a little bit of a bigger coalition and a core, crew of people started showing up to school board meetings. And then in January, one guy, his name's Brandon Mishon went up and kind of gave the first viral moment in Loudoun County where he just yelled at the school board and said, figure it out and, you know, that he ended up on Tucker. And that was kind of a precursor of things to come. But, you know, they eventually got

to the point, I think, in March, where they started doing combinations. So, you know, the kids would go to school a few days a week and then they'd be at home a few days. days a week. And by the time you got to April, it was four days a week in school and only one day a week, you know, that was hybrid, which really means just checking on a computer and, you know, go play video games after. All right. So that's the lay of the land. We now all, you know, have the exact same experience of just having lived in Loudoun County for two years, super helpful. But things really took off from there. So talk about how fight for schools gets created and how you get involved, which is messy, right? It's not just that you had this.

idea, there's a Facebook group of what you start calling Chardonnay Antifa. Yeah. Yeah. So this is actually interesting. I had never gone to a school board meeting. I wasn't paying attention to schools issues. I saw an article in the free beacon that said it was last summer that Loudoun County Public Schools was using Southern Poverty Law Center materials to teach social justice.

And I was like, okay. I remember Southern Poverty Law Center from being at DOJ, and I'm going to check into this. And so I emailed the principal. They're like, no, we're not. But then somebody said, oh, go to the one of these equity committee meetings. So I went to these equity committee meetings online, and they were talking about Loudoun County's detailed plan to end systemic racism and Loudoun County's equitable equity plan. And I'm like, what is this?

This is kind of interesting. And they kept talking about the equity collaborative. The equity collaborative recommended this and the lawsuit from the Attorney General's office. I'm like, oh, let me dig into this. So I read this equity collaborative report. And what they did was they hired this equity collaborative consulting company out of California to come in and do an assessment on their systemic racism. And so what they did was they interviewed a bunch of parents and students for focus groups. but they excluded Asian Americans and Caucasian Americans from the focus groups.

So they took this focus group and they started asking people questions. And it was all very anecdotal. And maybe they had 14, 15 participants, anonymous. And it was things like, you know, somebody would say, well, you know, my son, who's black, got in a fight with another kid who's white. And my son got suspended for three days. And that kid only got suspended for one day. And so they would conclude, well, that's clearly racism.

Right. Well, we don't know. I mean, we don't know if how this went down. We don't know the results of the discipline, what went into it. We only know this story of this mom. And it was kind of littered with those those kind of anecdotal things. And then the conclusions are, you know, yes, Loudoun County school system is, you know, essentially systemically racist. That eventually led to an attorney general investigation based on that report, which then led to a settlement by Loudoun County public schools of the investigation. which then turned Loudoun County into, you know, the center of equity and, you know, all that. So I thought that was really interesting. I ended up foying it, found out they spent a half a million dollars on this firm in 2019 alone. I also learned some other things. They were proposing a teacher code of conduct that would have disciplined teachers who spoke negatively about the school's commitment to equity, even on their own time and not just on social media. So if I'd like talking to my neighbor and she's a teacher and says, yeah,

I think what the school is doing is just over the top, I could call the school, you know, drop a dime on her and she could be subject to discipline. So I took those two things and I wrote an article in the Federalist in October. And then I went to a school board meeting and I spoke about the First Amendment issue on like the teacher code of conduct and then a new dress code that would, you know, ban anything that could possibly offend anyone. Literally, it said, anything that could be deemed offensive. And so, like, this has got some serious First Amendment problems. I can't believe they're doing this. But that was it, right? I mean, I was working on some campaigns last year. So November comes around, presidential election. I mean, we all know when you

work on campaigns, November and December, after that, if you're done, you're like, how many books can I read? How many shows can I binge, John? How little can I do until January? So that's kind of where I was at that point. And then March comes around, and I've gotten to know a couple of people in the community that were actively sort of pushing back on the school board on, you know, the critical race theory issue. And they, I ended up going to an event on March 12th for Pete Snyder, who was running in

the primary against Young kid at that point in time. And a bunch of these people told me that they said, hey, there's this private Facebook group. Can you look at this? Are they doing anything illegal? And so they sent me the screenshots. And it literally was one school board member says, we need to start pushing back on these people that are speaking out against critical race theory in schools. You know, I can't do it from my position because she had just been like censured and stripped of her committees for social media behavior like the week before. So, but you can. And so what happened was people just started saying all these mean things, right, in this private Facebook group.

But one person said, okay, here's the plan. Here's what we need to do. We need to infiltrate their groups. We need to publicly expose them through mailings and other measures. And we need to hack their websites and redirect them to pro-critical race theory websites. And then you get farther down and somebody else adds, Okay, here's how we're going to collect the names. First name, last name, area of residence, school board member. And people just started adding names, right? I mean, it was like between 60 and 70 people. And most of these people I've never even heard up, right?

I mean, they're not out there writing op-eds every day. They really were going through the school board meeting minutes and finding anybody that opposed the school board on anything and put them out there. And I get put on there twice, once we're going to the school board and speaking out on, quote, first amendment concerns was what they put in there. And then the other one was for my federalist article. And, you know, look, I was I was put on there by somebody I knew. And that didn't make me very happy. You know, I think I'm pretty mild-mannered individual and don't really get my dander up until somebody comes at me. And, you know, when they put your name in there,

they're not just putting your name in there. They're putting your kids' names in there, right? I mean, it's your last name. You had 600 people in that group. Among the people in this group were six school board members, the Commonwealth attorney, Buda Bivirai, and the member of the board of supervisors, Julie Briskman. She's the one that got elected for flipping off Trump. I don't know if you ever saw that in the Washington Post.

