What happens if a teacher in a public university shows perhaps passing assistance for President Donald Trump? In order to make you think so uneasy that you retire, activists may launch a force strategy.
That could have been the story of Brooke Zahn, a fourth grade teacher at Jeffers Pond Elementary School in Minnesota’s Prior Lake-Savage Area School District ( Prior Lake ), except she isn’t going anywhere.
On December 1, 2024, Zahn shared a photo that displayed aid for one of the major policy efforts of the Trump leadership: the imprisonment of illegal immigrants. That legislation was one of the major messages of Trump’s strategy, and it is so common, in fact, that Trump and Republicans across the board won a significant vote triumph in 2024.
The caption” a home that is deported up stays together” was featured in the photo Zahn shared, which essentially translated to Trump frontier czar Tom Homan, who in late October during the campaign claimed the Trump administration would be able to arrest families together in order to prevent family separation.
” While the image mentioned immigration, it really wasn’t about that. In a telephone interview with The Federalist, Zahn stated that the main point of my communication was that President Trump’s plan was not to divide people and was not to divide children from families.
( Courtesy of Rachel Carlson )
Before Lake was unconcerned about that, as Before Lake did by suspending her without pay for seven days after posting the image to a private Facebook group called” Before Lake Gentle Hearted Conservative Group.”
In a Dec. 11 letter informing her of her suspension, Prior Lake claimed that the post” caused significant educational disruption across the District”, citing emails, calls, media inquiries, and, notably, public comments made at a school board meeting by students and parents.
She claimed that families had inquired about removing their children from her class, which she claimed has not occurred. In the letter, it even stated that. According to Zahn Zahn, no one ever attends the” support group” the district established to “address the harm from]the post” to emotionally cope with the meme.
Your choice to post this message and your refusal to acknowledge any harm it may have caused constitute conduct unfit for teaching, the letter states.
There was a big urge for me to feel very uneasy when I returned to work, Zahn said.
” I was made to feel that the entire staff, or almost the entire staff, hated me and loathed me, and I was an embarrassment to our community and our school”, she added. ” Christmas was really hard. The entire month of December was hard, emotionally. I had this enormous difficulty. Shopping in our town was uncomfortable for me. I would leave town to visit the grocery store.
But once she returned to school, she found out that much of the district’s framing was, at best, disingenuous.
” I really just held my head up high because I didn’t do anything wrong, and I didn’t go out of my way to apologize to people or anything like that,” Zahn said once I returned to school and kind of regrouped. ” I just kind of was there, and I let people come to me and they treated me like they had before.”
However, it does not appear that the district did it because they were putting forth no effort.
In addition to blatantly describing the situation, Jeffers Pond principal Patrick Glynn also sent a message to all families informing them of” concerns raised about a social media post,” but he did not specifically mention Zahn. Though, it appears the situation was stacked against Zahn anyway, because Glynn said” I want to assure you that we remain committed to fostering a respectful, inclusive, and supportive environment for all members of our school community”.
The email certainly fueled chatter online, including by a Facebook group” Lakers for Love – A Community”, which has a post saying,” Okay, who can help me understand what’s going on at Jeffers Pond”? taking note of the “mysterious email,” and saying,” I’m wondering what happened and whether I should be concerned about the culture there. Don’t way ]sic ] to be nosy, but I have a multi-racial child there and we try to raise him to honor and respect all people”.
One commenter, inevitably, wondered whether it was about Zahn.
Even worse, prior to an investigation into Zahn’s release was made public, according to Prior Lake Communications Director Kristi Mussman, which was a customary practice when there is a” significant disruption.”
Administrators met with a group of high school students to “acknowledge their concerns,” according to Mussman. That is bizarre, though, because Zahn is a fourth grade teacher and does not teach in a high school in the district.
Directly after that meeting, however, two of the students, who had never met Zahn, gave impassioned pleas at a subsequent school board meeting.
High school senior Danny Nong said, implying Zahn should be fired, that a teacher who was meant to provide a safe and nurturing environment not only has publicly said such a horrible and hurtful thing, but to my knowledge, they will continue to hold their position unless something is done. ” I know many, many families in our district are upset and hurt by this news, and rightly so,” she said. As a son of immigrants and as someone who works in tandem with organizations fighting against the unlawful deportation of people, I am aware of how unfair and painful this is.
Another senior, Jasmine DuHadway, was perturbed that Zahn had apparently “resisted taking inclusivity classes” and said that other teachers who agree with Zahn should face consequences.
Some district officials who spoke with The Federalist on the condition of anonymity believe that the speeches were planned by Prior Lake High School assistant principal Gust Abdallah, assistant principal of Prior Lake High School, Sam Ouk, district executive director of academic services, and Dan Edwards, district executive director of academic services. Mussman contends that the speeches were not planned and that district officials had no intention of starting a pressure campaign against Zahn.
