Teacher supported after claims he told off student over pledge

CLOVIS — Several community members turned up at Wednesday's Clovis Unified board meeting in support of a teacher accused of telling a student who didn't stand for the Pledge of Allegiance to “go back to her country.”

Ryan Person was among those who spoke in support of Clovis East High School agriculture science teacher Ken Dias, who said the remarks attributed to him are “blatantly erroneous, and/or severely taken out of context.”

Person, who described himself as a friend and former student of Dias, said he was disappointed in the way Dias had been portrayed in The Bee. “(The) story deeply insinuated that he is a racist man and should be fired for verbally attacking a student. All those allegations are inaccurate,” Person said.

Person said he does not harbor any ill will toward Thailia Luna, the student who accused Dias according to a school incident report. “Rest assured there will always be one person there to support you, and that is Mr. Ken Dias, because that is the kind of man and the kind of teacher that he is,” Person said.

Beau Williamson, who also said he was a former student of Dias', described him as a teacher who cares deeply about his students. “There's things beyond the classroom, beyond the curriculum that I needed to be taught about and Mr. Dias is the man to do that,” Williamson said. “He is the man that inspired me and many others in this audience to be the very best we could be in mind, body and spirit.”

At one point during the meeting, another speaker asked the audience to stand if they supported Dias. Around 35 people stood up and clapped, including several uniformed Future Farmers of America students.