Yeah, so that's her. And there were tons of teachers and administrators, and people were scared. I mean, they were scared that people are going to call their work. work, you know, send mail, do whatever, I initially was mad for like 10 minutes. And then I'm like, wait a minute. This is actually a really like telling lesson about cancel culture. You know, this is not like we're canceling billionaire Dave Chappelle. This is cancel culture coming to your neighborhoods for speaking up at school board meetings. And most of the people

that were put on that list were actually speaking about opening schools, not critical race theory. And so, you know, I ended up going on Tucker, I think, a couple of days after the story broke because Luke Roziak from the Daily Wire broke the story. And that's, you know, that's where I deemed them Chardonnay Antifa, which was actually not my phrase. Somebody gave that to me literally on the car ride home or on the car ride there. They were just talking in a chat and they said Charday Antifa and I said, I'm using that. All right. Let's talk curriculum first. David, Why don't you start us off? Yeah.

So what is it specifically about the curriculum at Loudoun County that you've objected to? I know that there has been the, you know, we have seen reports of, for example, D-E-I training involving teachers. And what does D-E-I stand for? Diversity, equity, and inclusion. So we might use some, we might be using some acronyms here, CRT, critical race theory, DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion. They're not exactly the same thing, but DEI training is often heavily CRT influenced,

although they're not exactly the same thing. So walk through some of the specific curricular objections that you've had in the K-12 world at Loudoun County, as opposed to sort of the training of the teachers. Yeah, absolutely. So, well, just briefly, because this, I think, flows from that, but also kind of helps understand is that the majority of the issues flow down from the state to the school district itself, right? And you have these giant school districts,

and it's the administration that really holds the power. The school boards are basically end up being rubber stamps for the administration. So the administration, they have all these contracts with these teacher trainings, and they provide teacher trainings, but they also provide resources, right? And so, you know, you will get a teacher training and it'll say a bunch of different things. And at the end, it'll give you resources for preparation of classroom materials. And you'll get places like the Black Lives Matter movement, that Bettina Love individual, Ibram Kendi, right? So that's all in there. And the encouragement is you should use this to develop your classroom materials and your syllabus. Not all teachers will do that.

I've talked to dozens of teachers over the past couple of weeks during early voting who are like, yeah, we are not doing that. So, so, you know, I think to, I think it's important not to put the blame here on the teachers on all of them for sure. But as far as when it bleeds down into the classroom, you know, a couple of things that'll come top to top of mind. I had four slides that were sent to me. One was all about learning white fragility in Robin DiAngelo, and it just had all the terms, and I had little fishbowl cartoons. The other slide was white privilege,

so all the reasons why you could be white privileged. Then there was new words, right? So whatever woke word you can come up with, there was a whole vocabulary lesson on these new words. you know, whether it's gender issues or race issues. I mean, just go through an Abram-Kenni book. That's where you pull the words out. So those are the kind of the three most visual examples,

and it's tough because, you know, it's not a visual issue here. I had a second grade slide where they were talking about how women and minorities do not ever get credit for their work in America and that it is important to build anti, it is important in black history month to become an anti-racist activist. This is for second graders. Ibram Kendi is recommended in several schools. It's not, I think it's stamped is the book that they will, they will give out in junior high school. I'm trying to think a few more. There was obviously an incident in one of the high schools, which went kind of viral in March, where, you know, you had a kid, you have two twins, their fraternal twins, one's white,

one's black. They're on screen and the teacher was like, what do you see here? And the kid's like, I see two people chilling. And it's like, yeah, but what do you really see? It's like, what do you mean? What do I really see? I see two people showing. It's like, come on, you're being difficult here. You're telling me you don't see anything different here. He's like, are you trying to get me to talk about the race? Because I don't really see how that's relevant. You know, it gives me nothing. Aren't we supposed to be getting away from that? Like, why does the skin color really matter? And the teachers like, yes, it does matter. It does matter. And it is like that video went viral high school at one of the Loudoun County areas here. And then I guess the last thing, which, you know,

it's not necessarily critical race theory as, well, I guess it is. I mean, because we define critical race theory as Western liberalism, equal opportunity, meritocracy, perpetuate systemic racism. This, this would be that to me. My daughter comes home one day. The night before I had read a book, like a cartoon book about Columbus, selling to America, and I read it to my two kids, who were seven or five at the time. The next day, I kid you not, my daughter comes home and says, why did you read me a book about a bad guy? And I'm like, what are you talking about? And she's like, well, I learned that Columbus killed a lot of people and was evil and took all these slaves. I'm like, well, okay, how did you learn that? She's like, I learned it in a video.

Like, do you have a video? She's like, yes. So she showed me the video. There's this thing called brain pop and on brain pop it was like a teenage millennial type gen z type kid and a robot and they're going through the history of Columbus and they're they say oh you know Columbus sailed the world but sailed across the Atlantic to America but you know he actually really didn't do anything this guy found it and oh here's what he did when he went there and then they show literally a cartoon of Columbus like dragging Native Americans on the ground and then there's a bunch of like dead ones all piled up, right? I mean, this is the second grader seeing this. And then they have the priests come in and they have pictures of the priests, like really mean-looking priests, like, you know, forcing their hands on

these people with this ominous cross, right, as they're saying, and they force them to, you know, convert to Christianity against their will. And then they have like a money symbol over Western Europe and said, this was all about greed. And then at the end, they say this is, and this is now why we don't celebrate Columbus Day, but Indigenous People's Day. And I'm like, first of all, the disclaimer on that video said middle school. And second of all, are you kidding me? So then I go in and I saw what I could find on my five-year-old's laptop and I found a whole Black Lives Matter video that, I mean, you would have thought that, you know, George Floyd was Martin Luther King. It was just, I'm like, are you kidding me? This is not appropriate for five-year-olds. And so those are the sampling of the

