Charlie Kirk was Assassinated. MA Teachers Celebrated. We Investigated.
What did the public celebration of Kirk's death say about how educators were reacting behind the scenes? How were schools were dealing with this tragedy? We wanted to know.
It’s been almost two months since conservative activist Charlie Kirk was murdered while participating in a free speech dialogue event on a college campus in Utah. Almost immediately after his assassination, many public school employees took to social media to express their glee over his slaying. This was a nationwide phenomenon, and accounts like Libs of TikTok took notice of their ghoulish displays. Some of the teachers whose comments went viral were from Massachusetts. Rightfully, parents were horrified. Why did these publicly-funded employees - people trusted with the great responsibility of caring for children(!) - feel so free to celebrate murder? If a teacher celebrated Charlie’s death because they disagree with his faith or his politics, how could a conservative or religious parent be confident that their child or family would be treated fairly in that teacher’s classroom? And even if such a teacher treated the child fairly on a personal level, how could parents trust that their lessons would be politically neutral?
Watching these inflammatory social media posts from professional educators surface made us wonder: if Massachusetts public school employees were posting outrageous rhetoric on social media about Charlie Kirk, what might they be saying internally? We knew that many parents had the same question. If school administrators were receiving complaints or concerns from parents, how were they responding? We wanted to know.
To find out, we partnered with concerned parents and parental rights groups in a number of Massachusetts communities to submit public records requests to local districts regarding Charlie Kirk. These requests were submitted within weeks of Kirk’s death and focused on emails originating from or being forwarded by district email addresses containing Kirk’s name. While we knew this wouldn’t capture everything educators said about Kirk, it could provide parents a glimpse behind the scenes. Today we will share some of what we learned.
As it turns out, parents weren’t the only ones watching the news about teachers getting in trouble. Administrators were watching too. Hoping to save his district from the same fate experienced by nearby Wachusett Regional where a teacher went viral for her anti-Kirk comments, Shrewsbury Public Schools’ superintendent sent an email to all SPS staff less than 24 hours after Kirk’s assassination. He wanted to make sure his staff members were aware that some social media statements could “compromise (their) standing as a public school employee.” He also reminded them of the importance of maintaining political neutrality in the classroom.
While neither of these points should need to be made, the fact that public school teachers openly celebrating an innocent man’s murder online is a thing that was actually happening, it’s reasonable that a superintendent might want to give his staff a refresher on their district’s social media policy (not to mention basic human decency). As for the importance of political neutrality in the classroom, as the results of our public records requests ultimately demonstrated, that’s a reminder teachers in other districts could have used as well. In this case, specifically teachers in Natick and Groton-Dunstable.
Natick
One such example of bias was found in an English lesson from Natick High School.
In modern education, “media literacy” is a common emphasis - so in that spirit, let’s do this exercise together. Zoom in on the lesson below and see if you can spot the bias. If you are a teacher who leans left politically, this exercise is especially important for you.
Did you find it?
Twice, in this teacher’s short explainer of who Charlie Kirk was, she attributes quotes to him. Then later in the lesson she instructs students to pick a side in a discussion about free speech and “reckless rhetoric,” ostensibly based on the information provided, including the quotes. The problem is, these quotes have been taken out of context.
Under the descriptor “A Polarizing Political Figure,” she quotes Kirk as having said that empathy is a “made-up, New-Age term that causes a lot of damage.” Then later on under “A Key Quote (about the second amendment and lives lost through gun violence,” she quotes him as saying, “I think it’s worth [it] to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal.”
Both of these quotes, which were flying around the internet at breakneck speed after Kirk was killed, are indeed words that Kirk said. But they mean something different when read in their full context. In reality, the “empathy” quote is followed by him saying that he prefers the term “sympathy,” and the gun death quote is part of a larger conversation about how liberties sometimes come with dangers (another example he gives is driving). Both quotes, when read as he actually spoke them, provide a fuller understanding of what was being communicated - and neither are as heartless or as “reckless” as they appear. For a great analysis of these quotes, including the context and links to source material, click HERE.
Charlie Kirk’s comments, speeches, and writings are all over the internet. Why didn’t this teacher provide students with links to original sources to review? Why did she only feed them contextless, negative quotes - the very quotes being batted around by his most fervent critics? Was her lesson merely sloppy, or was it intentionally dishonest? Either way, the end result was the same. Students were given a distorted view of Kirk’s character and positions based on misleading snippets, and were then asked to form an opinion based on what they learned.
