E Wayne Ross

Okay, picture in your mind that old social studies classroom. What’s on the walls?

Pictures of lots of old, dead, white guys (mostly US presidents)…maps, yes, usually lot’s of maps. And fairly often there’ll be poster of the flags of the world, or in some classrooms (or school hallways) small flags of every country hanging along the top of the walls.

Suddenly, if you’re a teacher in Colorado (remember Jay Bennish?) you can only hang the Stars and Stripes in your classroom. (And, if you’re working in Red River Elementary in Coushatta, LA you can probably hang Old Glory and the Stars and Bars too).

Today’s Rocky Mountain News has the story of seventh-grade social studies teacher Eric Hamlin who was suspended from Carmody Middle School in Lakewood after refusing to remove the flags of Mexico, China and the United Nations, which were displayed in his classroom along with the American flag. Jefferson County school administrators said Hamlin’s principal believed the teacher was violating a state law that bars the display of foreign flags on public property.
Rocky Mountain News
URL: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/education/article/0,1299,DRMN_957_4940787,00.html

Teacher in trouble over flag displays
Geography instructor refused to take down foreign banners at school
By Berny Morson, Rocky Mountain News
August 24, 2006

A seventh-grade geography teacher at Carmody Middle School in Lakewood was suspended with pay Wednesday after he refused to take down foreign flags displayed in his classroom.

Eric Hamlin, 36, said the flags of China, Mexico and the United Nations were relevant to the unit on the fundamentals of geography he teaches in the first six weeks of the semester.

He’s used the same display for most of the nine years he’s taught in Jefferson County, Hamlin said.

“Since flags are symbols of a nation and the people who live in that nation, if a flag of a foreign nation in a geography class can’t be displayed, and only the U.S. flag can be displayed, we’re sending the message that America is number one, everything else is below that,” Hamlin said.

Hamlin received a written reprimand Tuesday. Principal John Schalk escorted Hamlin from the building when the flags were still up on Wednesday morning.

Schalk referred questions to Jefferson County Schools spokeswoman Lynn Setzer.

Setzer said Schalk believed Hamlin was in violation of a state law barring display of foreign flags on public property.

Schalk interprets the law as allowing display of a specific lesson, but not for the duration of a six-week unit, Setzer said.

Superintendent Cindy Stevenson said Hamlin could have removed the flags, then appealed the principal’s decision to higher administrators. By refusing to remove the flags, Hamlin was insubordinate, Stevenson said.

“He defied a direct, reasonable request from a principal. That’s what’s at issue here,” Stevenson said.

Stevenson said it’s possible Hamlin and the district could work out an agreement short of firing Hamlin.

Hamlin said, “There’s no question I was insubordinate . . . I did directly tell my principal that I would not follow what he told me that I had to do.

“It’s the background, the basis of what he told me to do that I disagree with,” he said.

Whether Hamlin was actually in violation of a state law is another matter.

The 2002 law bars the display of foreign flags on state buildings. Among the exceptions are foreign flags used as “part of a temporary display of any instructional or historical materials not permanently affixed or attached to any part of the buildings or grounds . . ..”

Mark Silverstein, the legal director of the Colorado chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said that exception would appear to cover Hamlin’s display.

Hamlin said he’s begun drafting a written request for ACLU representation.

“We’ll read the letter and d , to take,” Silverstein said.

Hamlin has more than 50 flags that he uses during the course of the year.

Copyright 2006, Rocky Mountain News. All Rights Reserved.

Akron Beacon Journal: State school board race evolves into debate over whether religion should be part of the science curriculum

State school board races rarely generate much interest. But this year’s race in the Akron area is drawing national attention.

The issue heating up this race is the teaching of evolution.

The nonpartisan race for the District 7 school board seat includes two prominent names: former Congressman and former Akron Mayor Tom Sawyer and incumbent Deborah Owens Fink, a University of Akron marketing professor.

Owens Fink was a leader in the effort to adopt a controversial science curriculum standard and lesson plan calling for a critical analysis of evolution, Charles Darwin’s theory that life on Earth evolved over millions of years from common ancestors.

Sawyer was drafted to run by the newly formed Help Ohio Public Education. The group’s founders, Case Western Reserve University professors Patricia Princehouse and Lawrence Krauss, say the curriculum changes promoted intelligent design and were an effort to insert religion into the science curriculum.

In February, the state board rescinded the curriculum changes. The vote came after a federal judge in Pennsylvania rejected the teaching of intelligent design there, saying it is religion masquerading as science.Princehouse said a HOPE Web site endorsing Sawyer is drawing viewers from across the country and a reporter from the New York Times recently interviewed Krauss.

