Last April, Missouri's Kearney School District (KSD) announced that it had hired a new principal to run Southview Elementary School: Ali Stewart, who had been the district's director of curriculum and instruction since 2023. Annie Palmer, a KSD parent and former KSD teacher who had worked with Stewart, did not think she was a good choice for that job. When Palmer saw the announcement on the school district's Facebook page, she expressed her displeasure with a thumbs-down emoji.
Or maybe it was a "sad-face" emoji, as Ray Weikal, the school district's director of communications and community relations, later described it in an email to KSD Superintendent Emily Miller. We can't say for sure, because Weikal deleted Palmer's response. He also banned her from the KSD Facebook page, seemingly oblivious to the First Amendment implications of that decision.
