The El Rancho Unified school board voted Tuesday to fire El Rancho High School teacher Gregory Salcido, who was heard in viral videos making comments critical of military members.
Salcido will remain on unpaid leave, pending any appeals to the State Office of Administrative Hearings.
After the decision was announced, Salcido said in a text message that it “would not be appropriate to comment until I am officially notified of a decision by the District.”
“The decision has been made. Our job is done, and we wanted to report that to you,” school board president Aurora Villon said after the announcement, which was met with applause.
The board voted in closed session after two people, local resident John Albitre and Pico Rivera City Councilman Bob Archuleta, spoke about Salcido during public comment at a board meeting.
Both said they hoped the board would fire him.
Albitre went a step further, saying he would try to figure out how to get Salcido stripped of his teaching credentials.
“A man like this — we just don’t need him,” Albitre said. “But I’d hate to see him keep his credentials and go somewhere else, and bully other kids and preach his way of life.”
The decision came almost two months after a video of him first went viral, in which he can be heard chastising 17-year-old student Victor Quiñonez for wearing a U.S. Marines sweatshirt and calling military members the “lowest of our low.”
The incident solicited reactions from as high up as the White House, when Chief of Staff John Kelly said that Salcido “ought to go to hell” for his remarks. Salcido was placed on paid administrative leave after the district verified it was indeed his voice in the recording, and he has been on leave ever since.
The Pico Rivera community has lamented what it views as a slow response by the district to fire him. Veterans protested outside the school the following week, and the district moved its next school board meeting to the gym to accommodate the huge crowds that turned out to speak about the issue.
Many people noted this wasn’t Salcido’s first controversy. He’s been placed on administrative leave at least twice before, once in 2012 for hitting a student and once in 2010 for allegedly threatening a student.
Although Salcido’s comments took place in the classroom, the blow-back from the episode has extended to his seat on Pico Rivera’s City Council. His fellow council members passed a resolution calling for his resignation. After he announced he would not resign from that seat, his El Rancho High colleague Raul Elias filed a petition to recall him from City Council.
City Clerk Anna Jerome is in the process of verifying that petition. Once she does, Elias will have 120 days to collect at least 6,386 signatures — 20 percent of Pico Rivera’s registered voters — to trigger a recall election.
During the Feb. 13 City Council meeting in which he said he wouldn’t resign, Salcido also said his comments were taken out of context and that they were a way of trying to reach an “apathetic” student.
He apologized if anyone was hurt, but he did not apologize for the comments themselves.
“If anything I have said has hurt somebody, it was unintentional, and I hope that apology can be taken sincerely,” he said.
