Army Officer Given Odd Reason for Being Kicked Out of Daughter's School

This is what Lt. Col Sherwood Baker, shown here with his son, was wearing when he showed up at his daughter’s high school to help her with a class change. (Screenshot: WJBK, Channel 2, video)

____________________

Parents showed up wearing camouflage and military garb at Rochester Adams High School’s Curriculum Night Thursday in a show of solidarity with a U.S. Army officer who had been turned away from his daughter’s school days earlier because he was wearing his fatigues.

Army Lt. Col. Sherwood Baker told WJR’s Frank Beckman that when he stopped by the school before reporting to work Tuesday morning to help his daughter with a class issue, he was in uniform – what he called “my suit and tie.” He was stopped at the front door by four private-contract security guards. Baker says one of them told him he wasn’t allowed in the building because “special ed students would go crazy when they saw me in uniform.”

“I was taken aback by that,” said Baker, who has been deployed six times – three times each in Iraq and Afghanistan – during his 24 years with the Army, WJBK, Channel 2, reports.

Rochester Community School Superintendent Robert Shaner told the Detroit Free Press there’s no such policy excluding members of the military from entering school property while wearing a uniform,. He’s not sure how the security company got the idea there was, Shaner said, but he’s committed to getting answers.

In the meantime, Shaner told the newspaper he has “profusely apologized to the parents” in a letter, which stated in part:

“As a former officer of Marines and the superintendent of an excellentschool district, I deeply regret this unfortunate incident. I want to personally assure the community, especially our families who are affiliated with any of our armed services, that we respect and honor their service to our country.”

Shaner went on to say the district is investigating the guards’ conduct and “will take disciplinary action if appropriate” against the private security company.

Baker told WJR he decided to speak out so other military parents don’t have to go through the same thing. “I know I’m not the only one in the district who’s in the military,” he said.

Baker’s wife, Rachel Ferhadson, credited Shaner with quickly apologizing and said Adams is “a really good school where somebody made a really bad decision,” The Army Times reports.

“The superintendent was shocked and appalled and disgusted,” Ferhadson said. “He didn’t expect that to come out of his school district.”

The couple say they’ve been buoyed by support both online and in person, such as the ubiquitous camouflage on parents attending Curriculum Night.

“There were a handful of people who nudged each other and looked at him and said, ‘That’s who that is!’ — [they] were definitely being very supportive in their own quiet way, and I think that was amazing,” Ferhadson said.

You Might Also Like:

• Final Resting Place for 250,000 Vets is a Tin Can on a Shelf
• Little Girl’s Heartbreaking Discovery after Her Daddy is Killed in Road Rage
• Prison Worker Poisoned by Crafty Inmate in 1893 Honored at 9/11 Service