(The Lion) — A Kansas City-area school district is under fire after it allegedly gave just a two-day suspension to a teacher who made what many feel is a repulsive post on the murder of Charlie Kirk.

Carrie Schmidt, a mom who earlier this year was banned from Gardner Edgerton School District property and events for trying to expose LGBTQ and sexually explicit materials on campus, contrasted her own draconian punishment – since lifted by a federal judge – with this week’s reputed suspension of teacher Leslie Hanzelka.

A science teacher at the district’s high school, Hanzelka appears to have doubled down on social media after someone called her initial response to Kirk’s assassination “callous.” In a screenshot of the apparent Facebook exchange, the other poster also noted Hanzelka tried to make light of the death of the father of two.

“2 young children lose their father and you try to be funny. Truly amazing!” the other poster writes to Hanzelka.

The Lion was unable to find Hanzelka’s original post, as her social media account is no longer viewable by the public.

“Meh,” Hanzelka wrote in response to the other poster’s criticism of her earlier post, “I’m saving my empathy for the children that got gunned down in Colorado today, none left over for the terrible person who considered the slaughter of children to be an acceptable price to pay so that inadequate white men can pose naked in front of a mirror with a machine gun and pretend they’re Rambo.”

The Gardner Edgerton board reportedly met Wednesday to decide Hanzelka’s posts and any penalty, but Schmidt, who has two children in the district, was far from satisfied with unsubstantiated reports of Hanzelka’s discipline.

“Word on the street is that the teacher who made the vile, disgusting, despicable comments regarding after Charlie Kirk was assassinated right on social media, she got a two-day suspension,” Schmidt said in a video posted by X account Libs of TikTok.

In February, Libs of TikTok had posted pictures of sex-related posters in a district school – a post that got Schmidt banned from district property. She is suing the district over the ban.

“Two days. That’s it for making despicable, disgusting comments,” Schmidt continued. “Right. So, I’m really upset about that. I’m also upset because … they’re not saying anything.”

Even before the Libs of TikTok-related ban, Schmidt had already ruffled district feathers by reading portions of sexually explicit books from a school library at board meetings in an effort to get them removed from shelves.

But after the district received national attention following Libs’ post in February, she was given an outright ban from all district property and events – including home-and-away ball games and graduations.

Schmidt won a temporary injunction in federal court in March that stayed the ban, allowing her to attend school events and watch her son play sports. Her ongoing lawsuit names the district, Superintendent Brian Huff, school board Vice President Greg Chapman and Gardner Edgerton High School Principal Frank Bell.

While Gardner Edgerton says it cannot talk about Hanzelka because it is a “personnel matter,” Schmidt says officials could at least denounce the language or say they don’t agree with it.

“This school district trespassed me. Not only that, they took me off of a school committee as well as brought a police report on me because I took pictures from on the walls of the high school, a public building, mind you … and then Libs of TikTok posted it with their words,” Schmidt said.

“I got all that stuff happening to me because of somebody else’s post – not my post, somebody else’s post – yet this teacher who, those are her words, she just gets a two-day suspension. And you know what? I don’t even know if it’s paid. It’s probably paid.”

The district didn’t immediately respond to The Lion’s request for comment Friday regarding either Hanzelka’s post or any discipline handed out.

Hanzelka is one of many across the nation – including school officials – facing consequences for applauding Kirk’s murder. Some have been fired or left their positions, and TV host Jimmy Kimmel’s show was taken off the air after he tried to incorrectly paint Kirk’s alleged killer as a MAGA Republican.

Schmidt said she is “disappointed,” and that the district “should share how they think about it or what they’re thinking right now because they’re going to brush this under the rug.

“That teacher right now is the face of our district, and I’m horrified,” she added. “I’m mortified by that.”

The Lion asked Schmidt if she’d like to make further comments on the teacher’s putative suspension. Here is a her statement:

USD 231 can’t stay silent. A teacher in this district went on Facebook after Charlie Kirk’s murder and called him a terrible person, so that inadequate white men can pose naked in front of a mirror with a machine gun. And what did the district do? A slap on the wrist, just an alleged two-day suspension.

Meanwhile, I was trespassed from every school property, kicked off a Board committee, and had a police report filed against me all because I took photos of the political propaganda hanging on the school walls and sent them to Libs of TikTok. I didn’t even post anything myself. Yet I was punished more severely than a teacher who spewed vile, hateful rhetoric for the whole world to see.

This is a double standard, plain and simple. When a teacher goes online and posts something that hateful, they become the face of USD 231. Is this the image our district wants to project to students and parents? 

The district needs to stand up and tell the community loud and clear whether it supports those comments or rejects them. Silence is not an option. If USD 231 won’t denounce those words, then it’s endorsing them. Parents deserve to know exactly where this district stands.