Schools chief defends dismissing principal over Holocaust remarks

The Palm Beach County school system had to fire former Principal William Latson because of the chaos caused by his comments about the Holocaust and Latson’s unwillingness to repair the damage, Superintendent Donald Fennoy said during a hearing on Tuesday.

Latson, the former principal of Spanish River High in Boca Raton, is trying to get his job back and has filed an appeal through the state Department of Administrative Hearings. If an administrative judge decides in Latson’s favor, the School Board would vote again on whether to reinstate him. Latson had led Spanish River High since 2011 before he was fired in October.

Fennoy said Latson created a crisis for the school system through his emails to a parent who was advocating for more Holocaust education at Spanish River.

In 2018, Latson told the parent that he had to remain “politically neutral” — sensitive not only to advocates of Holocaust education but to those who deny the annihilation of 6 million Jews during World War II.

“I can’t say the Holocaust is a factual, historical event because I am not in a position to do so as a school district employee,” Latson wrote to the parent, whose name is redacted from the emails released by the district.

Fennoy said Latson aggravated the crisis by sending a letter to his staff after his July removal from the school in which he blamed the parent who wanted more Holocaust education for his dismissal.

At that point, Fennoy said he couldn’t keep Latson as an employee any longer.

“We were in a crisis situation,” Fennoy said. “The damage done by his written statements would follow him wherever he would go.”

In a 5-2 vote in October, the School Board accepted the recommendation of Fennoy, who said the reason for the firing was that Latson had committed ethical misconduct by being unreachable when “all hell broke loose” after his emailed comments to the parent became public. Latson was on a previously planned vacation out of the country.

Latson’s attorneys said he was being punished for a “poorly worded email” and said there were multiple levels of culpability, including school district staff who knew about the emails for 16 months before deciding to discipline him when the comments focused national scrutiny on the school district.

Spanish River parents and alumni condemned what they called the insensitivity of Latson’s comments, considering the large population of Holocaust survivors and their descendants in Boca Raton and South Florida. More than 10,000 survivors are estimated to live in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, the second largest concentration in the United States after New York.

Politicians from across the state also called for Latson’s termination or resignation, as did the Anti-Defamation League, a national civil rights group with an office in Boca Raton. The Spanish River parent who was emailing with Latson also advocated for his removal.

The school district had known about Latson’s comments for more than a year, but Latson’s supervisors were working with him on improving Holocaust education at the school. He even traveled to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial in Washington, D.C., to learn more about the tragedy.

The hearing will reconvene at 9 a.m. Wednesday.

Latson