Like Shrewsbury, Natick Public Schools has a policy that governs how controversial issues should be handled in the classroom. See the relevant portion of the NPS’s policy IMB below. We argue that this lesson, while on its face appears to present multiple views, is actually in violation of this policy.
Making sure your lessons are fair as a teacher is important, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because you serve students who have differing views on controversial issues. Two student emails from the Natick public records request highlight this reality. While it’s unknown if these particular students took the class that gave the lesson above, it’s safe to assume that students who hold these perspectives can be found in every classroom.
In one email, we see a student expressing frustration because his classmates are making fun of Kirk’s death. He is emailing a likeminded friend, wishing he was in class with him.
In another email we see students laughing, finding aspects of Kirk’s assassination funny.
How was a student grieving Kirk’s death to feel, if his classmates treated his assassination like a joke? And how free would that student feel to speak up in class, if even the teacher wasn’t giving a fair portrayal of their slain hero?
The reaction to Kirk’s death highlights the reality in our country: political tensions are high, and there is a great deal of division. Students feel it too. So if teachers are concerned about the dangers of “reckless rhetoric,” they should ask themselves: what’s actually reckless? A conservative leader speaking to a willing audience who hears and understands his entire message? Or an authority figure like a teacher subjecting their captive student audience to a bogus characterization of that leader, misrepresenting his positions, and then forcing students pick a side based on bad information?
Groton-Dunstable
Natick was not the only district where the documents exposed a concern about political neutrality. The same issue presented in the Groton-Dunstable Regional School District (GDRSD), but in a different way.
Our public record request revealed that on the evening of Friday, September 12th, a parent contacted the district to express concern about comments allegedly made by a teacher during an 8th grade Civics class. According to the parent, the teacher told the class that “Charlie Kirk died because he is a sexist and a racist,” and also made a statement about her desire to influence her students politically. The parent also expressed concern about an assignment given by the teacher that allegedly discouraged depictions of American flags, in favor of pride flags or flags from other countries.
Before we go further, here’s a note about the redactions in this section. The GDRSD did not redact the names or contact information of the parents who submitted this complaint. To protect this family’s privacy, we have made those redactions, appearing in black. The redactions in orange are the teacher’s name, which we have also elected to withhold.
Now, back to the story.
At 12:02 on the following Monday after receiving this troubling complaint, the superintendent forwarded the parent’s email to the chair of the school committee. He informed the chair that the middle school principal and vice principal had already been looked into it, and that the parent’s claim about the teacher’s statement was “not substantiated.”
Later that day, the parent received a response from the principal, stating that she had spoken with the teacher. According to the principal, the teacher had provided an alternative explanation for the flag issue on the project. She said that she and the assistant principal would “continue to explore the other comments that you are suggesting happened.” She ended the email with, “We take your concerns seriously.”
In response to this email, the parent replied and formally requested a written explanation of the steps the district is taking to investigate the incident and prevent similar conduct in the future. On September 16th, a meeting between the parents, assistant principal, and the teacher occurred. On the day after the meeting, the assistant principal followed up with the parent and stated that he was still investigating the issue.
Reading through these emails, we can’t help but notice that the timeline of the administration’s investigation, as well as what was communicated to the school committee chair vs. what was being communicated to the parent, doesn’t add up. How seriously could building-level administrators really be taking the investigation on September 17th, when they had told their boss on September 15th that it had already been looked into, and was “not substantiated?”
While waiting for the results of the investigation, the parent contacted the district again with concerns about another lesson from the same class. According to the parent, this lesson included a list of notable figures that the students should consider for an upcoming project. The list of figures was disproportionately comprised of folks on the political left, and included George Takei, who the teacher allegedly stated is her “favorite.” Takei is a former actor and current author and activist who has written on multiple topics but is widely known for his progressive positions, anti-Republican rhetoric, and support of LGBTQ issues.
Takei’s political bias (and the reason why a conservative parent may express concerns about a teacher’s endorsement of his work) can be demonstrated by a 30-second survey of his Bluesky account. Yet in her response email, despite being a self-professed Takei admirer (and no doubt familiar with his activism), the teacher acted as if she couldn’t understand the parents’ objection.
In her reply to the parent’s email - which omitted the parent, but looped in the president of the GDRSD teacher’s union- she painted her admiration of Takei as unimpeachable, and the parent impossible to accommodate. She omitted Takei’s current political activism in her summary of his attributes, and did not address the parent’s allegation about the biased makeup of her assignment.
But if the teacher had done everything right - if the parent was simply being unreasonable, and there was no potential wrongdoing on her part - why did she copy her union president? And why did that union leader go on to forward it to the building-level union leadership?