In the reprimand letter, Prior Lake said that although she shared the image in a private Facebook group, the fact that it had 876 members meant that the “intended audience, based on the name of the group, is clearly the’ Prior Lake ‘ community” and that “regardless of the group’s designation as ‘ private,'” Zahn “knowingly shared” the post.
According to a school board social media policy, Policy 428, which requires that “employees must be respectful and professional in all communications ( by word, image, or other means )” and that “employees must make clear that any views expressed are the employee’s alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the District,” she was disciplined.
The district came to the decision that her endorsement of a particular school board candidate in a completely different position against the policy after a difficult web of logic. Even so, Zahn’s Facebook profile states at the top that” the views I share are mine & mine alone and only represent me,” as the Prior Lake letter acknowledges.
Families in Zahn’s classroom were informed that she had been taken on leave and would not be teaching.
Viewpoint Discrimination?
Because this is her third infraction since 2021, Zahn appears to have a target on her back because, despite the district’s mandate, she was defending students ‘ rights to wear masks to school. She was first criticized for encouraging parents to protest the school board’s decision to mandate masks, which was never supported by any scientific evidence and was also incredibly harmful to children.
A month later, she made a second infraction when she refused to make students in her class wear masks. She did not say they could remove their masks or enforce the law. She was suspended.
Due to this being her third infraction, she could be fired after a fourth, which would unmask her freedom of speech. That is how union negotiations with districts operate, and Zahn was still required to work through them in order to advance legal proceedings despite her leaving the teachers ‘ union a few years ago. She said that the union, Education Minnesota, seemed to do a fair job telling her information she needed to know.
That same union, however, is part of the reason that there was a target on her back for sharing the meme, Zahn said. Prior to the meme, the union circulated a “pledge” to” stand up to bullies”, who it said was Trump.
Zahn publicly refuted the promise and claimed that Zahn’s statement to The Federalist was that the union’s message was actually that teachers who support Trump should be bullied.
” I teach fourth grade, and we tell kids not to be bullies — to stand up to bullies”, Zahn said. ” I know that it’s really unpopular for teachers to be not just be conservative, but allow it to be known that they’re conservative. And I know that if I speak up and say something, maybe other teachers will realize it’s okay”.
However, that may not be the case for left-leaning administrators and teachers in the district. Mussman assured The Federalist that it was not the district’s policy or practice to engage in viewpoint discrimination against conservative teachers, but evidence suggests that there should be several reprimands being issued if that is the case.
Prior Lake High School principal John Bezek, who posted a photo of him holding a Biden-Harris sign, another essentially anodyne political position, on social media, is one instance of left-wing reprimand. The district confirmed that this was the reason for the reprimand, but it is still unclear whether it was the picture of him posing next to a student who was wearing a shirt that read,” Who ate all the p*ssy?” The Federalist’s email content filter did not respond to a clarification of which, or whether either of the two actions resulted in discipline, and Prior Lake’s own email content filter did not even allow it to directly inquire about that shirt.
( Courtesy of Rachel Carlson )
( Courtesy of Rachel Carlson )
In another instance, Andrea Alice, a special education teacher who goes by her maiden name online, shared a picture of a school house with a sign that reads:” Attention: this school protected from drag queens]and ] dirty books”.
The meme features an upside-down American flag with bullet holes, along with a school house full of bullet holes. It is unclear if she was reprimanded, and the district did not respond to confirm.
( Courtesy of Rachel Carlson )
A “hate has no home here” sign that features the Black Lives Matter logo and a gay pride flag is displayed on one of the classroom doors at Hidden Oaks Middle School, another district school. The door also says “people of quality don’t fear equality” and has a “land acknowledgement” stating “you are on Dakota/Ojibwe land”.
While Mussman said the “land acknowledgement” — a practice that distorts reality and claims that Americans are not the owners of their own land — is in line with” the District’s land acknowledgement”.
However, she also said that the district was unaware of the “hate has no home here” sign with the Black Lives Matter logo, meaning no one has been disciplined. If that logo is against district policy, Mussman did not respond to a follow-up inquiry.
( Courtesy of Rachel Carlson )
There are countless other examples.
For now, however, Zahn has retained a lawyer and is in early stages of planning a legal strategy, as her appeal was already denied.
As she deleted her accounts out of precaution, Zahn told The Federalist,” I feel like my First Amendment Right has been taken away from me online,” Zahn said. She maintains that she will continue to teach fourth grade despite the effects it has had on her and her family.
Breccan F. Thies is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered issues of education and culture for Breitbart News and the Washington Examiner. He is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow and holds a degree from the University of Virginia. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