things that I've seen. You know, the way this all has worked, the issues have sometimes shifted from, you know, the racially divisive material to the sexually explicit material to actually assaults. So it's just kind of, you know, I think that CRT was sort of the big issue out here going into June, but it's shifted certainly since then. So you're, I guess you're familiar with the litigation that's been filed against Loudoun County, that there was a teacher who indicated outside of the classroom environment that he was not going to use preferred pronouns. And he sued, secured an injunction, I believe, as he absolutely should. Like if you're going to be at a school board meeting and you're going to say,

no, prefer, I'm, you know, I'm arguing against a proposed policy issue of public concern. This is like black letter law first. Amendment. So then you had, now here's where it gets really interesting. I love your thought about this. So now that lawsuit has been expanded to where you have teachers who are challenging the school policy that is going to deal with preferred pronouns. In other words, on the job. Now, they're filing it under the Virginia Constitution, not the First Amendment of the U.S., but according to the papers, this is, the Virginia Constitution's free expression clauses are deemed to be coextensive with the First Amendment, what's your thought on that litigation?

Because it's very interesting how it connects with the anti-CRT legislation around the country because a lot of the anti-CRT legislation around the country is premised on the idea that if you're a K-12 teacher, all your speech belong to the school, that you do not have free speech at all, period, end of discussion. But you've got litigation in Loudoun County saying, at least under the Virginia Constitution, that there is free speech rights, and there are free speech rights for educators on the job. And I thought that was very interesting. And I've long disliked the Garcetti precedent, and I've long disliked the idea that there are no free speech rights for public employees in the pursuit of their duties.

So I kind of know where I stand. I'm very interested to hear where you stand on the aspect of this case that is challenging Loudoun counties on the job speech regulations. Yeah. So that's an interesting question. I've thought a lot about this. And I actually listened to, I can't remember who exactly it was. I know it was somebody from National Review and then Camille, who, you know, has got a great podcast. And they were really debating sort of how to handle CRT. And I kind of fall more on the line of instead of banning things, make everything public. So if you have teacher trainings, you put that online. your classroom materials have to be online. And then it can play itself out in the Democrat process, democratic process every two years or through participation. Because I think that ultimately solves a lot of the problems that come up. It also allows parents, by the way.

Like if you don't like what they're telling your kid about Columbus, then you can talk to them at home about Columbus if you know that that's what's being said versus banning a book about Columbus or any books about Columbus because now neither side can ever talk about Columbus again. And I think that is a very healthy way to approach it. And just David and I have talked about how if you choose to send your kid to public school, you do lose a lot of your ability to control the curriculum during school hours. But you don't at home.

Yeah, no. So, I mean, I think I've always looked at this whole fight out here as very dependent on First Amendment rights. And, you know, from this Facebook group that's attacking people for extracur, in their First Amendment rights, to the school board that's shutting down public comment and preventing people from exercising their First Amendment rights, to them putting Tanner Cross on administrative leave for speaking out on a proposed policy that they invited comment for, and he lives in Loudoun County. I mean, you don't even have to go to law school to know that that is a bad case that you're going to have to defend. And what's amazing, and this just

goes to show, and I know this is a little bit of a tangent, because this whole private Facebook group filters into everything. So he gets put on it on administrative leave, and you had three school board members in this group, one of them talking about the case, and somebody gives a tip to one of these activists that the real reason why he was put on administrative leave legally was not because of what he said, but because of the disruption it caused. So we need to continue to cause a disruption at Leesburg Elementary to keep him on administrative leave. You've got three school board members in that group as they're talking about it. That's insane. But, you know, back to the lawsuit itself, you know, it's going to be very interesting because what you hear

from the left on this policy 8040 is, well, we had to pass that. We had to pass it just like we did because that's what the model policy in Virginia says. Well, no, that may be what the model policy says. that may be what the Virginia Department of Education says, but that's not what the law says. And the statute, all it requires is that you pass some kind of policy, right? Some kind of policy that addresses bullying, that addresses bathrooms, et cetera. You could have easily done that policy, gotten stakeholders together, figured out a way to do it so that you're not infringing on First Amendment rights, so that you're not infringing on religious liberties, and you would have been able to comply with the law.

And so I think that, you know, I think their case has a very good shot. I mean, it's just on the pronoun portion of it. The bathroom portion is a whole, there's a whole lot of other complications there legally. But, you know, it's going to, I think everyone's going to be tuned into that because I can tell you that, you know, I've met Tanner and his wife. I mean, they're just fantastic people. Monica Gill, I've met her, you know, met her back in April. She's a fantastic writer, fantastic speaker. She actually spoke at the Pence event yesterday up here.

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Application times may vary, rates may vary. So let's move to the Loudoun County sexual assault story. We now have a lot more facts that have come out since the initial reporting about it. And I want to kind of separate this into two different parts here. One, there's the narrative that this sort of, you know, proves something about bathroom policies, transgender students, and sexual assault. I think that has been largely disproven by the facts of this case, you know, that they had a preexisting sexual relationship,

that they had both chosen to meet in the bathroom that day. She says, no, he then forces her. to engage in sex acts and has been convicted of that. It had clearly nothing to do with a bathroom policy that wasn't even in place at that point. And his gender identity, while still not confirmed publicly, seems irrelevant, again, if there had been this ongoing sexual relationship. I'm interested if you disagree with that. I'm happy to hear out anything that you think is relevant about the gender identity or bathroom policy. But then there's the second issue, which is on that for the school board itself and the superintendent, they lie.

