A group of students at Rim of the World High School in Lake Arrowhead have created a stir for displaying Confederate flags, staked into the beds of their pickup trucks, in the school parking lot.

On Friday, two Ford pickups, parked side-by-side, sat parked in the school parking lot, one Confederate flag and one American flag displayed in the bed of each truck. The black pickup also sported stickers from Patriot Alliance, an online retailer of clothing, National Rifle Association, and Donald Trump campaign signs.

Also on Friday, Running Springs resident Jennifer Celise-Reyes, whose daughter began her freshman year at the high school last month, said she sent emails to school board president Cindy Gardner, school district Superintendent Giovanni H. Annous, and the ACLU expressing her ire over the issue.

“California, along with other states, has declared that the Confederate flag is being used by racist hate groups to represent white supremacy,” Celise-Reyes said in her email. “This hate speech is not protected under the First Amendment and will not be tolerated or protected in our public schools.”

Gardner, in her reply email to Celise-Reyes, said school district administration was working closely, and daily, with the district’s attorneys for legal counsel on the matter.

“The matter is being taken very seriously and being handled at this time in accordance with the counsel given by our attorneys,” Gardner said in her e-mail to Celise-Reyes. “First Amendment rights and all rulings regarding these rights are being reviewed and considered by the attorneys and the district administration in the handling of this situation.”

• Photos: Rim of the World students flying Confederate flag on school grounds stirs controversy in San Bernardino Mountain community

Tony Marcano, spokesman for the ACLU of Southern California, said Friday the organization had just been made aware of the issue and was therefore declining comment until they have more time to review the matter.

Neither Annous nor Rim of the World High School Principal Derek Swem responded Friday to repeated telephone calls and emails seeking comment.

Celise-Reyes also alleged in her email that Rim of the World High School “has been inundated by hate speech, bullying and intimidation by a group of white male students, many of whom are on the wrestling team.”

“Racial slurs, including ‘white power,’ are being yelled at minorities,” Celise-Reyes alleged in her e-mail. “These students are writing ‘WP’ on their chests and raising their shirts at minorities.”

In a statement Friday, Lawrence King, assistant superintendent of personnel/pupil services for Rim of the World Unified School District, said “student safety and welfare remains the District’s highest priority.”

“In response to concerns brought to the district’s attention regarding students’ rights to display flags on their vehicle, we are working closely with our legal representation to ensure all aspects of this matter are fully considered,” King said in his statement. “We are working expeditiously by immediately responding to parent and student concerns that are brought forward. Additionally, the Sheriff’s department has been made aware of this situation and we will provide them with any information that they may request.”

Celise-Reyes, a former Redlands resident who served on the city’s Human Relations Commission, said she did not send an email to high school principal Swem on Friday because he already knows about the controversy.

“They’ve already had a meeting about it and are still deciding what to do about it,” Reyes said. She insisted in her email that the school district adopt a policy similar to a state law passed in 2014 stating that the Confederate flag may not be flown on state property.

“I love the community. It’s a tight-knit group of people. But not everybody is like that,” Celise-Reyes said. “A small percentage of people insist on being apathetic to other people’s views.”

Brian Levin, executive director for the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino, said displaying the Confederate flag, as distasteful as it may be, still falls within the realm of freedom of speech.

He said the Confederate battle flag had renaissance during of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s as a counter-symbol against those fighting racial segregation. After Dylann Roof, who embraced that flag, was accused of killing nine African-Americans on June 17, 2015 in Charleston, South Carolina, it came down from state houses across the South.

“The Confederate flag belongs in a museum. It is extremely offensive to people of good will, and not only African Americans,” Levin said. “But our First Amendment protections must also protect speech that we hate. It is the right of all Americans to exercise their freedom of expression, even if it’s offensive and hateful, which this certainly is.”