Last week, Van Nuys High School art teacher Lorcan Kilroy was suspended for 11 days after he reportedly sent a letter to a student’s parents criticizing the student’s disrespectful behavior in the classroom. While the Los Angeles Unified School District contends that Kilroy’s suspension and transfer from Van Nuys High School had nothing to do with the letter, Kilroy says, “Abusive teachers, abusive students. It’s abuse. Why are we tolerating that?”
The saga began when a female student of Kilroy’s reportedly directed a slur at him and wrote a note stating, “Imma slap the s*** out of you.” The administration did nothing about the student behavior, so Kilroy wrote a letter to the student’s parents:
This senseless apathy is a malignant sore, a cancer on the energy and morale of the whole class. This is dismal, pathetic, self-absorbed and destructive… Please do not respond to this letter by staging a conference to come dribble and whine like many do about you or your kid’s personal difficulties or your hard life.
Kilroy cannot enter the Van Nuys High School campus from August 13 to September 23, and has been transferred to Lawrence Middle School in Chatsworth. According to local media, Kilroy said, “I’m not proud of the letter, the letter is overly harsh. I’m not asking for sympathy from the letter.”
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to remove purported quotes from a primary document that cannot presently be independently verified.
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).