about it because they were concerned that it would be used as the narrative to prevent a bathroom policy. So they actually made it part of the narrative, even though the facts itself have nothing to do with gender issues or the bathroom policy. I'm hoping you can kind of explain this at the table, et cetera. And feel free to disagree. That is exactly correct. I mean, look, I can tell you that so the transgender policy really didn't wasn't put on the map until they put Tanner Cross on administrative leave like nobody was paying attention to it and I can tell you from like the parents I'm working with the moms I'm working with most of them did not want to touch that issue okay they felt very uncomfortable with it they felt like they

don't know enough they really did not want to engage there and you know I kind of felt the same way I said you know let's let's focus on what we're talking about which is on one hand, you know, violations of law by the school board. On the other hand, the curriculum stuff. I learned about that story shortly after the dad was arrested. And, you know, there were people- And will you explain just real quick. So he's, the police are called to the school the day he finds out about his daughter's sexual assault. There was some discrepancy over why he was arrested then, or why the police were called then. And then there's the school board thing. Well, you just walk us some of the facts on that. Yeah. So on May 28th at Stonebridge High School, you know,

somebody, so the girl was sexually assaulted. The mom goes in from my understanding. The mom gets called in. She's talking to the daughter. There's a guidance counsel there. I don't really know enough about that to talk, you know, factually about it, about the details. And then the dad gets called. And the dad gets extremely angry because things are, I mean, he just found out his daughter was sexually assaulted. He's really ticked off. He doesn't like the way it's being handled. I believe there was a school resource officer there, which is a member of the Loudoun County Sheriff's office. And they, it's my understanding that they called it in that they were, you know, investigating this. The dad got angry. And so they ended up having to bring backup up. They brought

backup in, whether they needed or not, I don't know, but they brought backup in. The principal at that time sent out a message basically addressing sort of the angry dad in the administration office because kids were like, what's going on? But they didn't publicly address the underlying issue. Which is hard because it's two minors and the school, you know, students at the school could easily identify probably who was involved. So that's, that's too tricky. Exactly. And you see, you see a lot of people on the left saying, oh, it was reported to the police right away. There was no cover it. Like nobody's, I'm not certainly saying that anything that was done wrong from the principal side and the school side at that time as far as communication was somehow, you know, nefarious.

But that happens, you know, you see, you see on social media, oh, it must have been one of those angry school board dads at Stonebridge High School and you're just like, okay, well, I don't know enough facts. But we did hear that, oh, I think somebody gets sexually assaulted. Kind of, kind of, went away. And then there was a June 8th meeting where people showed up in force to oppose the transgender policy, but more to support Tanner Cross. And you had a lot of people getting up there. I wouldn't say a lot, but there were a couple of people saying, I disagree 100% with everything Tanner Cross said. But I disagree even more that you suspended him for saying it. So that, you know, it was really a pro-Tanner, pro- First Amendment meeting. And then you get to the June 22nd meeting.

Now, that's the one where they thought they were going to be able to pass 8040, which was the policy that would require teachers and students to refer to other students by the preferred pronouns, would require kids to be allowed to use any bathroom that they identified with and would allow them to play in certain sports of the gender they identify with. And that meeting was again packed. There were rumors that, you know, the Democrats are going to be busing people in. So, you know, the other side showed up in force. And it was probably 85% opposed, 15% supportive, just to kind of take you through that school board

meeting. And I think that there's going to be a story coming out today that's going to clarify a little bit on what happened there, but I'll do it right now. I wasn't at the school board meeting. I was out collecting signatures in Leesburg for the reason that I thought this thing was going to be an, you know, an S show. And I'm like, you know, probably more of our high profile people shouldn't be there just to be cautious. And but I fully understand what happened because I was watching it as I was going door to door. And the first 20 or so speakers were all pro school board. And you had one woman get up there and she addressed the crowd and said, I see the hate dripping from the followers of Jesus and their children in the audience. And the crowd was like, are you kidding me? And they, you know,

they booed her and the chairwoman. She banged her gavel. She goes into her. recess, she comes back out, she admonishes the audience, and then gives the woman her time back. Like, what? Okay, so, so then the tide turns. After speaker number 20, it's just one after the other, after the other, just opposing the school board on a variety of things, but the policy included. You get to maybe 60 something out of 250, and you have a former state senator, Dick Black, gets out, and he just rails against the school board, right? He's directing his ire and his speech and his passion to the school board. After he's done, audience starts clapping, right? They're so excited. They're doing their jazz hands because that's what the chairwoman

wants, but most of them are clapping. And she bangs the gavel, goes quiet. And then the vice chair says, I vote to conclude public comment. And they all vote nine nothing to conclude it. And then people are like, you know, booing them and whatnot. And, you know, they were staying there. They stayed there for about half an hour. Somebody had a sound system so people that couldn't give their speeches just gave their own speeches to the crowd. They were singing the national anthem. And then in the back of the room, you have this individual, Scott Smith, and he was there with his wife. And he was there with his daughter, too. You can actually see the daughter in the footage. It's like the Zepruder film. You're like, you can see the family and how this all goes down. And somebody that

they knew, who's a, you know, big time far left activist was kind of getting his face saying, you know, I know what happened. What you're saying didn't happen. Your daughter wasn't assaulted. And he started getting mad. The mom started getting mad. And she said, I'm going to cancel your, I'm going to ruin your business as she was, like, pointing at his T-shirt for his plumbing business. Because that's what they do out here, right? They want to cancel everyone.