“People perceive the Ohio race as having the potential for real positive change for addressing root causes in poor science education,” Princehouse said.

Princehouse said that Owens Fink consistently thumbs “her nose at education experts, science experts and parents.”

Owens Fink, a Bath Township Republican, said she’s not running on the “evolution issue,” but rather the “broad base that I have brought to the table, most specifically this issue of really increasing the rigor in the curriculum” and aligning it with “what students should know and be able to do.”

During her tenure on the Ohio school board, she said, scores on state-mandated tests have improved “because we were really focusing on being very clear about what students should know.”

Owens Fink calls Princehouse, Krauss and other scientists supportive of Sawyer “members of the dogmatic scientific community” who want to stifle discussion about “the strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory.”

Sawyer rejected Owens Fink’s suggestion that his campaign is narrowly focused on the debate over teaching evolution.

Sawyer, an Akron Democrat, said his platform embraces the “broad range of the curriculum — the building blocks that comprise a thorough efficient education… Science education is an important part of that.”

He said he will also campaign about addressing school funding woes and a “stronger role for the state board of education.”

Owens Fink and Sawyer agree that more money will be spent on this race than usual.

“I’m going to do what it takes…. I’ve not had a major competitor before,” Owens Fink said. “This is new territory.”

Also filing for the District 7 school board election on Nov. 7 were Dave Kovacs, a philosophy student at the University of Akron, and John Jones, an employee of Ohio Edison Co. The filing deadline was Thursday.

Kovacs is making an aggressive run at the seat.

He developed a campaign Web site about six months ago in which he outlines his issues, including closing the achievement gap for minorities, disparities in school funding and corporate advertising in schools.

On Thursday, he criticized Owens Fink’s support of the controversial science standard, as well as charter schools. He’d like to see state-mandated testing de-emphasized and a return to a focus on a traditional curriculum.

“My issue is teach children to think for themselves,” he said.

Competitor Jones said simply: “I’m a common man and I want practical change.”

The Bush administration is attacking voluntary integration plans in Seattle and Louisville, which are two the last places in the US where schools remain relatively racially balanced.

As the Harvard Civil Rights Project has illustrated how the repeal of court ordered integration is resegregating schools and creating a growing number of apartheid schools in the US.

Apparently the Bush administration won’t be satified until all US schools follow the apartheid model.

Los Angeles Times: http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-na-scotus25aug25,1,1067156.story?coll=la-news-learning

The solicitor general urges the Supreme Court to scrap schools’ voluntary programs that exclude some students because of their race.

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has urged the Supreme Court to strike down voluntary school integration programs across the nation that exclude some students because of their race.

Administration lawyers filed briefs this week in pending cases from Seattle and Louisville, Ky., on the side of white parents who are challenging “racial balancing” programs as unconstitutional.

The parents say the integration guidelines amount to racial discrimination and violate the Constitution’s guarantee of the equal protection of the laws. They lost in the lower courts, but the Supreme Court will hear their appeals in the fall.
In the briefs, U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement urged the justices to rule that “the use of a racial classification to achieve a desired racial balance in public schools” is just as unconstitutional as old-fashioned racial segregation.

Louisville, which had a history of segregated schools, adopted integration guidelines in 2001 that said the black enrollment in each elementary school should be at least 15% but no more than 50%. In Meredith vs. Jefferson County, Crystal Meredith, a white parent, sued when her son was prohibited from attending the elementary school nearest to his home.

The Seattle school board adopted integration guidelines for its high schools, beginning with the 1998-99 school year. Officials said they hoped to preserve racial diversity in the schools and prevent segregation that mirrored the racially segregated housing patterns in the city.

In the case of Parents Involved in Community Schools vs. Seattle schools, a group of parents sued to challenge the guidelines after their children were denied enrollment in their first choice of a high school because of their race or ethnicity.

As many as 1,000 school districts nationwide — including the Los Angeles Unified School District — are integrating some of their schools by using race or ethnicity as a factor for enrollment, according to Sharon L. Browne, a lawyer for the Pacific Legal Foundation in Sacramento. That organization filed suit in October against the Los Angeles district in state court, contending that it had violated Proposition 209, the 1996 statewide initiative that prohibits public programs from using racial preferences.

Next month, lawyers for the Louisville and Seattle school districts, as well as civil rights advocates will file briefs defending the integration guidelines. The justices are expected to hear oral arguments in December.

In the briefs filed this week, Clement urged the high court to resolve a lingering dispute over the meaning of the court’s landmark decision in Brown vs. Board of Education. That 1954 ruling struck down racial segregation laws that prevailed in the South and parts of the Midwest and declared that segregated schools are “inherently unequal.”

