A group of Loudoun County parents gained enough signatures to file a recall petition against school board chair Brenda Sheridan, following months of turmoil in the wealthy suburb’s public school system.

Fight for Schools, a conservative parent group formed to “fight against implementing critical race theory in our schools,” filed the recall documents on Tuesday, after securing more than 1,200 signatures on a petition for Sheridan’s removal. Ian Prior, the co-founder of Fight for Schools and veteran GOP strategist, made the announcement during the public comment period of a school board meeting Tuesday evening.

“I said we’d see you in court. As of 3:30 today, we are now in court,” Prior said before the board Tuesday.

Tuesday’s filing is one part of a larger, months-long effort by parents to recall Loudoun County school board members. Former board member Beth Barts resigned in October, facing a recall campaign over open meeting laws and inappropriate social media use, and mounting backlash from the community. Before Barts resigned, a judge had ruled that the court case sparked by the petition could go to trial.

In Virginia, a recall petition for an elected official must be signed by at least 10% of the number of people who voted in the last election for the office being recalled. In Sheridan’s case, that number was 1,200; it took about 12 days, according to Prior, for the petition to meet the threshold. Now, a circuit court judge will decide if Sheridan’s case should go to trial. (These rulings can be appealed to the Supreme Court of Virginia).

According to a statement from Sheridan, who represents Sterling, she plans to see the recall process through.

“Tuesday’s filing is the result of a fraction of those citizens signing a petition, whether they voted [in the last election] or not,” Sheridan wrote in an emailed statement to DCist/WAMU. “Being a School Board Member is public service. It is not always easy or popular.”

The recall filings outline several allegations against Sheridan — some of which parents have been levying for months. One allegation claims Sheridan violated Virginia open meeting laws by joining private Facebook groups with other board members, where members allegedly “frequently discussed policies around opening and closing schools,” per the filing.

Fight for Schools also filed and gained the necessary amount of signatures for the recall of three other school members — Denise Corbo (At-large), Ian Serotkin (Blue-Ridge), and Vice Chair Atoosa Reaser (Algonkian) — but these have not been formally filed in court yet. While technically centering around open meeting law violations, Fight for Schools has repeatedly decried most board members for their coronavirus procedures, racial equity proposals, or transgender student protection proposals. Other outraged parents have called for the entire board to resign. 

Fight for Schools goes on to accuse Sheridan of violating the First Amendment rights of the community by implementing new procedures limiting who can speak during the public comment period of school board meetings, after some earlier this summer devolved into chaos. 

The final pillar of the campaign against Sheridan involves her handling of two sexual assaults that took place in Loudoun County schools. Last month, a judge brought charges against a student for allegedly sexually assaulting a classmate in a Loudoun County school bathroom in May 2021. The same student transferred to another Loudoun school after the alleged assault, and was later charged for a separate assault that occurred there months later. The recall filing says the transfer happened “despite Sheridan’s at least general knowledge of the alleged assault.”

As with other Loudoun County school issues in recent months, national conservative networks picked up the story, claiming the student charged with assault is genderfluid, a fact that hasn’t been confirmed by authorities. The firestorm came shortly after the board adopted a new policy that would allow transgender students to use the bathroom that aligns with their pronouns — a policy required by a new state law, but one that drew outrage and anger from parents nonetheless.

Sheridan was first elected to the board in 2011, and went on to keep her seat in 2015 and 2019. The recall filing comes on the heels of the Virginia election, where Republican governor-elect Glenn Youngkin ran on a “parents matter” platform, capitalizing on parents’ fears over the way race is being taught in public schools. Many of those pressure points bore out in Loudoun County over the past year and a half — beginning with parking lot protests over coronavirus school closures.

As of Wednesday, no dates had been set for a ruling in Sheridan’s recall.