And then he started yelling at her. And, you know, he used some language that, you know, you probably are going to regret. And a sheriff's deputy just kind of put his hand on his shoulder to pull him back. He didn't know it was a sheriff's deputy. I mean, he's all heated at this point. He kind of swats it back. That's when the tussle happens. on the video, you can hear the mom saying my daughter was sexually assaulted in a bathroom

at school. That led to the superintendent who came out and then declared an unlawful assembly. Now, I think what's going to come out today is in a deposition for somebody else they arrested for just simple trespass. He admits he had no legal authority to declare an unlawful assembly. But that's really how it all went down. And they didn't vote for the policy. that night. But what they did do was basically try and set up that, you know, there's no history of assaults of transgender kids, right? And that happens after? When does that famous exchange happen where the school board member says we have no evidence of sexual assaults and bathrooms and the superintendent says no. Yeah, that's so that happens after. They shut down public comment. Everybody

leaves and they come back and they hold the rest of their meeting, which is like online. So you can view it online. And one school board member, Beth Barts, asked a question. And she asks it, she says, is there a pattern or are there continual sexual assaults in bathrooms at Loudoun County Public Schools? And it's quite possible that the answer is no, right? But he didn't answer the question she asked. Instead, he volunteered, I am not aware of any records of sexual assaults in bathrooms. So what that, and then later the chairwoman kind of comes back around to clean it up and talks about transgender assailants. And then he's able to go into his, that's a red herring time magazine. So like it's clear, I think it's clear to a reasonable person that they had set up

a way to get out that there were no transgender sexual assaults in bathrooms. And he just answered the question wrong and was lying when he did it. And so nothing comes out out of that. And like I said, we had been talking about the, okay, so nothing comes out about that. It makes national news. Everyone's like, oh, my God, look at these evil, like January 6th, parents in Loudoun County, right? And if you're like, are you kidding me?

And then we get to August 10th. That's the next school board meeting. That's when they actually passed the policy. And up until that time, I had learned about this incident. And I was a little, you know, people wanted to get this out and kind of go into your point earlier. I'm like, I don't know that this, this story really does anything because I never actually heard the superintendent's statement. That didn't come out until later. That was like sort of under the radar. And I didn't want to get it out because I'm like, I don't know that this, you know, I don't know enough of facts about this.

I don't know if this kid is transgender or not or gender fluid. He was wearing a skirt. like this let's not let's not put that out there because this is not clear enough it's still going on i think the family didn't want to do it either because you know the sheriff's office was investigating um we learned later that they conclude their investigation on july 8th is when he was arrested um then he goes into juvenile detention and the commonwealth attorney's office takes over so you get to august 10th august 10th they passed the um they pass the policy nobody is allowed in the school board meeting room except to speak he got like one person of time goes to the podium, then you have to leave.

There's video now. So they turn the video away from the speakers because they're afraid of all these viral moments that we're tweeting out all these great speakers, giving me like four million impressions. You know, everyday people are now going on, Laura Ingram and Tucker Carlson and, you know, the local radio, local TV. And so they turn it around and now it's facing the school board. And this is where it gets really interesting. The mom, signed up to speak, but she didn't show up. The chairwoman calls out the mom's name. As soon as the chairwoman calls out the mom's name, superintendent writes a note, gets up, walks it over the chairwoman. On the other side of the dais, you have another school board member, look up,

super nervously, picks up his cell phone, starts sending a message, and looks over to the superintendent and the chairwoman. Now, that in isolation means nothing, but now we look at that were like they knew right and now they were saying so so there's that then we get to october 6th october 6th is when the sheriff office sheriff's office announces that it's arrested a kid at broad run high school for sexual assault he locked a girl in an empty classroom and and essentially groped her those are the allegations um and i start getting all these communications from people saying it's the same kid it's the same kid it's the same kid um and so the reporter who ended up breaking the story, Luke Roziak, had been working with this family. They wanted to tell their

story after this kid ultimately pled guilty, which was expected on October 14th. But once it got back to the reporter and to the family that this is the same kid, he was moved to a different school, apparently was never disciplined in any way, no suspension, no consideration of an alternative learning environment for him to keep him out while they were, you know, he was about to plead guilty for sexual assault. He's wearing an ankle monitor. And then that's when the story came out and it just blew up. And the story being that they knew about a sexual assault that happened on May 28th. On June 22nd, the superintendent lied, right? And he lied because they knew if any assault happened in any bathroom, regardless of whether the kid was gender fluid or male or it wouldn't

matter. It would have completely set them back and they wouldn't have been able to pass this policy. So politically, it would have been devastating for them. So that's really the motivation. Now, they come out and they say, four days, you know, we hold a press conference for three days later and say, here's all the facts, here's the reasonable assumptions, right? They said that the school board members were not aware of specific details until news reports. Okay, well, if you just said that and you didn't say unequivocally that they had no knowledge, that's carefully crafted legal jargon that means they knew something and did nothing. And there was nothing in there that said the superintendent didn't know. So therefore, one, that guy needs to be

fired. Any school board member that was complicit in this needs to resign. And DOJ should stop worrying about parents as domestic terrorists in Loudoun County and instead should do a Title IX investigation on this. There was also another story that came out right around then that said Loudoun County hadn't been reporting sexual assaults for years to the state as they're required by law. So, I mean, it was crazy. And then on that Friday, superintendent finally comes out and gives a statement. And he says, well, I can't do, we couldn't do anything because of Title IX. And but now we're going to do all this stuff that's going to prevent this from happening in the future. So it's like, well, what is it? You were barred by Title IX to do anything until

you got caught and now Title, you can do all this other stuff? Like, I don't understand. And then I mean, if anything, Title IX would require him to act far more decisively than he acted. Absolutely. Right. Absolutely. I think my frustration with all of this is that if this same exact scenario happened three years ago at the peak of the Me Too movement, it would have been a totally different reaction, which is what I hear from this story is that the school did not believe the girl that she had been sexually assaulted. And that's why the male student was not punished. he was moved to another school,

he assaulted another girl, and that is on them for not believing the first girl. And instead, I guess I am frustrated that it has become part of this transgender bathroom debate, when in fact it has nothing to do with that aside from, again, the adults trying to use it as a political volleyball to spike at each other, when in fact it actually highlights a huge problem

with the most common form of sexual assault right now, which is date rape. She knew her assailant, the assailant took advantage of a pre-existing relationship, didn't take no for an answer, et cetera, et cetera, like things that we actually need to be doing more about. And nobody's talking about that. Right.

