Miami private school owners who threatened to exclude vaxed students launch anti-cancel culture podcast

Miami private school owners David and Leila Centner made national headlines in 2021 for taking hard-line, uninformed anti-vaccine stances during the pandemic.

They said they wouldn’t employ teachers at their Centner Academy who got the jab and told parents their vaccinated kids would have to stay home for a month to ensure they were “healthy and symptom-free.”

Now they’re starting a podcast called “ERASED!” to tell their story and hear from other “cancel culture victims” such as former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, political strategist Roger Stone, lawyer Alan Dershowitz and pizza magnate “Papa” John Schnatter.

“We’ve seen firsthand how false narratives destroy lives,” David Centner said in a statement.

“It’s not just celebrities and politicians who have to worry about cancel culture; anybody can be targeted.”

A news release about the podcast, set to debut April 7, said the Centners were the targets of “false and malicious smears on multiple occasions in recent years, starting when they resisted mask and vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic”.

A message the Centners sent to parents about barring teachers from working at their school is still on Centner Academy’s website. It reads, in part:

“(We) ask any employee who has not yet taken the experimental COVID-19 injection, to wait until the end of the school year. We also recommended that all faculty and staff hold off on taking the injection until there is further research available on whether this experimental drug is impacting unvaccinated individuals. It is our policy, to the extent possible, not to employ anyone who has taken the experimental COVID-19 injection until further information is known. … (It) appears that those who have received the injections may be transmitting something from their bodies to those with whom they come in contact.”

Reports about a second message the Centners sent about their policy for vaccinated students quoted it as saying: “(If) you are considering the vaccine of your Centner Academy student(s), we ask that you hold off until the Summer when there will be time for the potential transmission or shedding onto others to decrease. … Because of the potential impact on other students and our school community, vaccinated students will need to stay at home for 30 days post-vaccination for each dose and booster they receive and may return to school after 30 days as long as the student is healthy and symptom-free.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s page dedicated to myths and facts, vaccine shedding refers to “the release or discharge of any of the vaccine components in or outside of the body, (but it can only occur) when a vaccine contains a weakened version of the virus. None of the vaccines authorized for use in the U.S. contain a live virus.”

The Centners ultimately canceled their plan to send vaccinated students home from their K-8 campus after then-House Speaker José Oliva threatened to pull state funding. Oliva called the 30-day stay-home order an “unreasonable, unnecessary and unduly burdensome amount of time.”