A Spanish teacher at a public high school in upstate New York was placed on paid administrative leave after she agreed to advise a student-led chapter of Turning Point USA on campus. Jennifer Fasulo, who teaches at Charles W. Baker High School in Baldwinsville, a Syracuse suburb, has been out of the classroom since Jan. 30.
The students asked for the club. The teacher said yes. The district pulled her from her job.
The Baldwinsville Central School District informed parents in a Feb. 10 letter that offered almost nothing in the way of explanation:
"The district can confirm that a staff member has been placed on paid administrative leave while a matter is under review. We are following established administrative and legal procedures, and we are unable to comment further or share additional details at this time."
That's the entire statement. No specifics. No allegations of misconduct. No timeline for resolution. Just bureaucratic boilerplate designed to say something without saying anything at all.
According to her supporters, Fasulo offered to help students establish a Club America chapter on campus, affiliated with Turning Point USA. The request came from the students themselves, not from parents, not from outside political organizers, and not from Fasulo, as New York Post reports.
Former Republican state Senate candidate Caleb Slater, who met Fasulo through church and other Christian circles and has taken up her cause, made this point directly:
"These are students who asked for this organization to be founded, not parents or teachers."
That distinction matters. Public schools routinely host student clubs across every conceivable interest and ideology. Environmental clubs, social justice clubs, LGBTQ alliance groups: these all operate with faculty advisers, and nobody gets suspended for volunteering. But when the club leans conservative, suddenly a "matter is under review."
Club America President Jerry Dygert addressed the Baldwinsville school board directly at its Feb. 9 meeting:
"This teacher is being targeted not because of her performance, but for her political beliefs."
Students have rallied behind Fasulo. A petition demanding her return has collected more than 2,100 signatures as of Thursday. Parents have taken to Facebook to voice support. The community response has been loud and overwhelmingly on the teacher's side.
Slater has gone further, saying Fasulo is being used as a sacrificial lamb to discourage any conservative organizations or opinions at the school. That's a serious charge. It's also one of the district has done nothing to refute,e beyond hiding behind "established administrative and legal procedures."
Others have claimed the school's actions had nothing to do with Turning Point USA and were instead sparked by an interaction Fasulo had with a student about sexual orientation. An unnamed parent alleged that Fasulo questioned her daughter about her sexual orientation while advising an after-school Christian youth group called Youth Alive.
These claims are unsubstantiated.
That's worth pausing on. The district has provided no official reason for the leave. The only competing explanation comes from an anonymous allegation with no corroboration. And yet, the teacher is the one sitting at home while the district "reviews" the matter weeks later with no end in sight.
If the district had a legitimate, non-political reason to place Fasulo on leave, nothing stopped them from saying so. Their silence speaks volumes. When a school district refuses to explain why it removed a teacher, but the only publicly visible trigger is her agreement to sponsor a conservative student club, reasonable people will draw reasonable conclusions.
This is how ideological conformity gets enforced in public education. Not through written policies banning conservative clubs. Those would be struck down immediately. Instead, through soft power: the raised eyebrow in the faculty lounge, the administrative "review" that never quite concludes, the chilling effect on every other teacher who might consider sponsoring something outside the approved ideological menu.
Every teacher in the Baldwinsville Central School District is watching what happens to Jennifer Fasulo. If she's reinstated quietly with no consequences for those who removed her, the message is still clear: helping conservative students will cost you weeks of your professional life and a cloud of suspicion. If she isn't reinstated, the message is worse.
The students at Baker High School did exactly what every civics teacher in America tells students to do. They organized. They found a faculty adviser. They followed the process. And the adults in charge responded by removing the only teacher willing to help them.
More than 2,100 people have signed a petition saying that's wrong. The district hasn't even bothered to explain why it thinks otherwise.
