The superintendent of a Colorado school district is recommending termination for a teacher who posted inflammatory tweets that misidentified a student of Covington Catholic High School in the wake of a video in front of the Lincoln Memorial that went viral and sparked a fierce national political debate.
In the hours immediately after the original video of Covington Catholic students exploded on social media on Jan. 19, Douglas County School District Teacher Michelle Grissom tried to identify one of the students pictured at the scene.
"His name is [redacted]. His twitter account is closed to non followers so we won't interfere with his training in the #HitlerYouth," Michelle Grissom's tweet read.
The father of the student identified in Grissom's tweet quickly tried to set the record straight.
"I assure you this is not [redacted] … he played in a Varsity basketball game last night in Park Hills Kentucky and another game today in Middletown Ohio," the father tweeted back in reply.
After local media in Colorado began to cover Grissom's tweets, she deleted her Twitter account, resigned a leadership position with the teacher's union, and the school district placed her on leave.
At a board meeting Tuesday night, Superintendent Thomas Tucker recommended Grissom's firing.
In the previous school board meeting, a citizen addressed the board about Grissom's behavior, but once he mentioned the teacher by name, he was warned he was violating the public comment policy. The board president told the man to stop speaking, who was then escorted out of the meeting by security.
A man at the DougCo school board meeting tonight was escorted out by an officer after he brought up tweets attributed to a district history teacher - tweets that referenced the Covington Catholic incident in DC and called a student "Hitler Youth." pic.twitter.com/uZPtaLEKSg
— Next with Kyle Clark (@nexton9news) January 25, 2019
A local television anchor found video from another board meeting in which a citizen held up signs naming district employees while she spoke before the DCSD board. However, she was only warned that she was violating policy, and she was not escorted away.
I pulled up video of the last board meeting. Where this woman waved signs criticizing specific people. She was reminded of the rule but permitted to stay. She then turned and lit into someone in the audience by name (apparently a staff member). She was allowed to finish. pic.twitter.com/ITLej6lXNi
— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) January 25, 2019
"So it kinda seems like whether the DougCo board gives you a polite warning or a police escort for violating Policy KE depends on who you are or who you are criticizing," the anchor concluded in another Tweet.
The Douglas County School District is the third largest in Colorado, and has been a political hotbed over the last decade. School reformers had made advances there including a 2012 vote to exclude the teacher's union from collective bargaining.
However, pro-union candidates took a majority of board seats in the district in the November 2017 elections, ending most of the reforms in progress.