A sixth grader in Florida was arrested after his refusal to participate in the Pledge of Allegiance escalated into a confrontation with police and school officials, authorities said.
The unnamed boy was charged with disrupting a school function and resisting an officer without violence on Feb. 4, the Lakeland Police Department said in a news release.
A local news outlet, Bay News 9, reported that the confrontation began after the student at Lawton Chiles Middle Academy, near Tampa, called the flag racist and described the national anthem as offensive.
Citing a statement provided to the Polk School District by the boy’s substitute teacher, the station reported that the teacher asked him, “why if it was so bad here he did not go to another place to live."
“They brought me here,” the boy replied, according to the statement.
After the teacher told him he could “always go back,” she called the school's office “because I did not want to continue dealing with him,” the station reported.
The district did not respond to a request for comment on Sunday, but a school spokesman told the Ledger, a local newspaper, that students are not required to participate in the pledge.
The spokesman, Kyle Kennedy, told the newspaper that the teacher, Ana Alvarez, wasn’t aware of that policy and would no longer work with the district.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...sal-participate-pledge-allegiance-led-n972671
I stand with Kaep! Good to see kids exercising their 1st Amendment right to not stand or participate in the Pledge of Allegiance. Any good American that supports freedom of speech should also support the freedom of expression to not stand for a Pledge of Allegiance or National Anthem. Unlike Kaepernick, this isn't on an employer's time where an argument can be made that it's a disciplinary issue up to the team, but this is on the government's time, and they shouldn't be forcing someone to express themselves according to how that government believe they should be.