School Board Member Takes Elementary Students To Gay Bar And Gets Mixed Reactions

A Florida school board member has received mixed reactions to a post showing her chaperoning students on a trip to a gay bar. 

Sarah Leonardi took to her official Broward County School Board member Facebook page to share pictures from the trip this week, showing images of the children sat inside Rosie’s Bar and Grill and posing next to its sign.

Leonardi described herself as ‘honored [sic]’ to have been able to accompany the children from Wilton Manors Elementary school to the bar, explaining she and the students walked over and ‘learned a lot about [the] community’ in the process.

Though parents would have no doubt had to sign off on their children attending the bar, indicating they were accepting of the trip, some social media users have criticised the move.

Leonardi’s post was shared to the Twitter account ‘Libs of Tik Tok’, which describes itself as ‘Showing how society is deteriorating through videos’.

In response to the post, one person wrote, ‘What in the ACTUAL f**k is THIS!? These kids are way too young to be involved in anything like this! Let them make their own choices when they’re able to make decisions like this! Seems we’re past that point now. Kids are being force-fed this stuff and it’s not fair to them!’

Other Twitter users described the trip as ‘egregious’ and ‘bullsh*t’, though one responded to say it sounded like a ‘cool field trip’.

Another comment reads, ‘I… I don’t see anything wrong here?’

Many people have argued that taking children to a bar is wrong in itself, regardless of whether it was a gay bar or not. Neither Leonardi nor Broward School District appears to have responded to the backlash at the time of writing, October 28.