Rochester Board of Education vice president under investigation for alleged threat

Rochester, New York – The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office reports that Beatriz LeBron, vice president of the Rochester Board of Education, is the focus of a police investigation.

LeBron, who also serves as the executive director of the Father Tracy Advocacy Center, allegedly threatened Monroe County Legislative Vice President Mercedes Vazquez Simmons during the April 9 Legislature meeting, according to a statement made public on Tuesday.

During that meeting, Vazquez Simmons and fellow Democrat Rachel Barnhart were two of the seven legislators who voted against a motion to approve additional financing for the Neighborhood Collaborative Project.

“We would be voting to award funding to the Father Tracy Advocacy Center, whose executive director has waged a campaign of threats and intimidation against legislators who ask too many questions,” Barnhart said during a Legislature committee meeting Tuesday. “She even threatened a legislator right here in these chambers with all of you looking on.”

“In the past six months, I’ve been subjected to violence, threats, both physical and verbal,” Vazquez Simmons added. “I’ve been harassed in this very chamber.”

LeBron allegedly threatened to break her face in Spanish, according to Vazquez Simmons.

“Why would she do this? I’ve been asking myself this for a while,” Barnhart said. “Even though she is the executive director, vouchers show she used ARPA funding to pay herself, as a vocational trainer, $3,900. How convenient that she and one of her good friends suddenly became vocational trainers when the dollars started rolling in.”

Whether LeBron will face charges is still up in the air for the police.

LeBron and Vazquez Simmons both declined to be interviewed and said they had already hired attorneys or were doing so. A county representative said that comments would not be made until the investigation is finished.