Livonia — David Chiola, the legendary and highly decorated wrestling coach at Livonia Franklin High School, was unceremoniously fired right before the start of the season, with no reason given, causing considerable confusion.
Livonia Public Schools’ longstanding policy not to comment on personnel decisions has fueled the social-media rumor mill, creating further angst among parents.
Coach Chiola—as his former and current wrestlers still call him— finally took to Facebook in a now-deleted post in which he said no wrongdoing took place and that he was disappointed in his firing.
That post prompted a letter to Franklin parents, signed by principal Andrew Pesci and Livonia Public Schools Superintendent Andrea Oquist, stating that Chiola “fell short” of Franklin’s “expectations” and implied a failure of trust, while also again making no comment on what he may have done to be fired.
This letter led to a social media frenzy. Rumors spread that Chiola was fired due to possible comments he made regarding a trans student at Franklin. A few days later, Chiola confirmed in a subsequent and now-deleted Facebook post that he did have a conversation after his firing with the Franklin athletic director.
A source with intimate knowledge of Chiola’s firing inside the district confirmed that the situation involved a trans student currently enrolled at Livonia Franklin High School.
All of this led to the Nov. 18 Livonia School Board meeting, which will now live on in infamy.
I arrived for this 6:30 p.m. meeting a full 30 minutes early to find the auditorium already filled with parents, wrestlers, students, and several members of the media. Even more parents and students were attempting to enter, causing the crowd to spill out into the hallway and stairwells.
The look in the eyes of most everyone in the room was concern mixed with outrage.
Chiola sat with his daughter and was continually approached by supporters, but his shoulders were slumped, a defeated man.
This was no regular school board meeting. After conducting regular board business, the superintendent handed the floor over to those requesting the microphone, and we were off the races.
Parents, wrestlers, and even a social-media influencer each spoke for three minutes, eliciting passionate and excited responses from the audience, until Chiola spoke and attempted to explain himself. He was cut short due to time limitations, and anger flashed through the room.
What happened next ignited the powder keg. A woman, later identified as Alexia Anagnostopoulos, stood up and proceeded to make several allegations of grooming and inappropriate behavior by Chiola toward an unidentified former Franklin student. She alleged to be speaking on behalf of that student.
The room erupted. Karen Branford, the president of the school board, was unable to keep decorum—and soon, the yelling and screaming from the audience was directed at her.
Inexplicably, Bradford persisted in allowing Anagnostopoulos to speak, sparking even further rage. Bradford finally gaveled the meeting and turned off the remote feed before Anagnostopoulos was hustled by police into a side room, and the board immediately escaped the auditorium.
It took police over 20 minutes to calm the room before the meeting could resume. Anagnostopoulos returned to the podium, and Bradford dutifully kept track of her time. Then, she was hurried from the room under police protection, followed by a small group of young adults.
After several other speakers took the podium, including Chiola’s daughter, who gave a moving speech in defense of her father, the meeting was over.
I spoke with several Franklin parents afterwards. One parent asked, “What the hell just happened?”
The parents I spoke with expressed extreme displeasure with the district and, more specifically, the board for remaining silent, answering no questions, giving no comment, and not giving Chiola’s supporters a modicum of attention.
The overriding vibe from the superintendent during the meeting was annoyance and silence.
A source within Livonia Schools, who was not authorized to speak on behalf of LPS and asked not to be named, said, “The District is afraid of being sued, and the board’s primary function is risk management, so they won’t say anything.”
Another LPS source watching remotely stated, “Bradford should have stopped the lady [Anagnostopoulos] from speaking, in accordance with her own stated rules, and never should have brought her back in to resume her time.”
Coach Chiola told Enjoyer, “I think I just need to let this die. I don’t want my job back. I have no grounds to sue. There’s no such thing as wrongful termination. The fact that the school would bring in someone to slander my name from a liberal group out of Lansing and allow them to speak for so long, [while] everyone else was shut down, sickens me.”
The next day, I spoke with Anagnostopoulos, and she was understanding of the anger directed at her in the meeting, but stated, “I hope the victim’s words could be heard over the yelling and screaming in that room.”
As for the school board and the district, they remain silent. Livonia Public Schools directed me to the official statement released days earlier, when I asked for further comment. Meanwhile, the Livonia Franklin wrestling team has a new coach.
But despite Chiola’s desire to have this behind him, this story likely isn’t over. While verbal warfare ensued between the parents and the board, I spied two individuals quietly and discreetly documenting the night’s events. Nobody spotted them. They remained off camera and were very cleverly avoiding capture of bodycams worn by the social media influencers in attendance. I was impressed.
After the meeting, I walked over and made friendly conversation. “We’re working,” they said. They were representatives of the teacher’s union, the Livonia Education Association.
Perhaps this fight is just beginning.
J.Z. Delorean is a writer for Michigan Enjoyer and has been a Metro Detroit-based professional investigator for 22 years. Follow him on X @Stainless31.
