“I said, ‘Oh, I didn’t mean it that way, that wasn’t my intent at all,’” Furkin said. “He said ‘We’ll get back to you,’ and then the next day after that, I’m no longer welcome in the building.”

Furkin said Kelly Educational Staffing, the agency the school district uses to book substitute teachers, told him that he wasn’t being allowed back to the school because he had “bullied” a student.

“To me personally, the flag represents freedom, and there’s a lot of price that’s been paid for the freedom we have today,” Furkin said. “That’s all I’m saying to the kids. ... Could somebody feel offended by that? I would hope not. But like I said at the (school board) meeting, when you say something, you don’t know how someone else is going to perceive it.”

After Furkin made his comments Wednesday night, Parkway School Board President Jeff Todd told Furkin that the board would communicate with him via a letter “in the near future.”

Furkin said he had been substitute teaching with Parkway for about 10 years, and for the last several years he had largely worked at Parkway South High . Teachers at the high school regularly requested him to substitute for their classes, he said.