The comment of "The format is up to teachers, not administrators or 
parents, Dunlap said." makes me realize that these school administrators 
have forgotten who they work for.  It is not the government but is the 
parents.  In a private school there would be no such confusion.

=============================================

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20081114/NEWS/81114027

Debate on Pledge of Allegiance in Vt. town
The Associated Press • November 14, 2008 

No one's sure when daily recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance fell by 
the wayside at Woodbury Elementary School.

But efforts to restore them have erupted into a bitter dispute in this 
tiny (pop. 810) Vermont town, with school officials blocking the 
exercise from classrooms amid concerns that it holds nonparticipating 
children up to scorn.

Supporters say the classroom is the place for it, and the disagreement 
has fueled an increasingly acrimonious debate.


 "The whole thing is tearing our community apart," said Heather 
Lanphear, 39, the mother of a first-grade student.

Unlike other Pledge controversies, this one centers on how and where 
schoolchildren say it, not whether they should be allowed to.

In 1943, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that schoolchildren can opt out of 
reciting the pledge for religious reasons.

Sixty-one years later, the court said a California father couldn't 
challenge the Pledge of Allegiance, reversing a lower-court decision 
saying teacher-led Pledge recitals in public schools were 
unconstitutional. That case involved an atheist who didn't want his 
third-grader to have to listen to the phrase "under God."

But it didn't rule on the constitutionality of compulsory recitation.

The brouhaha in the Vermont school began in September, when parent Ted 
Tedesco began circulating petitions calling for its return as a daily 
practice in the 19th-century schoolhouse, which has 55 children in 
grades kindergarten through six.

School officials agreed to resume the pledge as a daily exercise, but 
not in the classroom.

"We don't want to isolate children every day in their own classroom, or 
make them feel they're different," said Principal Michaela Martin.

Instead, starting last week, a sixth grade student was assigned to go 
around to the four classrooms before classes started, gathering up 
anyone who wanted to say it and then walking them up creaky wooden steps 
to a second-floor gymnasium, where he led them in the pledge.

About half the students chose to participate, according to Martin.

Tedesco, 55, a retired U.S. Marine Corps major, and others who signed 
his petitions didn't like that solution, calling it disruptive to 
routine and inappropriate because it put young children in the position 
of having to decide between pre-class play time and leaving the 
classroom to say the Pledge.

"Saying the Pledge in the classroom is legal, convenient and 
traditional," said Tedesco. "Asking kindergarten through sixth graders 
who want to say the Pledge to leave their classrooms to do so is neither 
convenient nor traditional."

Martin and School Board Chair Retta Dunlap defended the practice, saying 
it restored the Pledge to the school as requested, preserved the rights 
of students who — for political or religious reasons — didn't want to 
participate and gave others the opportunity to pledge their allegiance.

"I was happy to have it upstairs. I think it's important that all the 
kids share in it together," said parent Ellen Demers, 42.

On Friday, the routine changed again.

Just before 8 a.m., Martin herded all the school's students — and a 
handful of adults — into a cramped foyer that adjoins the first-floor 
classrooms and told sixth-grader Nathan Gilbert, 12, to lead them in the 
Pledge.

Most recited it; some didn't.

Afterward, 10 adults streamed down the steps and outside, forming a 
circle around Dunlap for a heated discussion in which they pressed for 
an explanation of why it couldn't be said in the classrooms.

The format is up to teachers, not administrators or parents, Dunlap 
said.

"The children will get used to it, and they'll know what's expected of 
them," she said.

In an interview, Martin said the point of having the whole school gather 
for the Pledge was to protect children who don't participate in it.

"If you're in a classroom with 15 students and you choose not to say the 
Pledge, it's much more obvious than a group setting. When they're saying 
it in a group of 55, it's may not be so obvious. We don't want to 
isolate children," she said.

Tedesco pulled his two children out of the school last week, but he says 
the reason was the school's declining scores on standardized tests, not 
the Pledge issue. He plans to continue lobbying for classroom 
recitation.

"There's no way a heckler's veto should abridge the constitutional 
rights of the majority," he said.

CMPQwk 1.42-21 9999 
Stop the Democrat party oil embargo ....

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