Former Deep Run HS principal to lead Loudoun County Public Schools
Table of Contents
The first principal at Deep Run High School has been named the superintendent of one of Virginia's largest public school systems.
Aaron Spence, who spent a decade in Henrico County from 1998 to 2008 (first as an assistant principal at Henrico High School for three years, then for more than seven years helping to plan and open Deep Run High School), announced Monday that he was leaving his role as superintendent of Virginia Beach Public Schools to accept the same job in Northern Virginia's Loudoun County. He has held the Virginia Beach job since June 2014.
With 82,000 students, Loudoun County Public Schools is one of the state’s largest public school systems. Virginia Beach has about 65,000 students. (Henrico has about 50,000.)
In Loudoun, Spence will inherit control of a school system that found itself in the national spotlight in 2021 after two sexual assaults by the same student at two different schools. Loudoun’s former superintendent, Scott Ziegler, later was fired and subsequently indicted by a special grand jury after it determined the school system had failed to handle the assault cases appropriately. Ziegler’s trial and that of a former school system spokesperson are expected to begin this fall.
Daniel Smith has been serving as Loudoun’s acting superintendent.
After leaving Henrico, Spence spent two years as the chief academic officer for Chesterfield County Public Schools, then moved to Texas to become chief high schools officer for the Houston Independent School District from 2010 to 2012, before being named the superintendent of Moore County Schools in the Sandhills of North Carolina. He held that role for about two and a half years before moving to Virginia Beach.
He was named Virginia’s superintendent of the year in 2018 by the Virginia Association of School Superintendents.
“It will be my goal from day one to ensure we are leading together to build trust, create even greater transparency for our community around the outstanding work of our school division, recruit and retain a world-class team of educators, and leverage the power of relationships with families and stakeholders to strengthen us,” Spence said in a statement of his plans for Loudoun County.
