Community members voice opinions on suspended Hallsville school employees at Board of Education meeting
Mitchell Kaminski
HALLSVILLE, Mo. (KMIZ)
The Hallsville Board of Education held a pair of closed sessions before and after its 6 p.m. public meeting to discuss “personnel matters” after two teachers were placed on paid administrative leave following backlash over social media posts about Charlie Kirk.
Kirk, a conservative activist and co-founder of Turning Point USA, was killed in a shooting on Sept. 10 while speaking at Utah Valley University. He was 31.
Following his death, social media accounts matching the names of school district employees Anthony Plogger and Kayla Lewis were seen sharing posts from a social media page called “So Informed” that read:
“Charlie Kirk was a racist, xenophobic, transphobic, islamophobic, sexist, white nationalist mouthpiece who made millions inciting hatred in this country.
Whether it was his genocide denial, his transphobic tirades, his oushing for mass deportations, or his normalizing Trumpism for years, the man stood for nothing but hat.
I extend absolutely no empathy for people like that.
In this situation, my empathy is reserved for his children. May they grow up to live in a country that is the total opposite of everything their father envisioned.
May all of our children grow up to live in a country that values their lives enough to take gun violence seriously and reject any person who would try to justify senseless gun-related deaths – especially the deaths of children.”
Screenshots of the posts were shared around social media by public pages and community members. The school district wrote in its letter that the employees had “voluntarily removed the posts.” The screenshots do not show the employees giving additional comments.
Eleven people spoke at Wednesday’s Board of Education about the two employees, with only three voicing support. Bekki Brewer was one of the three who offered support for the suspended employees.
“As you know, those two individuals have not violated any of our school policies. Both shared posts on their own time, on their private Facebook accounts,” Brewer said. “You, as the school district, have records that show that those teachers have been effectively performing their roles for years.”
The two others who spoke in support of the teachers argued that firing the teachers would be “giving in to the tantrums of bullies” and that other school employees had made similar private posts that were not leaked to the public.
State Rep. John Martin (R-Columbia) had previously commented about the situation on his social media page, demanding that the employees be fired. He was one of eight people who believed the employees should face discipline.
“I’m not here to speak against their First Amendment rights. They have those rights. But they do have consequences for their words,” Martin told the board during the meeting.
Others who spoke said that the post set a “bad example for students”, “incited more violence that we should be standing up against,” and the employees failed to “uphold the basic moral principles such as morale is wrong.
Records obtained by ABC 17 News show that Plogger is a seventh-grade social studies teacher who was hired on June 7, 2021, but didn’t begin teaching full-time until Aug. 6, 2025. Lewis is a middle school counselor who has been working for the district since Aug. 12, 2020. However, the district would not confirm that Lewis and Plogger were the teachers placed on administrative leave.
The school district wrote in a letter to parents earlier this week that two employees were put on paid leave, pending the outcome of a review.
“We want to clarify that social media posts made by employees of the school district in their personal capacities and outside of their school duties do not reflect the opinions of the District or the Board of Education, nor are they endorsed in any way by the District. As a public school district, we recognize that our role is to create a learning environment where all students feel safe and valued,” the letter says.
The district says that Superintendent Tyler Walker made the decision to release the statement, adding that Walker is working closely with the district attorney.
Kirk considered himself a passionate supporter of free speech and a vocal critic of “cancel culture.”
In June, Kirk spoke at the Oxford Union debating society in London, where he criticized British laws after a woman was arrested for a social media post urging people to “set fire” to hotels housing migrants. Her post came in response to the July 2024 Southport attack, when the teenage son of migrant parents fatally stabbed several people.
“You should be allowed to say outrageous things,” Kirk told the crowd in London. “You should be allowed to say contrarian things. Free speech is a birthright that you gave us, and you guys decided not to codify it, and now it’s proof, it’s basically gone.”
On May 2, 2024, Kirk also posted on social media:
“Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free.”