Daniel Zeruto, May 29, 2026
What is happening in the Leon County School District reflects a deeper issue that many parents have experienced firsthand, but too few leaders are willing to openly discuss, much less address.
This week, during a public school board meeting, a board member openly stated she was asking questions publicly because the superintendent would not respond to her emails or phone calls regarding decisions he had made. That moment said more than any presentation, slogan, or consultant report ever could.
For many parents, teachers, and even elected officials, this culture of non-responsiveness has become one of the defining problems within the district.
When leadership publicly displays immature or emotional responses to questions, criticism, or accountability, it becomes difficult to expect professionalism and emotional control throughout the system. Culture starts at the top, and what is modeled in leadership often becomes reflected throughout the system.
That is why more taxes will not fix the problem.
This is a leadership and culture problem.
As a father who championed public education, I saw the challenges firsthand. From 2020 through 2025, I tried to help. I tried to be involved. I tried to be a voice for parents, students, teachers, and school administrators. But over time I realized something difficult:
Too many parents feel shut out of the conversation because they do not receive responses to their emails, phone calls, or concerns. When district leadership does not respond, and when even at district events parents feel unseen and their concerns go unaddressed, it becomes easier to understand why so many families and teachers have left the system.
Too often the focus becomes protecting appearances instead of addressing culture. Behavioral issues are minimized as “the way things are now,” while leadership itself increasingly models the same emotional and unprofessional behavior being tolerated throughout the system. Meanwhile, teachers are expected to maintain professionalism while juggling instruction, discipline, disruptions, documentation, and every other responsibility placed on them without the support they deserve.
There was a time when schools placed clear expectations on everyone. Parents were partners. Students understood expectations and consequences. Teachers knew they had support. Schools communicated that success required everyone working together, and district leadership modeled that tone.
Meanwhile, the district often returns to the same answer: “We need more money.”
Hire another consultant. Commission another study. Launch another initiative.
Yet many parents and teachers are asking a simpler question:
Why not start by answering our calls, our emails, and listening to us?
My family experienced this personally.
Then everything changed.
After changing educational environments, we realized something remarkable: for the first time in years, we never received a call to pick up our children because they felt sick.
That realization was difficult. We realized that the behavioral disruptions, constant distractions, difficulty focusing, and overall culture being tolerated throughout the system had been affecting them far more than we understood.
Without school choice programs, we may never have connected those dots. Our children may never have experienced an environment where they felt safe, supported, and excited to learn.
We did not leave public education because we stopped caring. We left because we could no longer sacrifice our children’s safety, education, and emotional growth for a system that too often refused to listen, refused to change, refused to lead, and increasingly treated concerned parents as problems instead of partners.
This is not an argument against public education.
It is a call for public education to return to educational excellence, accountability, discipline, parental involvement, and leadership that listens instead of dismisses.
Parents are not leaving because they do not care. Many are leaving because they can no longer sacrifice their children’s safety, education, and emotional growth for a system they believe no longer listens or leads.
If the tone, behavior, and culture modeled by district leadership do not change, the exodus from public schools will continue.
The solution is not simply more funding. The solution starts with trust, accountability, transparency, and restoring parents as partners in education, and those things cost nothing.