Well, you know, and since this all happened, oh, and the other thing, the superintendent said, well, I misunderstood the question. Like, okay. All right, Bill Clinton, sure. Yeah. And the crazy thing is that ever since this has happened, we've been getting just influx of people saying,

my daughter was sexually assaulted and nobody ever did anything about it. My daughter's friend was sexually assaulted. She reported it. The kid got detention or suspended for three days and then went around and like bragged about it. And so I said, you know, at this presser, look, the least you can do is commission an independent investigation, right? I mean, we see it all the time with a lot of these schools, these colleges that have to deal with it. Other schools, they'll bring in some independent law firm, they'll investigate, they'll put out a report, they'll get to the bottom of it. And this is how it all connects, right?

I mean, you're going to spend $500,000 more, actually, at the end of the day to have this equity collaborative come in and investigate systemic racism dating back to, you know, school integration in the 60s, yet you're not willing to commission an independent investigation to investigate, you know, sexual assault culture in your schools and how they respond to it that's happening right now. And so that just kind of shows how the political, how this school system has become so politicized, and they're putting all their priorities in the wrong buckets, right? I mean, I like to think of the core functions of schools are a place to learn,

a place to learn, a place to learn, number one, number two, a place to learn skills that will unleash everybody's potential to succeed at what they can succeed at, and then three, a place where it's safe. And it seems like over the past two years, here, and I'm sure other places across the country have failed at all three of those things. And so, you know, if you look at the big picture

on why education has become such a big deal out here, it's because they have failed at those three core functions because of politics. During the Volvo Fall Experience event, discover exceptional offers and thoughtful design that leaves plenty of room for autumn adventures. And see for yourself how Volvo's legendary safety brings peace of mind to every crisp morning commute.

This September, Lisa 2026 XE90 plug-in hybrid from $599 bi-weekly at 3.99% during the Volvo Fall Experience event. Conditions supply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. So let me interject for a minute. So I'm in the minority on this podcast. I'm not in the Northern Virginia area. I'm down in a county that's very much like Loudoun County

in some interesting ways. I'm in an ex-urban county of a major metropolitan area. I'm an ex-erb of Nashville. Like Loudoun County, I'm in one of the top 10 most prosperous by-income counties in the United States. Like Loudoun County,

I'm in an area where there's a lot of very politically powerful people who live here. Unlike Loudoun County, our problems are completely opposite and hardly ever on Fox News at all. Okay? So, for example,

we have a group of parents here. who are trying to ban and get a ban and one of the reasons why they're objecting to a book is because it has a picture of the Norman Rockwell painting from the desegregation area and Norman Rockwell painting

of Ruby Bridges desegregating schools. I believe in Little Rock. We have parents who have literally threatened and this was a viral video, healthcare professionals who testified in support of masks and schools. We have had some pretty remarkable moments virally in the other way. One of the more disturbing, for example, is a guy who's talking about how he's taking his son to school and he's

passing by all of these Confederate monuments and road signs and whatever dedicated Confederates. And as he's talking, you can kind of hear the hissing rising and someone yells out, you're in the South. And yet, if I'm talking to conservatives here, they're talking about Loudoun County, Virginia. You know? So, like, this is what's very frustrating to me about the nationalization of our politics.

I love what you're saying about transparency, about the First Amendment. I was actually on the phone with a speaker of a house, of a state house, and he asked me, what is one thing that we should focus on? I said transparency. One of the things that parents are frustrated at is they don't know what their kids are being taught.

Transparency, transparency, transparency. But I guess one of the reasons, you know, one of the things that I worry about is when we nationalize all of these local disputes, I honestly think part of what's happening in my own county is people are fighting the battle of Loudoun County, Virginia, in Williamson County, Tennessee, where we have very different issues.

I mean, we had a middle school a couple of years ago where white kids joined arms in a hallway, wouldn't let anyone but other white kids through and said they were building Trump's wall. We had teachers who had made an assignment, says, you own slaves, what are the directions you give your slaves? I mean, and so this is, I guess what I'm saying is, how should we look at these local disputes from a national perspective? should we look at them from a national perspective? Because, you know, it's funny, if you look at the Fox News website, Loudoun County, Loudoun County, Loudoun County, you look at CNN, Williamson County, Williamson County. And so how should we put this in perspective in your view?

Yeah, and I'll say it's tough because, you know, it does get politicized. For example, you know, that we're trying to recall these school board members that were part of this group. And they were like, well, we're trying to recall it on over critical race theory. It's like, no, we're not trying to recall them over critical race theory. We're trying to recall them because there was a quorum of them in a viewpoint-restricted Facebook group discussing school issues. Now, the canceled part of it was due in part to we want to cancel people that are opposed to critical race theory.

But this is a massive Open Meetings Act violation. So if you were to say, okay, I'm going to call, I'm not chairwoman of the school board. I'm going to call five of the other school board members. I'm going to invite all our political allies to a banquet hall. We're not going to tell anybody about it. And we're going to sit there and listen to all their issues. We're not going to televise it. And we're not going to put out minutes of that.

And we're going to take their input. And it's going to be in our heads. And we're going to use that as we engage in policymaking. Well, that would be against the law. It doesn't matter if it's digital or if it's in person. So that's kind of what we. And so we were very frustrated early on. that this, that we would have to say this is not actually a recall about critical race theory or

policy. Because you're not going to win removal efforts in Virginia on policy. You need to have violations of law. And, you know, so there's a, there's a push in a, there's a, it's like an immovable object, it's an unstoppable force, and it becomes nationalized, and nobody is just sort of meeting in the middle to really clarify what those issues are. So the issues, as I said, I mean, we talk about transparency, accountability, collaboration. I mean, those are the core issues, but they ultimately get surrounded by all these other issues, which is somewhat inevitable. But, you know, we just had, so one of the school board members that we were trying to get

removed, she actually passed away over the summer. She was elderly. She passed away from surgery complications. And they just appointed somebody in her place. And he, nobody really knows what he is. Nobody knows if he's a Republican or a Democrat. I think he's kind of maybe slightly right of center, maybe not. But he's already had like three town halls.

