School district officials are investigating after a Villa Park High teacher allegedly removed and threw away a student memorial to slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk from the front of the Orange County campus.
Supt. Rachel H. Monárrez confirmed that the memorial had been removed but said personnel rules prevented her from discussing any allegations involving an employee. She confirmed the Orange Unified School District is looking into the incident.
“We have an obligation to investigate,” Monárrez said. “That doesn’t mean that the person is guilty or not guilty. We’re investigating.”
Monárrez added that the school had no advance notice that a memorial would be set up, but “wanted to support children in their grieving process.”
The episode comes amid a string nationwide of employees being fired or suspended after being accused of publicly applauding the death of Kirk, who was assassinated last week at a Utah college campus. Public and private employees have used rough, celebratory or crude language — typically on social media — in response to Kirk’s death. While Kirk, who was 31, relished the give-and-take of debates — including by taking on views different from his own — his own polarizing statements have long attracted sharp criticism.
Two of the three student organizers agreed to be interviewed but requested anonymity. Both were concerned about online notoriety that could be associated with a politically tinged situation. One student worries about the effect on a possible future athletic scholarship and participation in team sports. The other student is contemplating a career in public service and doesn’t want the incident to come up in a background check.
The idea to assemble a memorial came together quickly, on Sunday night.
A 16-year-old junior said he thought the idea was “really cool … because I feel that I relate to this person. And I wouldn’t even say it’s all political. I say that I relate to him because I’m also a very religious person” especially “within the past year or two.”
On his note, he said, “I wrote thoughts and prayers for the Kirk family.”
“After Charlie’s passing, I felt really bad, and I wanted to host something at the school,” said a 17-year-old senior.
The next morning, before school, three students brought bouquets and notes and added them to an unrelated memorial to the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The 9/11 memorial had been set up at an outdoor amphitheater inside the campus.
An administrator suggested that the Kirk memorial be moved to the public sidewalk in front of school, noting that the 9/11 memorial was about to be taken down. The students agreed, in part, they said, because their memorial to Kirk would be more visible out in front.
The school bell rang at 8:30 a.m. and the students were off to class.
But later that morning, around 10 a.m., they received texts that the memorial had been taken down. A parent, they said, took a picture of a woman removing the materials and saw the woman put the materials in her car.
The students provided a photo to The Times that shows a woman at the memorial and her car nearby. The students identified the woman as a teacher and said the teacher did not complete the full day at work.
The district declined to confirm the identity of the individual or whether the teacher had been asked to leave campus. Monárrez said it is common during an investigation to place an employee on paid administrative leave, but she did not say if that had happened as part of the inquiry.
When alerted of the memorial’s removal, administrators tried to find out what happened, including by enlisting the school resource officer.
The materials were found in an off-campus dumpster, said a parent of one of the students and also Alex Tran, a Villa Park High student government leader who graduated in June.
“I believe it is vandalism” and a violation of students’ right to free speech, said Tran, who is about to begin college at UC Davis.
The superintendent confirmed that the memorial artifacts were located “off campus” and then brought back so the memorial could be set up again.
Monárrez said that when an employee does something improper, but without putting children at risk, there is typically “progressive discipline,” which takes into account the seriousness of the offense along with a person’s employment history. If an employee receives a warning letter, for example, that level of discipline would remain confidential. The school board would have to ratify more serious consequences that would affect pay or employment.
“The removal of the memorial was not behavior that was condoned,” Monárrez said. “This is about the behavior. We’re really trying to be a district that gets past these cultural wars and really stays focused on children and educational outcomes for them.”
