Elementary Hire After Kissing Scandal?

A Colorado teacher fired for graded “same-gender kissing” skits is now back in a classroom teaching elementary kids, and parents are asking how this was allowed to happen.

Story Snapshot

A Denver French teacher was fired after an investigation found girls felt pressured to kiss classmates in graded skits.
An administrative judge called her approach “irresponsible and inappropriate” and linked it to harm for students.
Despite that record, she has been hired as an elementary school teacher in another Colorado district.
The case exposes serious gaps in school hiring, transparency, and protection of children from ideological agendas.

How a Denver Teacher Ended Up Fired Over Kissing Skits

Denver Public Schools fired French teacher Jennifer Honka after multiple girls reported feeling pressured to kiss classmates during biweekly skits that counted toward their grades.^[4] The skits, with titles like “The Neighbors Saw Everything” and “The Boring Kiss,” included repeated scripted moments where students were expected to kiss, often pairing girls with other girls.^[1] An investigation found at least one student who refused to take part said she received a zero for the assignment.^[1] Several students described feeling uncomfortable, embarrassed, and trapped by the grading setup.^[9]

A state administrative law judge reviewed testimony from the district and from Honka and upheld the push to dismiss her.^[4] The judge wrote that even if students were not physically forced, the way the skits were designed pushed them to make public decisions about consent to a “very personal and sexualized activity” in front of their peers while under teacher authority.^[4] He concluded her use of skits might work in theory to teach French, but the way she did it in this case was “irresponsible and inappropriate” and had little educational value for the students involved.^[4]

What Investigators Found Inside the Classroom

The investigation went beyond the kissing scenes and painted a picture of a classroom where boundaries had broken down.^[1] Reports say Honka enforced a rule on her wall that “the answer is always ‘yes,’” which some students took as pressure to go along even when they were uneasy.^[1] One girl reportedly told another teacher she felt she had no real choice because the skit was graded, later sharing a meme at school that said “she makes girls kiss,” and her attendance dropped after the incident.^[1] Another student who refused to participate said her grade suffered badly.^[1]

The judge also faulted Honka for revealing deeply personal adult topics to minors in class, including details about her sexuality, fertility struggles, suicidal thoughts, and childhood abuse.^[1] At least one student who was already struggling with suicidal thoughts reportedly left her class after those discussions.^[1] In the judge’s view, these disclosures, combined with the kissing skits, showed a “troubling pattern of poor judgment and neglect of the best interests of the students in her charge.”^[4] Denver Public Schools then fired her for incompetence and neglect of duty, calling student safety, dignity, and well-being their top priority.^[4]

From Unanimous Firing to a New Job With Younger Children

After this record, the Denver Public Schools board voted 7–0 to terminate Honka’s employment.^[4] Board members had the option to keep her, put her on a one-year probation, or fire her, and they chose removal with no public debate before the vote.^[4] Parents might expect that to be the end of her classroom career, at least for a while. Instead, media reviews of staff listings found she is now employed as an English language development teacher at Malley Drive Elementary School in Colorado.^[3]^[10] That means she moved straight from a middle or high school setting into an elementary school role serving younger, more impressionable children.

Honka continues to deny wrongdoing, saying she never forced anyone to kiss and offered alternatives like pretending to kiss, blowing a kiss, or giving fist bumps.^[9] But the judge’s decision makes clear the problem was the overall setup: a teacher in authority tying personal, sexualized physical acts to graded performance, under a classroom rule that “the answer is always yes.”^[4]^[1] For many parents, the key issue is not whether every student’s lips actually touched, but that kids felt pressured and unsafe while adults in the system failed to stop it sooner.

Why This Case Alarms Parents Who Want Schools to Protect Childhood

Many conservative parents see this case as part of a wider pattern where activist ideas around sexuality and identity creep into classrooms instead of basic academics. Here, reports say the skits almost always paired girls with other girls, even though the class was close to half boys.^[3] That raises obvious questions about why same-sex pairings were consistently chosen and whether an ideological message outweighed common sense. Parents send their children to learn languages and math, not to act out romantic scenes for a grade or to navigate adult topics pushed by a teacher.^[3]

This case also shows how schools can hide serious problems behind closed doors. The board met in executive session, and the full hearing record is not public, leaving many families with only short summaries from reporters and activists.^[4]^[9] Without full transparency, parents cannot easily judge how many warnings were missed, who knew what when, or how many similar cases are being handled quietly. At the same time, the fact that another district hired Honka, despite all this, signals that some administrators still treat these incidents as small “judgment calls” instead of clear lines that must not be crossed when children are involved.

What This Means Going Forward for Parents and Communities

For parents who value traditional family standards, this story is a warning sign about trusting the system to police itself. A teacher with a documented pattern of poor judgment now has access to younger children in a new district.^[3]^[10] If adults in charge do not share a firm line about protecting kids from sexualized content, then the burden falls on families to ask hard questions at every school, every year. That includes pushing for open records on teacher discipline, clear rules on physical contact in class, and real consequences when staff abuse their authority.

Across the country, fights over classroom content, gender ideology, and parental rights have turned school boards into political battlegrounds.^[23] This Colorado case brings that national fight down to a very personal level for families: will schools respect childhood innocence and parental values, or will they keep hiring people who treat kids as props in social experiments? The answer will not come from distant bureaucrats. It will come from engaged parents who show up, demand transparency, and insist that their local schools put student safety, modesty, and genuine learning first.