A popular teacher in Michigan has been fired for simply posting the following tweet below supporting President Trump, along with a retweet of President Trump saying “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!”
I’m done being silent. @realDonaldTrump is our president ❌🧢
Don’t @ me
— Coach Kucera (@CoachKWLW) July 7, 2020
Here’s more from Free Beacon:
A Michigan school district fired a popular high school teacher and coach after he pointed out that “Trump is our president” on social media.
Varsity baseball coach and social studies teacher Justin Kucera said Walled Lake school district officials hauled him into a closed-door meeting after he indicated his support for President Trump’s speech to reopen schools. He told the Washington Free Beacon the Walled Lake Western principal and district superintendent gave him an ultimatum: be fired or resign.
“I was required to meet with [human resources], the superintendent, and my principal [on July 10]. They initially took my statement on why I tweeted those tweets and they told me they would have a decision about my future employment in the upcoming days. When they completed the meeting, I was told I had the option to either be fired or resign.” Kucera said.
Neither the school district nor the principal responded to requests for comment.
Kucera said the statement that cost him his job was intended to unify, rather than divide.
“I know a lot of people are just rooting for Trump to fail, and I don’t think that anybody should do that,” Kucera said. “Agree with him or not, you should want the president to do well. I apologized that [my tweet] brought so much negative attention, but I’m not sorry for what I said.”
It’s absolutely mind blowing that indicating support for president Trump ends up with a popular school teacher getting fired. This is not the America I grew up in, where supporting the president of the United States was seen as a fireable offense. This would have never happened during the Obama presidency.
But it’s worse than that. According to Free Beacon, other teachers in the school district have done the opposite and have not been fired:
Other Walled Lake teachers have expressed their political views without any repercussions. Paulette Loe, a now-retired Walled Lake Western teacher, encouraged students to read an article from the Atlantic about “how to beat Trump” while still employed. Nicole Estes, a kindergarten teacher in the district, called Trump a “sociopath” and a “narcissist” on Facebook in 2016 and is still employed at Keith Elementary School. Neither Loe nor Estes responded to requests for comment.
I’d bet there are even more examples of this hypocrisy. Even so, the hypocrisy isn’t what is so upsetting. It’s the fact that a teacher merely indicated support for the president and reopening schools in the fall, and for that he was terminated.
If I were him I’d file a wrongful termination suit and sue to get my job back with back pay. A case like this should be a breeze through the courts…
UPDATE: Upon a little more research into this post, I saw some students referring to a different tweet from Kucera that’s been deleted. Apparently that tweet said “Liberals suck man”:
@ahhamka @kennethgutman you know him? pic.twitter.com/AayTqfBXPt
— abby (@itsabbyig) July 7, 2020
Judging from the screenshot it looks like Kucera was responding to something someone else had said, but thus far I can’t find a screenshot showing the fuller context. My guess is that the ‘liberals’ he was referring were in some story that he’d read and was responding to. But these students saw it and begin sending this tweet to officials in the school district.
I’m not suggesting that Kucera’s termination was justified, but only that there appears more to this story than what Free Beacon reported.
UPDATE II: I spoke with Chrissy Clark over at Free Beacon, who wrote the article above, and she explained that she’d asked Kucera about the deleted tweet saying “liberals suck man”, and that he was very sorry for tweeting it and said it only served to stoke the flames of controversy. She added that he apologized to administration leaders behind closed doors for the tweet, but that he believed it was the tweet about President Trump that brought him into the office.
If you look at the date stamp on the deleted tweet and the one about President Trump, they are only about a half hour apart. And I did see students tweeting the deleted tweet to school officials. So make of it what you will.
UPDATE III: Below is the full screenshot of the ‘liberals suck man’ tweet with the appropriate context. As you can see, he was referring to the ‘liberals’ who have been trying to take down the president since he was elected.