And he puts out after every school board meeting, he's like, here's what happened. Here's why I voted how I voted. And, you know, I'm not always going to agree with how he votes. But you know what? It's a sign of hope that he recognizes everything that's gone wrong and here's how this needs to be run. So, you know, I think that the message should be as people are looking at the, the Loudoun County battle, it's not necessarily about policies. It's about, you know, a different

form of government at the local level where, you know, these are our representatives that are supposed to be at the closest level to their constituency. And we need to, we're never going to repair national politics if we don't have local political apparatuses working with the people in a collaborative way to sort of set the tone for how people, when they move up the stream, into bigger positions, will then deal with their constituency. One other thing I would add, too, is, you know, this is a big-picture policy thought. But I think for Loudoun County, I mean, we've got 420,000 people. There's 80, 81,000 students, and we've got nine school board members and eight districts. That is way too big for nine people, for a part,

time job that they get paid $20,000 a year and have a staffer that works 10 hours a week. I mean, it just doesn't work. So ultimately, you get the administration is the one calling all the shots and the school board just has to say, well, they said this is a good idea. I don't have time to research it because this is a part-time job. So it's going to be interesting long term how school boards function. I mean, maybe if this is going to be something that over the next 10 years is, you know, a political hot spot, maybe we should relook at how school districts are divided up, how

school boards are run, how they're staffed. Maybe they have to be more like congressional offices and be more responsive and have people that, you know, have these town hall meetings, have a staffer that can go out there and meet with community leaders. You know, I think there's a longer solution here that will take time if this kind of thing continues. But I just think that the way it's set up now is, you know, destined for failure if there are no changes made. All right. You are also, in a previous life, a Republican political operative. You worked on campaigns before your DOJ days. What should we make of the Virginia governor's race at this point? And how impactful has this issue overall been? How impactful has Loudoun County specifically been?

By the way, a fun fact for those listening. I had two deputies during my time at DOH. Jay. Ian was the first. The second deputy was Devin O'Malley, who is now the spokesperson for the Yoncan campaign. So I'm so proud of our little family out there trying to make a difference in the public policy of our country. Yeah, so how, you know, are our school board moms, the new soccer moms? Yeah, I mean, it's certainly looking like that out here. You know, I've heard pushback, you know, all summer and from some media outlets that, oh, you know, I'm just doing this to to help win an election. I mean, that would be impressive. If I, if I had somehow the ability to sort of manipulate the universe so that I got put on a list and then was able to use that to build a

movement, that's like Emperor Palpatine stuff right there, right? Like I said in a tweet yesterday, like, wait till they find out about my secret clone army. They're going to be, but I do think so. you know, I think that I've never seen an issue rally people like this has. And, you know, we've got two Democrats on our board. I've spoken to hundreds of people over the summer. And there are a lot of independent, I've seen a lot of independents and Democrats that kind of, you know, like they've mosey on over to the signature thing. They don't want anyone to see them. I'm like, I'm a Democrat, but I get rid of this school board. I'm not voting for this stuff this time around. And so what I think you have is the traditional, you know, you elect a new party and then the brake pedal starts coming, right? And how fast does the brake pedal start? You know, it's always there by midterms, but sometimes it shows up a year early. And so on one hand, you've got everything going on with Biden, Afghanistan, his numbers tanking after Afghanistan. Yonkin starts going up, right? I think the education issue sort of, I

I want to say it fell off during the summer, but, you know, school board meetings aren't happening. Kids aren't in school. So it's not top of mind. But then when you get back in September and October, all of a sudden, education becomes a big thing. So then what are the two sort of inflection points that we've seen out here? Given that context, one, Terry McCallough gets up in a debate and delivers like the gaff of all gaffes and says, I don't think parents should be, you know, telling teachers what to teach. And it's like nobody's saying... That was remarkable.

Yeah, that was remarkable. Nobody's saying parents should have like veto power over everything in schools. They're just saying, look, we shouldn't be shut out of school board meetings. You should work with us. And, you know, when you're developing these policies that impact our kids. And then two, I think that this this cover-up story, it, you know, it's obviously a horrible, I mean, two people were assaulted. It's terrible.

And it's terrible for so many. reasons because now parents, especially parents of girls, don't feel safe in those schools. So you have that going on in the whole context. But it also, I think the way that they lied and they failed and they put politics over their core mission has kind of validated what parents have been saying for the past seven, eight months or more, which is that this school system is just focused on political issues and not their, you know, their core basic functions are running the business of schools. And so you throw that into the mix and then you've got two candidates and you've got, you know, Glenn Yonkin here and you've got Terry McAuliffe here. Now Terry McAoff is bringing in

all the star power, right? He's bringing in Obama. He's bringing in Biden. He's bringing in Kamala. And, you know, I don't think people here care about that right now. That seems very presidential election, you know, maybe missing the moment, misreading the moment that that's going to impress us. Whereas Yonkin, you go to Yonken rallies and, you know, he brings in parents to speak. And so he's really reading the moment. And I think when you're talking about a representative democracy, the best candidates are the ones that can look to their potential constituency and say, okay, this is what they're talking about. And, you know, I need to learn more and I need to sort of give them a voice. Whereas Terry is kind of, I think, playing the base game. He's

like, I just got to turn out my base. So I got to make sure the unions are happy. I got to make sure the party is happy. And if I do that, and I'm going to make sure that the base is happy. And if I do those things, I'll win. Yonkin is looking at it more like, yes, I've got to turn out the base, but I also need to reach independence. I need to read soft Democrats. And what I'm seeing is that the one unifying issue out there that kind of gets everybody is education. And so that's, you know, that's an important factor in this race. So I want to run a theory by you. One of my theories is that, you know, if we're talking about sort of this contest between the two parties, that one thing during the Trump era that began to emerge was the suburbs sort of started swinging more towards the Democrats. The educated suburbs tend to swing more, we're swinging more towards the Democrats.

