By Keith Dowling
Superintendent Larry Leaven of the Florida UFSD tendered his resignation after a tumultuous fifteen months in the position. Mr. Leaven’s tenure will be terminated on November 30th, 2022. His departure is being celebrated by multiple members of the community, and comes as a welcome relief to many parents in the district.
Florida resident Roxanne Cobianchi told The Dispatch “Mr. Leaven came in with an agenda. He was immediately hostile to parents who wanted an unbiased, non-political classroom for their kids.” Superintendent Leaven’s short time in his position is notable for his advocacy of the book “Gender Queer” being made available in the S.S. Seward school library. The graphic memoir, which students can still access, features multiple illustrations of children engaged in a variety of sexual scenarios.
In the ensuing months after Leaven’s hiring, the district saw parents withdrawing their children from the schools and a wave of teacher and administrator retirements. Last spring, a Florida parent told The Dispatch “We chose the Florida School District because we liked the village and the small-town feel to the schools, both Golden Hill and S.S. Seward. This all changed last fall when Larry Leaven became the Superintendent. Faced with the initial implementation of his extreme, ideologically-driven agenda, we decided that our boys would benefit more from home-schooling.”
The Dispatch reported in May of this year that nearly twenty Florida school district staff had resigned or retired. On condition of anonymity, staff members agreed that this was due to the toxic environment Superintendent Leaven had created. At that time, both the principals of S.S. Seward and Golden Hill had decided to leave. However, the Principal of Golden Hill Elementary pulled her resignation once the three “Parent Choice” candidates swept the Board of Education election last May. According to sources, the unprecedented voter turnout for this contest was a welcome sign that Leaven’s behavior would be reined in, one way or another.
According to Mrs. Cobianchi, this saga was entirely unnecessary, and stemmed from what could only be termed a failure to adequately vet Superintendent candidates. “Mr. Leaven had posted multiple tweets to his twitter account that were anti-White and anti-Christian… which he locked once he found out that we discovered them. These posts were outrageous and should have disqualified him from serving as a school Superintendent, period. It would have prevented so much unnecessary damage, had the former Board of Education done their due-diligence and provided us with non-activist candidates. That’s another reason so many people came out last May… to bring back some sanity.”
One Florida resident cited an incident where Mr. Leaven grabbed the personal papers of a parent at a December Board of Education meeting and refused to give them back. Others cited Leaven’s harrassing of teachers and staff who were beloved by the community. Mr. Leaven also brought in curriculum consultants who championed sexual and political theories that many felt were inappropriate for the Florida community.
Mr. Leaven’s resignation follows the discovery of the mishandling of district funds at a July Special Meeting of the Board of Education. At this meeting, it was revealed that one hundred and fifty-six thousand dollars in “staff development” contracts had been awarded to long-time colleagues of Mr. Leaven. These lucrative awards appeared to have been deliberately withheld from the purview of the School’s Attorney, David Shaw. BOE President Rob Andrade announced his “surprise,” that these contracts were not shared with Mr. Shaw for the necessary legal review and comment. This new BOE then canceled these contracts.
Ms. Cobianchi concluded, Mr. Leaven discovered that our town is full of amazing and passionate citizens. We are people who insist that our kids are not made to be guinea pigs for whatever new, weird and damaging theories are getting pushed by higher academia or the media. Our children are in the Florida schools to learn and become capable and skilled critical thinkers. In Florida, we came together as a community to ensure that. And we were successful.”
