Page 11 - IAV Digital Magazine #469

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11-year-old Arrested After Refusing To Stand For Pledge of Allegiance
By Lia Eustachewich
An 11-year-old student was arrested after refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and allegedly telling a teacher that “the flag is racist and the national anthem is offen- sive to black people,” accord- ing to reports.
The boy, a stu- dent at Lawton Chiles Middle Academy in
Lakeland, Fla., was charged with disrupting a school function and resisting arrest without violence for the Feb. 4 out-
burst, according to Bay News 9.
He was also issued a three- day suspension.
His mother, Dhakira Talbot, said officials took things too far by arresting her son, who she said is in gifted classes
and has been bullied in the past.
“My son has never been through anything like this. I feel like this should’ve been handled different- ly,” she said. “If any disciplinary action should’ve been taken, it should’ve been with the school. He shouldn’t have been arrested.”
The classroom
kerfuffle hap- pened when a substitute teacher, Ana Alvarez, ordered the boy to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.
When he told her he believed the flag was racist and the anthem was offensive, Alvarez asked him “why if it was so bad here he did not go to another place to live,” the teacher said in a state- ment to the school district.
The teacher said he replied, “they brought me here.”
Alvarez then told him, “Well, you can always go back, because I came here from Cuba and the day I feel I’m not welcome here anymore, I would
find another place to live.”
She said she resorted to call- ing the main office “because I did not want to continue dealing with him.”
The student also allegedly called school leaders racist, threatened to get the school resource officer and principal fired and beat up Alvarez, accord- ing to an arrest affidavit.
He denied threat- ening to beat the teacher in an interview with Bay News 9 with his mother.
Polk County Public Schools spokesman Kyle Kennedy insisted that the boy was not arrested for failing to stand for the pledge.
“Students are not required to par- ticipate in the Pledge of Allegiance,” he told The Ledger.
The sixth-grader was collared “after becoming disruptive and refusing to follow repeated instruc- tions by school staff and law enforcement,” he added.
Kennedy said he couldn’t discuss the boy’s disci- pline. Alvarez will no longer work as a substitute teacher in Polk County, he said
“Our HR depart- ment will contact Kelly Services, which provides our substitutes, to further refine how our substi- tutes are trained,” Kennedy said.
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