Former Loudoun County Public Schools Superintendent Scott Ziegler is scheduled to stand trial from Feb. 3 to Feb. 7, 2025.

It will be his second trial on the same misdemeanor charge after a judge last month set aside the September 2023 guilty verdict on one count of illegally retaliating against a special education teacher in 2022. The same jury acquitted Ziegler on a separate misdemeanor retaliation charge.

Chief Judge Douglas L. Fleming Jr., who scheduled the new trial dates at an April 18 hearing, vacated Ziegler’s conviction because of faulty jury instructions. In a written opinion, Fleming said the jury should have been told that Ziegler may only be found guilty under the statute if he “knowingly violate(d)” the law.

At issue in the criminal case is whether it was illegal for Ziegler to recommend to the School Board that the teacher, Erin Brooks, be terminated in 2022. Prosecutors from the Virginia Office of the Attorney General argued Ziegler recommended her termination because she asked an activist to criticize school officials on her behalf. Ziegler’s attorney argued that he made the recommendation because of Brooks’ poor job performance.

A grand jury impaneled in 2022 by Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) at the request of Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) also indicted Ziegler for allegedly lying at a School Board meeting about details of the first of two student-on-student sexual assaults in 2021, but Miyares’ office dropped that charge last year.

Ziegler was hired by the school division in 2019 and was named superintendent in 2021. He was fired in December 2022, shortly before grand jury indictments were announced against him.

The grand jury also indicted Wayde B. Byard, a now-retired school division spokesman, on one count of felony perjury. A jury acquitted him last year.