Charlie Kirk was shot and killed on Wednesday while speaking at Utah Valley University. He was 31 years old. His death was a tragedy. Yet some teachers across the country celebrated it. That should disturb every parent in America.

A Baylor University student teacher interning at a Texas middle school wrote, “this makes me giggle” in response to Kirk’s assassination. She also added, “Good thing I’m not a Christian.” Another teacher at Goose Creek Consolidated Independent School District in Texas, Jennifer Courtemanche, wrote online, “Could this have been the consequences of his actions catching up with him?” She later added, “I’ll bet if the victim had been Black or brown or a Democrat influenced, he’d have been singing a different tune.”

Meanwhile, a teacher in Florida, Kelly Brock-Sanchez at Ridgeview Elementary in Clay County, shared a post online saying, “This may not be the obituary. We were all hoping to wake up to, but this is a close second for me.” (She was suspended, and the school district says they’re investigating, according to Florida’s Voice.)

There are other reports too: an Iowa school district is looking into a teacher’s post about Kirk’s death. And in Salisbury, Maryland, another teacher created a meme mocking Kirk's death.

These aren’t harmless lapses in judgment. These are moral failures. Teachers aren’t supposed to cheer when someone is killed.

Teachers are supposed to model decency and compassion. Instead, these teachers mocked a man’s murder because they disagreed with his politics. What message does that send to their students? That hate is acceptable if you direct it at the right targets? That political violence is funny?

The truth is that public schools are full of people like this. Not every public school teacher is bad, of course — there are good ones. But too many are liberal political activists first and educators second. And teachers' unions make the problem worse. They exist to protect the worst people in the profession. Fire a teacher for being incompetent or offensive, and the union will step in to defend the wrongdoer. Parents are left with no choice but to keep sending their kids into schools where the adults in the room openly celebrate violence.

This is one reason why school choice matters. Parents deserve options. If they don’t want their children taught by people who cheer when someone is assassinated, they should be able to take their tax dollars and send their kids somewhere else if the schools won't step in and fire the teachers who do these things. It's the parents' money, and they deserve to use it to educate their children how they see fit, including in parochial schools.

In private schools, a teacher who mocks someone’s murder would be out the door immediately. Parents pay tuition and expect standards. In public schools, unions and bureaucrats drag their feet. They treat the worst offenders like they are victims. That’s not accountability. That’s corruption.

School choice is about freedom. But it’s also about safety — moral safety for children. Kids should not be trapped in classrooms with adults who laugh at tragedy. And parents should not be forced to subsidize it.

The people mocking Charlie Kirk’s death exposed what many of us already knew. The culture in many public schools is broken. That’s why families need a way out.

Charlie Kirk believed in speaking uncomfortable truths. One of those truths is that our schools are not working – and that improving the quality of teachers is the way to improve education. These teachers quoted above proved his point; they're low-quality human beings. And their behavior makes the case for school choice stronger than ever.