School district creating a climate of fear
To the editor:
The auditorium was packed for the meeting of the Lee County School Board on Tuesday evening. The Cape High football team — players, parents, coaches — were there in support of former coach Tyler Murphy, who resigned last month after allegations he had sex with the mother of a player. Murphy is now trying to get his job back. The public comment portion of the meeting lasted nearly an hour, with 51 people given one minute each to comment on an issue before the board. Several people spoke, both for and against vaccination mandates, but the majority of speakers were focused on the firing of three teachers for their alleged social media postings in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder.
The district has not released the content of the teacher posts, nor has it explained how the posts came to their attention. Through a reliable source, however, I have seen the posts and can report that it became immediately obvious that many, if not all, of the speakers demanding the firing of the teachers were unfamiliar with the actual content of the posts. The most common accusation was that the teachers celebrated Kirk’s death; other speakers referred to the posts as “hate speech” and others even accused the teachers of inciting violence. These are teachers, not haters; there was no celebration of Kirk’s death in the postings; what the teachers were guilty of was dissent from the MAGA world narrative that Charlie Kirk was an American hero and reverence must be paid.
In a landmark SCOTUS decision, the court said that neither students nor teachers “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” But no right is absolute; because of their professional responsibilities to their students, teachers are correctly held to a higher standard, but conformity to a popular opinion is not the standard. Teachers’ speech is protected if it does not cause disruption to the educational process or to the environment of the school. It is difficult to imagine how these teacher postings about Charlie Kirk would disrupt the educational process of their schools. In my opinion, firing the teachers and forcing their students to be taught by substitute teachers for extended periods of time would be a genuine disruption of the educational process.
Superintendent Denise Carlin insults our intelligence when she claims these teacher firings are not politically motivated. She has been, no doubt, under enormous pressure from the state to make an example of these teachers, but given the gravity of the dangerous precedent she is setting, many of us had hoped she would not give in. These teacher firings have got nothing to do with Charlie Kirk and not much to do with freedom of speech; these firings are about creating a climate of fear, not only among teachers, but among administrators and even school board members. Dissent from our authoritarian Project 2025 agenda and we will come after you. Your job, your reputation are safe so long as you keep quiet and go along to get along. We can’t fire every teacher we identify as liberal, but we can use fear and intimidation to stifle dissent.
Three lives are in ruins. And it’s not just the teachers in question; it’s their families and circle of friends. These are people devoted to making a difference in the lives of our children and we’re tossing their dreams away over private remarks on social media that could be described, at worst, as insensitive. A letter of reprimand in the teachers’ personnel files and we could all have gotten on with our lives. But when everything is political our society is in big trouble. And we can see clearly this is exactly where we are headed.
One speaker at the board meeting rightly pointed out that the teachers will most likely file lawsuits for wrongful termination and the costs to the board of defending against these lawsuits and possible monetary judgments if the courts find in favor of the teachers will all come out of taxpayer pockets.
Ray Clasen
North Fort Myers