For decades afterward, school districts across the nation adopted policies to bring about racial integration: Some set enrollment guidelines that prevented schools from becoming nearly all black or all white, while others have used magnet programs that consider a student’s race. Many of those policies remain in effect.

Los Angeles Unified considers race as one of the factors for enrollment in its 162 magnet programs, which use specialized curricula to draw a racially and ethnically diverse student body from across the city. When the program was created almost three decades ago, nearly 40% of the district’s students were white, about one-third Latino and one-quarter black.

Today, fewer than one in 10 Los Angeles Unified students is white, and 30% to 40% of magnet seats are reserved for white children.

Clement, the Bush administration’s chief lawyer before the high court, said such programs should be struck down whenever they involve the use of a “racial classification” to decide who may enroll.

“The promise of this court’s landmark Brown [decision] was to ‘effectuate a transition to a racially non-discriminatory school system,’ ” he wrote. “The United States remains deeply committed to that objective. But once the effects of past de jure [legal] segregation have been remedied, the path forward does not involve new instances of de jure discrimination.”

His argument is likely to get a favorable hearing from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and his conservative colleagues.

“It’s a sordid business, this divvying us up by race,” Roberts commented in June when the court ruled on a voting-rights dispute from Texas. The court majority said Texas had violated the Voting Rights Act by shifting Latino voters out of a congressional district where they were nearing a majority, but Roberts expressed his dismay with the law’s focus on the race and ethnicity of the voters.

In the past, Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony M. Kennedy have regularly voted to strike down contracting set-asides or affirmative-action programs that give preferences to minorities.

Three years ago, they dissented when the high court, in a 5-4 decision, upheld the affirmative-action policy at the University of Michigan law school. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote the majority opinion.

The replacement of O’Connor, who retired last year, with Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. could tip the court’s balance on affirmation action as well as on voluntary school integration. During his days as a Reagan administration lawyer, Alito said he was especially proud of his work on cases that challenged “racial quotas.”

The solicitor general defends federal agencies and federal laws when they come under challenge in the high court. He also may intervene in cases, even if no federal law is at issue, to express the views of the administration. In the school integration cases, the solicitor general could have intervened on the side of the school districts or on the parents’ side.

Clement argued that the government, including public schools, may use “race-based measures” only to “eliminate the vestiges of past discrimination.”

Since neither Seattle nor Louisville defend their policies as a remedy for past discrimination, they may not use “race-based assignments” simply to achieve integration, he said.

His brief sidesteps the issue of affirmative action in higher education. Referring to the University of Michigan case, he said the court had permitted “the limited consideration of race to attain a genuinely diverse student body, including a critical mass of minority students, at universities and graduate schools. That interest is not implicated here,” he wrote.

Seems the Red River Elementary school in Coushatta, LA is all over the Bush administration’s push to resegregate US schools.

Check out the story at the The Shreveport Times. Also, read the “readers comments” at the end of the article.

The Shreveport Times: Black students ordered to give up seats to whites

COUSHATTA — Nine black children attending Red River Elementary School were directed last week to the back of the school bus by a white driver who designated the front seats for white children.

The situation has outraged relatives of the black children who have filed a complaint with school officials.

Superintendent Kay Easley will meet with the family members in her office this morning.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People also is considering filing a formal charge with the U.S. Department of Justice. NAACP District Vice President James Panell, of Shreveport, said he would apprise Justice attorneys of the situation this week. He’s considering asking for an investigation into the bus incident and other aspects of the school system’s operations, including pupil-teacher ratio as it relates to the numbers of white and black children, along with a breakdown of the numbers of black and white teachers employed.

“If the smoke is there, then there’s probably fire somewhere else,” Panell said in a phone interview from New Orleans. “At this point, it is extremely alarming. We fought that battle 50 years ago, and we won. Why is this happening again?”

Easley would not comment much on the allegations Wednesday, saying it is a personnel issue. She acknowledged that she has investigated the claim. And she confirmed that the bus driver did not run her route Wednesday, nor would she today.

Asked if the driver would work for the rest of the year, Easley said, “I’m not going to answer the questions. “» You’re getting all that you’re going to get from me. I’m sorry.”

Red River Elementary School Principal Jamie Lawrence tried to rectify the seating situation when it was brought to her attention. But it was ultimately handled at the Central Office, Patricia Sessoms said.

Sessoms aunt, Iva Richmond, is the mother of two of the children, ages 14 and 15, and foster parent to three others, ages 5, 6 and 10. Janice Williams, who is the mother of the other four children, is Richmond’s neighbor. All nine children catch the bus at a stop on Ashland Road.

