The Stupids: Episode 4,577

by digby

A geography teacher put on paid leave for refusing to remove Mexican, Chinese and United Nations flags from his classroom will be allowed to return to school today after district officials backed down.

But Eric Hamlin, who teaches seventh-graders in Jefferson County, hopes his experience will inspire a backlash against a Colorado law that restricts display of other nations’ flags.

“This hasn’t been a teacher-versus-school- district issue,” Hamlin said. “This has been a teacher taking on the state statute, with the school district stuck in the middle as the enforcer.”

Carmody Middle School principal John Schalk put Hamlin on paid leave Wednesday after the teacher refused three orders to take the flags out of his classroom.

The school district cited a state law prohibiting the display of any flag but the American, Colorado or local flags on public buildings, including schools. Temporary displays for instructional or historical purposes are exempt, but the school principal did not consider Hamlin’s display temporary enough.

District officials agreed Thursday that Hamlin could keep the flags up for six weeks, then exchange them with other flags from his collection of more than 50. The district said he could keep his next set of flags, 25 of them from Middle Eastern nations, up for 12 weeks.

Former state Rep. Carl Miller, who sponsored legislation in 2002 strengthening a 1971 law restricting foreign flag displays, said the school was right to put Hamlin on leave and should not have let him return so soon.

Miller, a Democrat from Leadville, disagreed with Jefferson County Superintendent Cindy Stevenson, who said the outcome was a “win-win situation.”

“The only win-win I see is that Mr. Hamlin wins, China wins, Mexico wins and the United Nations wins,” he said.

The Stupids: Episode 4,578

Littleton schools take down foreign flags

A Littleton middle school removed 30 flags from the gym today, fearing they violate a Colorado law against displaying foreign flags in state buildings.

Goddard Middle School Principal Amy Oaks said students will express the same message of diversity by creating banners that symbolize the foreign nations.

“Perhaps I have a much more cautious interpretation of the law than other people,” Oaks said. “I have no idea. I just know that we certainly wouldn’t want to be in violation of the state law…

“We don’t want it to be anything that anybody would say, ‘Do you realize you’re violating the law on the wall of your gym? We don’t want that.”

State law allows flags as part of a temporary display for educational purposes, provided the flags are not permanently affixed to the building. The Goddard flags have been up since the 2003-04 school year.

“It kind of feels permanent to me,” Oaks said.

Oaks pulled down the flags after a teacher in Jefferson County was placed on administrative leave over a flag controversy in his classroom.

The 30 flags at Goddard, including a U.S. flag, represented the nationalities of Goddard students, including some from as far away as Mongolia and Eritrea.

Oaks said she and an art teacher will oversee creation of the banners, using paint on artists canvas.

These are the educated people.

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