A Pico Rivera, California, teacher who made headlines for an anti-military rant that was caught on camera has been fired.
Gregory Salcido, who taught history at El Rancho High School, was fired by the El Rancho Unified School District after a unanimous vote Tuesday night, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Salcido still has 30 days to appeal the decision.
“The classroom should never be a place where students feel that they are picked at, bullied, intimidated,” said Board of Education President Aurora Villon.
On Jan. 26, Salcido had gone on a rant, calling U.S. service members the “lowest of our low.”
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“They’re not like high-level thinkers, they’re not academic people, they’re not intellectual people; they’re the frickin’ lowest of our low,” Salcido said on a student’s recording of the event. “I don’t understand why we let the military guys come over here and recruit you at school. We don’t let pimps come in the school.”
Salcido's rant appeared to have been sparked by a student wearing a Marine Corps shirt.
The footage eventually caught the attention of White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, a retired Marine whose son was killed in action in Sangin, Afghanistan.
“Well, I think the guy ought to go to hell,” Kelly told Fox News Radio. “I just hope he enjoys the liberties and the lifestyles that we fought for.”
The firing of Salcido comes after the school board received a wave of negative attention from veterans and their relatives, according to Villon. Last month, a town hall meeting at El Rancho High School drew a crowd of 500, and highlighted the dissatisfaction of the community, Villon told the Los Angeles Times.
During a February city council meeting, where Salcido serves as a councilman, he apologized if he had hurt anyone, but stood by the comments, which he felt were taken out of context.
Salcido told reporters and residents that he was trying to get his students, many of whom are from poorer backgrounds, not to settle for military service.
“My goal as it relates to my students is to get them to do everything to get to college,” said Salcido. “I wanted to challenge them to reach their academic potential.”
Kyle Rempfer was an editor and reporter who has covered combat operations, criminal cases, foreign military assistance and training accidents. Before entering journalism, Kyle served in U.S. Air Force Special Tactics and deployed in 2014 to Paktika Province, Afghanistan, and Baghdad, Iraq.