Sessoms will join Richmond and Williams in their meeting with Easley today. Sessoms said they would ask for bus driver Delores Davis’ immediate termination. Davis, who originates her bus route in Martin, has called Richmond to apologize, Sessoms said. A message left on Davis’ answering machine late Wednesday afternoon was not immediately returned.

After Richmond and Williams filed complaints with the School Board, Transportation Supervisor Jerry Carlisle asked Davis to make seat assignments for her passengers, Sessoms said.

“But she still assigned the black children to the back of the bus,” she added.

And the nine children had to share only two seats, meaning the older children had to hold the younger ones in their laps.

A new solution reached Monday by School Board officials has a black bus driver driving across town to pick up the nine black children.

“I think the whole school system needs to be reviewed in Red River Parish,” Sessoms said.

Sessoms, who has two children at Red River Elementary, said she has no problems with her bus driver. “I have a wonderful bus driver,” she added. Sessoms’ request to have her young children sit near the front because of their ages was granted.

School Board member Gene Longino said Wednesday evening that he had not heard about the situation involving the nine children.

“I don’t know anything about that. “» Until something formally comes to the School Board members through the superintendent, we don’t know the details,” Longino said.

School Board President Ricky Cannon was at work Wednesday evening and unavailable for comment. Board member J.B. McElwee also was not at home. Calls to the homes of Cleve Miller, Kassandria Wells White, Karen Womack and Jessie Webber were not answered.

…as part of a lesson on freedom of speech.

Jefferson County Public Schools then removes him from the classroom. Seems to me students probably learned more about “freedom of speech” than intended.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Stuart Middle School teacher burns U.S. flags in class—Lesson causes uproar
By Chris Kenning
The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY)

A Stuart Middle School teacher has been removed from the classroom after he burned two American flags in class during a lesson on freedom of speech, Jefferson County Public Schools officials said.

Dan Holden, who teaches seventh-grade social studies, burned small flags in two different classes Friday and asked students to write an opinion paper about it, district spokeswoman Lauren Roberts said.

A teacher in the school district since 1979, Holden has been temporarily reassigned to non-instructional duties pending a district investigation. The district also alerted city fire officials, who are conducting their own investigation.

“Certainly we’re concerned about the safety aspect,” Roberts said, along with “the judgment of using that type of demonstration in a class.”

Pat Summers, whose daughter was in Holden’s class, said he was among more than 20 parents upset about the incident at school yesterday. Holden apparently told the students to ask their parents what they thought about the lesson, he said.

“She said, ‘Our teacher burned a flag.’ I’m like, ‘What?’ ” Summers said. “When I was (at the school) at 8 a.m., the lobby was filled with probably 25 or 30 parents” who were upset, he said.

Holden could not be reached yesterday for comment.

Roberts said the flag burning did not appear to be politically motivated, based on an interview with Holden.

Summers said no advance notice had been given to parents, nor were school administrators aware of Holden’s plans, Roberts said.

Stuart sixth-grader Kelsey Adwell, 11, said students were abuzz about the incident yesterday.

“They just can’t believe that a teacher would do that — burn two American flags in front of the class,” she said. “A teacher shouldn’t do that, even though it was an example.”

Kentucky has a statute last amended in 1992 making desecration of a national or state flag in a public place a misdemeanor, but the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that flag desecration is protected speech.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky said the federal ruling would trump the state statute.

Congress has tried unsuccessfully to prohibit flag burning with a constitutional amendment. The latest attempt failed in the Senate this year.

Beth Wilson, director of Kentucky’s ACLU, said the district is allowed to decide what’s instructionally appropriate.

But “if a school is masking their objections to flag burning under the guise of safety, it raises questions about freedom of speech and academic freedom,” she said. She said her group would monitor the case but did not plan to get involved at this point.

Regardless, school board member Pat O’Leary said the flag burning was unnecessary and could have offended some students, including those in military families.

“A teacher doesn’t do that,” he said. “It’s just disrespectful.”

Rebecca Creech, a Stuart sixth-grader, said she also thought it was “wrong.”

Ginny Adwell, Kelsey’s mother and the school’s PTA president, said some parents who called for Holden to be fired were “going a little bit overboard” and should remember that the teacher was trying to provoke thought.

Brent McKim, president of the Jefferson County Teachers Association, said Holden has “been teaching for many years, and has by all accounts a good teaching record. It was not a political statement and was meant to illustrate a controversial issue. To fire someone because of that would be inappropriate,” he said. “It wasn’t like he was taking one side or another.”

McKim said he was gathering facts that would determine whether the district was justified in removing Holden from the classroom.

In 2001, a teacher in Sacramento, Calif., faced suspension for using a lighter to singe a corner of an American flag in class.

The teacher later was fired, but district officials cited numerous acts of poor judgment and disregard for superiors.