After the dismissal of a Battle Ground high school teacher, other educators censor their curricula

On Sept. 10, 2025, Battle Ground High School social studies teacher Amanda Gonzales was trying to stay in control of the churn of high school students during the minutes between class periods.

It was the day that conservative activist Charlie Kirk was killed during a speaking event outside Salt Lake City, Utah.

Looking back, Gonzales said, it was a hectic time of day when a student came up to her and asked if she had heard about Kirk’s death.

That’s where the two accounts diverge.

Gonzales recalls telling the student “thoughts and prayers,” and “he’s not my political cup of tea,” before moving on to wrangling her class.

The student’s account was different. “[Ms. Gonzales] was laughing about it, saying she had no sympathy for Nazis,” the student wrote in a text message to his mom, who soon shared a screenshot of the text on social media. There, it went viral, creating a firestorm online that inspired more than a hundred angry emails sent to administrators calling for the teacher to be fired.

Since then, the impact has been extensive for Gonzales.

“It’s burnt my life to the ground,” she said.

A few hours later that day, the district put Gonzales on paid administrative leave, where she has been for the past eight months. After the incident, she received online threats from a parent in the district, which led to a judge issuing a restraining order. Gonzales’ elderly parents got doxed. She has panic attacks and said she’s still afraid to go out in public.

Battle Ground School District spokesperson Amanda Richter declined an interview request for this story.

School Board Director Lorri Sibley also declined to comment for this story. The other four school board directors and Battle Ground High School Principal Heather Ichimura did not respond to interview requests.

In a letter outlining Gonzales’ cause for discharge, Superintendent Sherry Whitten wrote that multiple students were aware of Gonzales’ “political bias” because of statements she’d made in class about controversial topics. She added that, based on parent feedback, Gonzales’ expression had an adverse impact on the district and that her conduct had undermined the trust of students and families.

“The District finds the students credible,” Whitten wrote.

Battle Ground School District parent Shauna Walters, whose son’s text message catalyzed the investigation into Gonzales, agreed.

“We were assured multiple times that the district did not base their pursuit of termination solely on the testimony of my son, rather from the mountain of evidence from multiple sources,” Walters, who declined an interview request, wrote in a statement to OPB.

In January, a third-party arbitrator was hired to oversee an appeal between the teacher and the school district. Retired Washington state Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Martin determined that Gonzales did nothing wrong. After interviewing teachers, students, administrators and parents, Martin wrote in her findings that the allegation against Gonzales was “not credible,” and the opinion expressed by the teacher “was not egregious.”

Martin said the district had not met its burden of proof when it said that Gonzales had violated school policies about civility at school, staff expression and disciplinary action that it used to justify firing her.

“[Gonzales] is entitled to be reinstated to her teaching position,” Martin wrote, along with attorney fees and back pay. Arbitrators don’t have enforcement powers like an active judge, so a court would have to force such decisions to take effect.

The district has still not allowed Gonzales to return to class, and the situation at Battle Ground High School has left some other teachers feeling unprotected. Several told OPB that they don’t feel safe engaging with students or they are self-censoring when controversial topics come up in class.

Teachers censoring lesson plans

Shortly after the incident with Gonzales, something similar happened to Jordan Johnston, an English language arts teacher at Battle Ground High School. At the time, she was teaching “The Crucible,” a 1953 play by Arthur Miller that tells a story of mass hysteria during the Salem witch trials as an allegory for the Red Scare and McCarthyism in the 1950s.

An administrator pulled Johnston aside during a five-minute classroom passing period and told her they had overheard students talking about whether they could get Johnston to say something that would get her fired.

“Just be cautious,” Johnston recalled being told.

The next minute, she had to step into her classroom and teach “The Crucible,” a play about false accusations and reputations being ruined. It was something she had taught for years, she said, but now she was second guessing herself for fear that someone would misinterpret the lesson. She decided not to go into as much depth about McCarthyism, the political fearmongering named after Republican Sen. Joe McCarthy who made widespread accusations about communist infiltration into the U.S. government. His accusations ruined many careers in the 1950s, even when his claims were later found to be unsubstantiated.

