An Eisenhower High School sophomore who said he has dealt with threats and harassment from fellow students following a flap with a teacher over his participation in the Pledge of Allegiance last month is leaving the school, his mother said.
Kelley Porter Turner said Wednesday that she was pulling her 15-year-old son Shemar out of Eisenhower and had already started the process of enrolling him in an online charter school.
“My son tells me every day he’s afraid to walk down the halls,” she said. “Every day someone is calling him out of his name or being mean to him. He’s lost a few friends, his grades have dropped.”
The harassment, which Porter Turner said she reported to the school but not to law enforcement, started after Shemar began sitting out the Pledge on Aug. 26 to protest killings of blacks by police, she said.
“It’s terrible,” Shemar said of the repercussions of his action. “Now a whole bunch of people don’t like me because of this, and people are trying to fight me, too.”
A Community High School District 218 spokesman said the district takes any reports of threats or harassment very seriously and investigates them, but declined to confirm or comment on Porter Turner’s claims that her son had been bullied.
Superintendent Ty Harting, meanwhile, has since asserted that students aren’t required to stand for, or recite, the Pledge of Allegiance.
An outspoken sophomore who lives in Merrionette Park, Shemar sat through the Pledge of Allegiance during his entire freshman year at Eisenhower without issue, simply because he didn’t feel like standing up, he said.
This school year, however, the act took on a new significance for him after he began watching videos of police violence against blacks that popped up on his social media feed.
“I was like, ‘No, I’m not going to stand up,’ so I didn’t,” said Shemar, who first refused to stand and recite the pledge in class on the morning of Friday, Aug. 26, just hours before San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sparked a national debate on the issue by sitting for the National Anthem during an NFL preseason game.
When Shemar’s teacher asked why he wasn’t standing, he replied, “America sucks,” he said.
Porter Turner said the teacher confronted her about the incident later that day when she stopped in at the school to drop off her son’s lunch.
After learning what her son had told his teacher, Porter Turner said she made him apologize for his “inappropriate” comment, but told the teacher it was his right to sit if he wanted.
According to Porter Turner, the teacher said she understood Shemar’s First Amendment right to not pledge allegiance and would allow him to sit in the future.
“In my mind, it was over,” Porter Turner said. “In my mind, there was nothing else to discuss.”
The following Tuesday, however, when Shemar again refused to stand for the Pledge in the same class, the teacher tried to pull him out of his seat, he said.
“She grabbed me by my arm,” said Shemar, demonstrating the motion. “I pulled back and she grabbed me, and eventually I yanked, all the way.”
Shemar said the teacher then went to the front of the classroom and threatened any students who refused to stand for the Pledge in the future with a disciplinary write-up.
Upon learning of the second incident, Porter Turner said she reached out to the school’s associate principal and met with her, the dean of students and school security that Wednesday. She said she asked for an apology from the teacher and said she left the meeting with the notion that one was forthcoming.
Instead, the teacher took her son into the school office the next day and continued scolding him, Porter Turner said.
“This meeting is at my request, so that she could apologize to my son. It never happened. He was again being accused of being disrespectful, disrespecting the military,” said Porter Turner, who decided to contact the media with her story because she felt the school administration ignored her. Since Friday, Sept. 2, her son has been permitted to sit out the Pledge, she said.
Harting, the superintendent, confirmed that an incident around the Pledge had occurred between a student and a teacher, and acknowledged that the teacher had “bumbled” by asking the student to stand for the Pledge. He denied, however, that the teacher grabbed the student and tried to pull him out of his seat.
Harting said the teacher had been disciplined, but declined to provide the teacher’s name or the extent of the discipline, citing the confidential nature of personnel matters.
In a statement, the superintendent called the situation an “isolated incident” and said the district “respects an individual’s constitutional right to not stand for or recite the pledge,” and that district staff “should neither encourage nor dissuade students or others from participating in the pledge.”
The district has since provided all staff members with a copy of the school’s policy regarding recitation of the Pledge and will customarily remind its teachers of the policy on an annual basis going forward, according to correspondence between the district’s attorney and the American Humanist Association, an organization that supports a boycott of the Pledge and issued a statement in Shemar’s defense.
Porter Turner said she also requested an apology from the teacher and asked that the district send a letter home to students explaining their constitutional rights, but isn’t expecting either to happen. She said she told the district she would be OK as long as the school disciplined the teacher and respects her son.
“I highly doubt if I get any more from [the district], because in their eyes they’ve done what they were supposed to do,” she said.
When asked if he planned to use the incident as a teachable moment to engage students about their rights and discuss the underlying societal issues that sparked Shemar’s protest, Harting said the district was working to establish a Student Bill of Rights that would address the matter.
“We want to empower students to make meaningful contributions to our schools and district,” Harting said in a statement. “One way to do this is to empower our students and make sure they are aware of their school rights and constitutional rights. “
While Shemar said he received support from a few other students who have expressed solidarity and even joined him in sitting out the Pledge, the majority of the reaction has been negative.
He said he feels a tinge of regret over the social consequences of his actions, but said the experience hasn’t dissuaded him from acting on his beliefs in the future.
“I’m going to keep making statements,” he said. “Whoever doesn’t support me, doesn’t. Whoever does, they do. I’m just not going to worry about it anymore. I’m just going to do what I think should be done.”
Porter Turner, who said her father was a decorated World War II veteran, said that while her son’s decision to sit out the Pledge was entirely his own, she supports his stance and will continue to encourage him to do what he feels is right, even when it’s not popular.
“This is a 15-year-old who’s formulating his opinion,” she said. “Now as he moves through life he may change his mind, but for right now that’s how he feels, and as his mother I have to stand by my son.”
She said she views the situation as nothing more than a constitutional free speech issue and wishes it had been treated as such from the beginning.
“No one is trying to pick a fight or make Eisenhower look like some horrifying school — although they’ve done that for themselves — but it’s about the truth,” she said. “It’s about the truth and what’s right and what’s legal, and that’s all it really is.”
David Niose, legal director at the American Humanist Association, said students regularly contact his organization about problems they’ve experienced after opting out of reciting the Pledge, especially toward the beginning of the school year when teachers are confronted with students sitting for the first time.
While the issue is more prevalent in Bible Belt states, Niose said, he hears from students at schools all over the country.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 1940s that free speech rights preserved in the First Amendment protect people from being forced to pledge allegiance cannot, Niose said.
“You could have a fairly progressive school with tolerant values, but all it really takes is one uninformed or overly assertive teacher to cause a problem,” he said. “And that’s what we sometimes find, that even in communities outside the Bible Belt you might find a rogue teacher, if you will, who kind of insists on trying to force a kid to participate in the Pledge.”
Twitter @ZakKoeske
