BRANFORD, CT, February 22, 2013, (LifeSiteNews.com) - A parent with a daughter attending Branford High School complained to the local school board that the pro-life club at the school "is a club that gets its directive from an extreme base of hate and intolerance. Their tactics of killing doctors, assaulting women, blowing up clinics is terroristic in nature and a total disregard for law and woman at large."

The woman asked members of the Branford Board of Education not to identify her during their meeting on February 20. However, the local newspaper reporting the incident indicated that the meeting was videotaped.

“It has come to my attention that a BHS pro-life club has been formed,” the woman said at the board meeting. “We all know that -- especially today -- that a pro-life/pro-choice debate is a very heated and intense topic."

"A club that is so clearly divisive should not be permitted in the public school system. In the very least it is a topical club that is alienating. It is not a club of supported diversity," she said. "It is a distraction from what our children are really there for: an education.”

“Don’t let hate groups infiltrate our educational system,” the woman concluded.

The superintendent of education responded to the woman's complaint by outlining the process by which a proposed school club is vetted, noting that the pro-life club was approved by the board.

He added that the board will take the complaint into consideration.

“I feel confident that our school system is a very, very tolerant school system, and clearly you are bringing something forward, and part of addressing that will be open communication,” said superintendent Hamlet Hernandez according to the Branford Seven.

The Branford High School pro-life club had tried to engage the school's students with sidewalk chalk messages as part of National Pro-Life Chalk Day last September. However, the student newspaper reported that almost no one saw the messages, since they were washed off before students arrived for classes. "We are a public building, and anything written on a public building is defacement of public property regardless of the message," said Branford High principal Lee Panagoulias, who ordered their removal,

Marisa Kaplita, editor of the student newspaper the Branford Buzz, was able to take pictures of the chalk messages before they were erased.

“All I want to do is get the message across to as many people as I can that being pro life is OK, and that I defend the rights of the unborn," the student who wrote the chalk messages told Kaplita.

“It is not something that can be ignored, and I feel that only we can defend the rights of the unborn, and that’s what I’m here to do—speak for those who can’t,” she told the Buzz.

Videos of the February 20th meeting of the Branford Board of Education are available on the Board's website.

Contact:

Branford Board of Education

Hamlet Hernandez, Superintendent

1111 Main Street, Branford, CT 06405

Phone: 203-315-7809

Online contact form.

Branford High School

Lee Panagoulias, Principal

185 East Main Street, Branford, CT 06405

Phone: 203-488-7291

Fax: 203-315-6740

Online contact form.