Schools must publicly post their Pledge of Allegiance policies if new Ohio bill passes
If a bill introduced in the Ohio House of Representatives becomes law, schools would be required to publicly announce their policies on the oral recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.
Schools in Ohio are already required by law to have a policy regarding whether or not students recite the pledge.
The bill, sponsored by Reps. Gail Pavliga (R-Atwater) and Tracy Richardson (R-Marysville), would require school districts to make their child safety policies publicly available and post them on the district’s website (if they have one).
School policies may not require students to recite the pledge, and students and staff may not prohibit students from intimidating or coercing them to participate.
Pavliga said she is a patriotic person and has observed that sometimes people do not know things like the national anthem or when to kneel or put their hand on their heart.
“I just think that school policies need to be in place, and parents as taxpayers need to understand what policies these schools have so they can then think about what they want to do with their children,” she said.
The bill has not yet been assigned to a committee. Pavliga believes the bill can pass before the end of the legislative session in December because it only requires a three-sentence change in the Ohio Revised Code.
How did we get our oath of allegiance laws?
According to the Free Speech Center, the practice of students reciting the pledge dates back to an event in 1892 to celebrate the day of Christopher Columbus’s voyage to America. Later, religious objections and exceptions to the pledge arose. For example, Mennonites had problems with the supposed promise to bear arms in 1918, and Jehovah’s Witnesses rejected the flag salute in the 1930s as idolatry.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1943 that students could not be forced to salute the flag after children of Jehovah’s Witnesses were expelled from school for refusing to salute the flag.
Erin Glynn is a reporter for the Ohio Bureau of the USA TODAY Network, which covers the Columbus Dispatch, the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.
