Saturday Reads

Substitute teacher should have known better. You can not in any way humiliate students in the classroom by singling them out, especially something like this where the student or students belong to a religious minority The fact is students are not required to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance or salute the flag. This has been settled U.S. law for DECADES, since the 1940s.

This article explains it even better.  The school district has a lot of latitude in what it considers acceptable conduct by a teacher.

“I think the school has the prerogative to draw a conclusion on what the kid said happened and how he or she reacted to it,” Magarian said. “Comments can be taken differently than intended, and that’s what is tricky about a situation like this. It matters how the student took the statement.”

Tony Rothert, legal director for the ACLU of Missouri, agreed, saying legal cases built around instances such as this tended to favor government bodies such as school districts.

“A public school teacher is the government and in the classroom is speaking on behalf of the government,” Rothert said.

If the leaders of the school district see that speech as harmful to a student, the teacher can be punished, he said.

The substitute should have kept his big mouth shut.
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Trump decided not to alienate people further and did make a visit to destroyed Paradise, California, to survey the destruction.
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