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2 Palm Beach Central High admins arrested over sex assault reporting approved for new jobs

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2 Palm Beach Central High admins arrested over sex assault reporting approved for new jobs

Prosecutors dropped charges that that the two administrators failed to report sexual assault allegations to the state. Where will they work now?

Two Palm Beach Central High School administrators who were arrested last year and charged with failing to report sexual assault allegations made by a student have new jobs with the school district after the charges against them were dropped.

Palm Beach County School Board members on Wednesday approved a new position for former principal Darren Edgecomb, who will be a principal on assignment supporting the department of charter schools. The board also approved a new position for former assistant principal Daniel Snider, who will take on the same job at Royal Palm Beach High.

The two men were among five employees at Palm Beach Central who were arrested in July and charged with failing to report the suspected sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl that occurred off campus in 2021. A friend of the girl reported the incident to Snider, who is related to the boy accused of assault.

Law enforcement investigators found that neither Snider nor the other employees notified the Department of Children and Families. Under Florida law, all employees of the public school district, charter schools and private schools have “an affirmative duty to report all actual or suspected cases of child abuse, abandonment, or neglect.”

A judge dismissed the case against Snider in November after Snider said he didn’t report the sexual assault to DCF because he didn’t believe it happened. Judge Scott Suskauer ruled that Florida law requires the recipient of a sexual-abuse report to decide whether the report has merit before reporting it.

Prosecutors dropped the charges against the remaining employees in March.

Marc Freeman, a spokesperson for the state attorney’s office, said that prosecutors felt it would not be in the girl’s best interest to endure cross-examination in five separate trials. He added in March that the girl’s family agreed with the decision to end the prosecution.

Darren Edgecomb’s new job title with department of charter schools remains unclear

The other three employees who were arrested, former assistant principal Nereyda Cayado de Garcia, chorus teacher Scott Houchins and then-guidance counselor Priscilla Carter, have not yet returned to school campuses.

All five employees became subjects of school district investigations in addition to the criminal charges filed against them. Citing the fact that the investigations are open, the school district has previously declined to release documents regarding those reviews.

Snider’s start date for his new job has not yet been set. A review of his personnel files showed he has been a district employee since 1997 and has no previous disciplinary history with the district.

Edgecomb will start his new job on July 1, but it’s not clear what his role will be in the department of charter schools. District documents show his job title as “principal on assignment,” a role typically assigned to principals when they are removed from their schools.

Edgecomb has been with the school district since 1996 and became the principal at Palm Beach Central in 2014.

In 2019, the school district’s inspector general found that Edgecomb and then-Assistant Principal Laurence Greenberg raised the grades of at least 11 students without their teachers’ knowledge.

According to their report, Greenberg said he “changed the student’s grades because there were extenuating circumstances where the teachers targeted the students” and where “teachers unfairly graded the students’ class performance or did not accept the students’ class work.” 

Edgecomb was put on probation for three years starting in October 2022.

Egdecomb also got into trouble in 2010, when he was the principal of Turning Points Academy near West Palm Beach. He was accused of punishing assistant principal Anne Williams Dorsey, who went on maternity leave, by demoting her and cutting her pay.

Five years later, the U.S. Justice Department sued the school district over the demotion. The school district reached a settlement that cost taxpayers $350,000.

Katherine Kokal is a journalist covering education at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at kkokal@pbpost.com. Help support our work; subscribe today!

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