Book banner Jeffrey LeBlanc is running for Smithfield School Committee

In June of 2022, LeBlanc was before the Smithfield School Committee with like-minded parents calling for three books to be banned from school libraries...

Jeffrey LeBlanc

The 2024 Smithfield School Committee election is one to watch. The five-person committee splits its elections every two years. In 2022 three Republicans, Amanda Fafard, Richard Iannitelli, and Jessica Sala were elected, establishing a 3-2 majority. This year the seats occupied by Democrats Anthony Torregrossa and Benjamin Caisse are up for re-election. Torregrossa is not standing for re-election, but Democrat Robert Randall is running. Two Republicans, Jeffrey LeBlanc and Ashley Hogan, are challenging for the seats in an attempt to establish a 5-0 Republican school committee.

This is an issue because, with only a 3-2 Republican majority in 2022, the school committee immediately canceled an equity audit Smithfield Public Schools had recently completed, refused to send Smithfield Superintendent Dawn Bartz to a conference (because the organization had an equity statement), and began the [ultimately unsuccessful] process of dismantling the school system’s Transgender, Gender Diverse, and Transitioning Student policy.

I don’t know much, as yet, about Democratic Candidate Robert Randall or Republican candidate Ashley Hogan, but Smithfield Republican Town Committee member Jeffrey LeBlanc has made his positions very well known over the past few years.

In June of 2022, LeBlanc was before the Smithfield School Committee with like-minded parents calling for three books to be banned from school libraries. The three books LeBlanc opposed were all award winners: A Place Inside of Me: A Poem to Heal the Heart, by Zetta Elliot, Were I Not a Girl: The Inspiring and True Story of Dr. James Barry by Lisa Robinson, and Feed Your Mind: A Story of August Wilson by Jen Bryant and Cannaday Chapman. [Jacquelyn Moorehead at the Valley Breeze covered this issue here.] You can watch the meeting in the video below, with LeBlanc speaking at the 1h19m mark.

Stepping up to the microphone, LeBlanc identified himself as “the father that started this complaint process.” LeBlanc objected to the book Were I Not a Girl because “gender identity and gender equality” were not part of the school's curriculum “for my third grader” and “if there's no curriculum that this book supports, particularly because it's such a mature topic that does not align with the targeted age group, that violates policy.”

LeBlanc next objected to the book, A Place Inside of Me because it depicted the police killing of an innocent Black woman and depicted Black Lives Matter protests and candlelight vigils. “Like any other political activist organization,” said LeBlanc, “Black Lives Matter is inherently biased, and biased material violates town policy...

“This is about the school committee adhering to their policy. This isn't about feelings or emotions,” continued LeBlanc. “Over the past couple of weeks, I've noticed that there's a Smithfield police officer parked outside our elementary school. I see him every morning at drop-off. Now I'm wondering, is this to instill fear in our children, to give them a terror that ‘stalks them like a sinister shadow and seeps into their dreams like a poison’ [this is] text from a book. No, of course not. The [police] represent safety and give us a sense of security. It's the presence of a friend. Outside of what my feeling is, [this book] is a violation of the policy. The messaging [of the book] is a direct contradiction to why we ask the police officers to be there, and I don't think you can have it both ways.”

LeBlanc objected to the third book, Feed Your Mind, because of the use of a racial slur. “If it were not for the use of a highly inappropriate and mature racial slur - if that wasn't in there - the book would not have been included on my list of complaints,” said LeBlanc.

LeBlanc dismissed the concerns of a Black parent who commented that her children were victims of that word as early as the third grade.

All three of the award-winning books LeBlanc objected to were written by LGBTQ+ and/or BIPOC authors. The committee voted 4-1 against removing the books.

Though LeBlanc explained his list of banned books as violations of school policy and not expressions of his own biases and prejudices, his antipathy to transgender rights was in full view a year later when the Smithfield School Committee took up the possibility of revising their transgender student policy.

Testifying at the June 21, 2023, Smithfield School Committee meeting, LeBlanc read a “letter” written in part by Michelle Cretella. Cretella has long been a leader in Rhode Island's [and the nation's] anti-trans movement, a small movement of vocal activists with strong support from national groups. [See: Anti-LGBTQ extremist group sending RI Senators to D.C. for training] LeBlanc can be seen reading her comments at the 1h5m mark in the video below”

I did extensive reporting on Smithfield's efforts to gut the transgender student policy here:

• 2023-04-18 Smithfield School Committee considering policy to out LGBTQ students to parents

• 2023-05-03 Smithfield School Committee Meeting Sees Opposition to Proposed Policy Outing Trans Students to Parents

• 2023-05-16 Medical doctor brings alarming truths about trans youth to Smithfield School Committee

• 2023-06-18 School Committee decision on Transgender Student Policy could trigger lawsuits, make school less safe

• 2023-06-22 Smithfield School Committee approves minor, cosmetic changes to transgender student policy

Michelle Cretella is the former executive director of the American College of Pediatrics (ACPed), identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as “a fringe anti-LGBT hate group that masquerades as a premier United States association of pediatricians to push LGBT junk science…” In January, Cretella spoke against the life-saving Transgender, Gender Diverse, and Transitioning student policy at the Westerly School Committee.

“The transgender movement is an opening for a totalitarian government.” - Michelle Cretella, ACPeds executive director, speaking at Illinois Family Institute Worldview Conference, Oct. 2019

About Michelle Cretella:

• 2017-07-15 Tucker Carlson teams with hate group to spread junk science about transgender kids

• 2018-04-2018 Transgender advocates protest ‘transphobic lecture’ at St Pius V Church in Providence

• 2023-05-17 A Massive Leak Spotlights the Extremism of an Anti-Trans Medical Group

• 2024-01-18 Hate and Love: Westerly School Committee takes up Transgender student policy

• 2024-01-30 Anti-LGBTQ extremist group sending RI Senators to D.C. for training

Back to LeBlanc: On December 7, 2023, he called some residents of Smithfield “snowflakes” after complaints about Christmas decorations on the Smithfield Republican Town Committee adopt-a-spot were ordered to be removed by the state Department of Transportation, responding to complaints. Again, Jacqueline Moorehead in the Valley Breeze:

“I’m looking at this as the people who complained are officially the first snowflakes of the year. I like snow, I don’t like snowflakes,” said LeBlanc.

LeBlanc also doesn't like “race hustlers.” Speaking against a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion [DEI] Task Force, LeBlanc said, “You’re basically bringing a professional race hustler to look underneath this town that they don’t know under a microscope whose lenses are strictly race and gender." Video here, at the 52-minute mark.

Trans and BIPOC children will pay the price for the rightward turn of our school committees. Keeping book banners and anti-trans extremists from power is the best way to keep our children safe.