Pledge of Allegiance Debate Shines National Spotlight on Arlington

By 5 p.m. yesterday afternoon, Sean Harrington was exhausted.

The Arlington High School senior had been up since 5:30 a.m., first to do a nationally televised interview with Fox News, quickly followed by several other interviews with different outlets, including "Nightside with Dan Rea" and Michael Graham on Boston's 96.9 FM radio station. 

"I am very surprised and glad about what is going on," said Harrington who has spent three years of his life - his entire high school career - trying to raise awareness around the Pledge of Allegiance and why daily recitation needs to return to Arlington High School. "It has been very overwhelming and gratifying to get this attention for it."

Harrington and the Arlington Public Schools were thrust into the national spotlight after the School Committee rejected an impassioned plea from Harrington last week to reinstate the Pledge of Allegiance at Arlington High School at their June 22 meeting.

Though the pledge is recited in all of the elementary schools and at the Ottoson Middle School, it stopped being recited daily at the high school decades ago and the decision as to whether it is recited daily is left up to the individual school administration.

Harrington spent three years gathering more than 700 signatures for his petition to to reinstate the pledge in the high school. He presented it at the  June 22 meeting and the committee deadlocked, 3-3. A tie fails.

Since the vote, Arlington High School principal Charles Skidmore said that he will lead a daily recitation of the pledge in the lobby of the school on school mornings and that eventually he will move it to the classrooms "... After all students and teachers have had a chance to talk about appropriate behavior for those who do and don't participate in the pledge. I want the Pledge Of Allegiance to be meaningful to our students," he said in an Email sent to high school parents last night.

Harrington insists that lobby recitation is not enough. "When kids go to school, they don't think of going right into the main lobby," Harrington said. "They go right into their homeroom. There would be no consistency. What would stop people from heckling the crowd?"

Yesterday, Superintendent Kathleen Bodie and School Committee Chairman Joseph Curro released a joint statement calling the national media reports "misleading."

"Reports circulating in the media that the Pledge of Allegiance is not recited in the Arlington Public Schools are inaccurate," Bodie said in her statement. "Students are welcomed, but not mandated, to join in the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance as part of the morning routine in our elementary schools and the middle school. This practice provides leadership opportunities for our fifth grade and middle school students who lead the Pledge. Our current practice complies with legal requirements."

The statement came after a day full of calls, emails and faxes from around the country to members of the School Committee and administration mostly in support of Harrington.

For Harrington, who became visibly distraught at last week's meeting, the coverage has been heartening. "The media has put us on a national stage and all eyes are on Arlington and we are all are waiting for School Committee to make the right move," Harrington said yesterday. 

Harrington believes the state law is very clear:

"Failure for a period of two consecutive weeks by a teacher to salute the flag and recite said pledge as aforesaid, or to cause the pupils under his charge so to do, shall be punished for every such period by a fine of not more than five dollars."

Curro and Bodie pointed out in their statement that the statute  he refers to "was ruled constitutionally invalid by the Supreme Judicial Court in 1977... The Arlington School Committee was specifically advised in a memo from Town Counsel Juliana Rice that this law is unconstitutional and unenforceable."

Enforceable or not, Harrington has garnered support from across the country for his cause, something that deeply gratified a boy who says he has been bullied and mocked by fellow students. He has been called names, but what hurts him the most is the idea that he somehow has a partisan agenda: "This is not a Democratic or Republican issue," Harrington said. "It is an American issue."

And while it may be surprising to see such passion in a 17-year-old boy, in Harrington's family, patriotism is very important. "I have had a family member in almost every major American war since the Revolution," said Harrington who promised himself three years ago that he would get the Pledge back in the high school.

To Harrington, the matter is clear: "We need to have voluntary recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance over the PA with either a volunteer teacher or administrator or a tape recording," he said. "Until a policy is made that complies with the state law, the School Committee is violating state law and the people who have voted this down have violated their oaths of office."

The spotlight on Arlington took an uglier turn when Captain Robert Bongiorno of the Arlington Police Department said that his department is investigating hate Emails directed at the School Committee members. Bongiorno called the emails, "offensive, hateful, potentially criminal."

Harrington also received threats yesterday, he said. One, in particular, encouraged him to go to Iraq and die so this would no longer be an issue. Still, he is not swayed.

"The hate does not bother me anymore," Harrington said. "People will be people, but please just respect the issue at hand."