In another class, Johnston avoided teaching a poem by Langston Hughes, a lauded Black American poet during the Harlem Renaissance. In the poem, the author talks about his race. She avoided the topic out of fear that she’d get negative feedback from students or their parents.

“In the past, I would have just done what I always do, but I feel bad that I actually didn’t teach some of those poems that I should have taught,” she said. “I shouldn’t have been worried that it was going to bother somebody.”

According to Johnston, other teachers feel the same way, or say they’re scared to attend protests or political rallies in their free time out of fear that they’ll be targeted.

“We’re all just kind of walking on eggshells,” said Joseph Drury, a math teacher at Battle Ground High School. Since Gonzales’ was put on leave, Drury said, he feels less safe engaging with students out of fear that district officials wouldn’t be supportive if something similar happened to him. Both Drury and Johnston testified in support of Gonzales when the arbitrator interviewed students and faculty at the school.

Combating cyberbullying

The controversy at Battle Ground High School underscores how teachers are increasingly navigating a pervasive online culture among their students and a political climate that can seep into the classroom.

In nearby Vancouver, Washington, teachers earlier this year protested over what they called their district’s lack of response to a student’s Instagram account that showed altered photos of teachers, including political and sexual references. And in Idaho last year, a middle school teacher resigned after a high-profile controversy when she was asked to take down a poster with the phrase “Everyone is Welcome Here” and a row of multiracial hands that the district said violated its policies.

Some teachers feel a Washington state law to ban cellphones in school would help combat cyberbullying of students and teachers.

“Teenagers are teenagers. They’re not fully thinking about the consequences of what that accusation can have,” said Ben Folgers, who teaches English language arts at Mount Rainier High School in Des Moines, Washington.

Folgers is a union representative for the Washington Education Association. He has noticed other cases in which teachers were targeted on social media after Charlie Kirk’s death. Usually they involved words taken out of context or blown out of proportion, he said.

While Oregon and many other states have rules prohibiting the use of personal electronic devices during the school day, Washington has no such rule. Gov. Bob Ferguson signed a law this year asking the state superintendent’s office to study policies in other states and make recommendations to the Legislature by the end of 2027.

“Washington is really behind the curve on that,” Folgers said.

Related: Oregon students and staff say cellphone restrictions are going well

As a social studies teacher at Battle Ground High School for the past decade, Gonzales didn’t shy away from controversial topics. Her courses included a class titled “Holocaust and genocide studies.” Speakers included Holocaust and Cambodian genocide survivors, and a guest speaker about the Rwandan genocide.

“You have to be able to have discussion and debate and talk about tough things,” Gonzales said. “Do I like teaching the slave trade? No. But you have to. It’s part of history and you’ve got to make kids understand not everything is rosy and pretty all the time.”

Disagreement moves to court

The third-party arbitrator’s report notes that Gonzales had no previous disciplinary history or formal complaints and received the highest possible teacher evaluations for eight of her 11 years in the district.

Walters, the Battle Ground parent, also testified as part of the arbitrator’s report. She said she disagreed with the judge’s finding that Gonzales should be reinstated, arguing that not all the appropriate evidence could be included in the investigation.

“Several students brought in video evidence of [Gonzales’] classroom political rants that were not admissible in her proceedings due to Washington being a two-party consent state,” Walters said.

At this point, Gonzales has several options. The district has made multiple settlement offers, she said, but none has been sufficient.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” she said. “Why am I worrying about not having any medical coverage? Why am I worried about what my retirement is going to look like?”

Gonzales may only be able to get her job back by taking the issue to Clark County Superior Court. She and her lawyer plan to give the district until Monday, April 27, for her to be reinstated. Then they’ll try to get the arbitrator’s order enforced in court.

The standoff is complicated by the fact that Battle Ground Public Schools is one of several districts in Clark County that are trying to find their way out of significant budget deficits. If Gonzales loses her job, it will be tough to find a new one in the area. Later this month, Battle Ground Public Schools will detail staff cuts to address a $20 million budget gap. Cuts are also happening at Vancouver Public Schools and Evergreen Public Schools.

Gonzales said she’s open to transferring from Battle Ground High School to another school within the district but hasn’t had any such offers from administrators.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct Joseph Drury’s first name, which was incorrect in an earlier version. OPB regrets the error.