But I'm wondering about, especially in the bluer areas of America, not my area, my daughter did not miss a day of school last year because of COVID. She was there, my youngest daughter, she was there the whole time. But I'm wondering if some of what happened over the pandemic in some of the bluer areas where the teachers unions had more sway and their reluctance to reopen in spite of overwhelming evidence that it was going to be safe for kids to reopen, how much, A, has that impacted sort of the suburban view of the parties, and B, how much has that sort of impacted the story that teachers unions have told the public about themselves, which is that they're all about education and kids, not that they're all about self-interest. Because it feels to me like the way

that the teachers unions responded to COVID in many ways punctured the story and blew up a lot of the story that they tell about themselves in a way that really impacted families. And the impact of that may echo for a while. So that's just kind of of my theory, but you're in the middle of it. You're in the middle of that, that exact kind of suburb. You know, am I off base here? Yeah, no, I think that's, that's right. And sort of, you look at, you know, the origin story here and how I talked about these parents were organizing during the pandemic, that this was a very nonpartisan organizing at the time. And there was extreme frustration with the teachers union, with Randy Weingarten, you know, keeping schools

closed. And a lot of these folks were Democrats. And so that had already existed when, when March comes around and the whole, you know, cancel culture situation and allowed it. So in order to kind of unify those, those two movements, I think, it really, you kind of had to thread the needle because a lot of these folks are traditionally Democrat. And if, you know, I had gone out there, and, you know, been some far-right provocateur, and, you know, there never would have been sort of the unification of the movement. But that's not what I am. That's not who I am.

And certainly, like, you know, as I call them, the army of moms that go to school board meetings that are collecting signatures, that's not who they are either. I mean, a lot of them are, you know, hey, I'm a libertarian or, hey, I used to be a Democrat, but, you know, now I'm a repul. Like, they're all have a political evolution. and they're just not flame throwers. And so I think that's how, you know, you can point to the unions as having a outsized role

in the origin story of this education issue. And so when you see, you know, Terry Wine, I mean, yeah, when you see Randy Weingarten tweeting things talking about how we've always wanted to get in schools and then you just see that, like, are getting destroyed. Like, just sit this one out. I mean, you've already, you know, you're not going to help anybody that you think you're helping because you, it is bipartisan all around that you did not, you were not looking out for

kids. You're not even really looking out for teachers. You're just looking out for your own power. All right. Last question, because I think what has been really fascinating about this conversation for me is how much it brings back the fact that this is local, right? Loudoun County is not Williamson County and how this has been nationalized actually kind of misses a lot of why this has happened. Based on that, if Glenn Yonkin wins, you know, the Fox poll that came out yesterday had him up by eight points. If he wins by eight points, do you think that the Glenn Yonkin model can be, will be repeated by Republicans in 2022, or that in fact, there are local dynamics at play here that are simply going to be different in other places?

I think the answer is a combination of both. I think that it can be an effective thing going forward, but it has to have the local dynamics. You know, you cannot just say, well, look what they, you know, here's the playbook they ran in Loudoun County, right? They talked about this issue. They talked about that issue. They talked about this issue. That may not be the case in other places in America.

Ultimately, though, what the real, as I said, the real issue here is accountability, transparency, the willingness of school boards and school administrations to work cooperatively with parents. And that's sort of the overarching problem that we have here. And so if that's an overarching problem elsewhere, then yes, that is absolutely something that they should look to sort of, you know, Loudoun County. but it's not going to be the same policy issues. It's not going to be, you know, it might not be critical race theory, right? It might not be a bathroom policy. You know, it could be, it really could be anything. But I think that when people look at, you know, the story of Loudoun County,

they have to look at really almost on a personal level. And that personal level is that, you know, parents overall sort of realize their inner strength because it involves their kids and they were able to really unite and go against this machine, which it turns out isn't really that much of a machine. They're just people that make bad decisions and over and over and over again because all those decisions made by the Loudoun County School Board, like they're the ones that keep feeding this because they keep making bad mistakes and we keep saying, oh, you just gave us another mistake to explain like, we're now going to have to talk about that for a week.

And then the other, like, kind of personal piece of this is that, you know, every individual mom and dad that's out there, you know, working every day, I mean, they are making immense sacrifices both professionally and personally, right? They've lost friends. They probably lost business. But they, it's like a, it's like the hero's journey where they see what is happening to their kids or other people's kids. And they've woken up and they've said, I got to fight this. Like, I got to go be the hero for my kid here because, you know, I'm trapped. I might not be able to afford private school. I may not have the option for homeschooling. This is what the, you know, these are the cards I've been dealt. I need to find that extra, you know, inner strength, fire motivation. And it really, it sees, there's no sign of it letting up.

And I find it interesting, you know, my sort of reports back, Intel reports back on some of these school board members. they're just like, well, it's fine. Like, after the election, you know, they're just going to, they're going to stop. And like, no, we're not. This has never been about winning an election. Like, if that happens, that's a byproduct of what's been happening here. But we have our mission, and our mission doesn't end on Election Day. I think that's a great note to end on.

Ian Pryor, thank you so much. The organization is Fight for Schools. You'll have a website set up and everything, and people can learn more there. All right. Well, thank you for having me, guys. You know, I'm sorry. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace.

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