The emails we received also show the principal forwarding the parent’s complaint about the teacher’s alleged comments to the HR director, another move that seems unnecessary if they were sure that the accusations were baseless.
So… were the accusations baseless?
Accusation #1: Teacher said that Charlie Kirk was sexist and racist.
Result: Undetermined. None of the emails we received from our records request proved that the teacher had slandered Charlie Kirk in front of her class. This neither refutes or proves the parental complaint.
Accusation #2: Bias in two of the teacher’s lessons.
Result: Keep reading to see for yourself.
According to the parent, in one lesson the teacher discouraged depictions of American flags in favor of pride flags or flags from other countries. The name of that lesson is “Identity House.” We obtained a copy, and you can see it below.
As you can see, the lesson does indeed tell students that they may not use the American flag.
Let’s take a closer look at the three exemplars at the bottom. Exemplars are often given to students to help them better understand the assignment, to show them what an excellent project would look like, or both.
Sample #1 highlights several left-coded topics such as “health care for immigrants” and “equal pay.”
Sample #2 has even more overtly leftist causes depicted (although, props to this student for giving Mom and Dad a shout out!).
And finally, sample #3 depicts the progress pride flag, climate change, anti-colonialism, minimum wage, and gun control.
There’s not an American flag in sight. These exemplars align with the teacher’s grading rubric below, which also states (in red!): “No American Flag.”
Why would a teacher require students not to use the American flag, if that it the flag they feel represents them the most - especially in Civics class? And why would a teacher only supply students with exemplars that demonstrate allegiance to left-wing or progressive ideologies? Was the climate of the class so biased that no students felt brave enough to express other views? Or did they express them, but their projects were not chosen?
Either way, it is clear that the parent’s concerns about this lesson were well-founded.
The second assignment reported by the parent contained a list of notable people, to be used as the suggested focus of a project. According to the parent, the list of names was “predominantly aligned with political far-left or liberal Democratic viewpoints.”
But is it? You can see the list of “Change Makers” below for yourself.
In order to assess the parent’s claim that the list was biased, and avoid any possible accusations of bias ourselves, we entered the list of names into ChatGPT with instructions “to analyze the following list of names for political bias” and tell us “for each name, if the person identifies with a political party or social movement, and if they ‘lean left’ or ‘lean right.’”
It answered our question in two different formats, both of which had the same result. You can see one of them HERE. The other can be seen in the screenshots from ChatGPT below.
According to ChatGPT, not a single one of the names presented as a “Change Maker” was right-leaning. And out of a list of 32 names, the only one with any connection to the Republican party has been dead for 130 years!
We also obtained a different version of this same assignment that contained all of the names above, plus 8 additional: Justin Dart Jr., Ansel Adams, Nellie Bly, Lewis Hine, Frederick Law Olmsted, Warren Buffett, Bill and Melinda Gates, and Milton Hershey.
When those names are put into ChatGPT for the same analysis, here’s the result.
Accusation #2: Bias in two Civics lessons.
Result: Confirmed.
This reflects very poorly on the Groton-Dunstable Middle School Civics program, and the administrators who oversee it. The records we have don’t prove that this teacher said something derogatory about Charlie Kirk, but they certainly demonstrate other examples of political bias in the classroom. They also give us a glimpse into a district culture where, when a serious complaint was made, a great deal of parental pressure appears to have been required to convince administrators to launch a formal investigation. And when they did ultimately investigate, the results seem to be a foregone conclusion. Given this, we can’t rule out that any GDRMS teacher might have felt free to say something terrible about Kirk, or to demonstrate political bias in some other way, and not anticipate any negative consequences. With this amount of bias present in this one small snapshot, we have to wonder - what else is going on at this school that parents don’t know about? Why should any conservative or religious parent trust this district to deal honestly with them, or with their children?
Just like in Natick, Groton-Dunstable also has a policy that speaks to controversial issues and bias in the classroom. And just like in Natick, they aren’t following it. See the relevant portion of the GDRSD policy below.
Teachers and administrators in Natick and Groton-Dunstable (and other districts too) must remember that respecting the families and cultures of all students is their responsibility. That includes conservative and religious families, too. If they can’t figure out how to do that, or if they don’t want to try, it’s time they find a new job.
Kudos to parents like the ones from Groton-Dunstable who were paying attention to what goes on in the classroom and decided to speak up. Massachusetts needs more parents like them.
What else did we learn from our public records inquiries about Charlie Kirk? Make sure to subscribe so you’ll get part 2 in your inbox as soon as it is released!
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