Victor Skinner, Education Action Group News, November 7, 2018

Two days before Thanksgiving, the principal at Fairfax, Virginia’s Westfield High School introduced a new program to encourage students to learn the Pledge of Allegiance in different languages.

A week later, the principal reportedly canceled the program and apologized to students for the “offensive” idea, according to Stephanie Somers, mother of a senior at the school.

Somers said her son was excited when asked to recite the pledge in Spanish on Monday, but by Tuesday afternoon the program was scrapped over complaints from the community.

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“It was my understanding it would be Spanish, French and German, and I think there’s 80, 90 different languages at this school and I thought that would be a cool thing,” she said.

Fairfax county Public Schools contends the program wasn’t canceled but rather designed to only last the two days before Thanksgiving as a means to “promote engagement and inclusion,” according to a prepared statement to WTTG.

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“It’s inclusive, it’s making them proud of their heritage and their ethnicity,” Somers said. “So I was surprised that instead of continuing it, there was a we’re nixing it and an apology. Didn’t seem right to me.”

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