2 OKLAHOMA BOYS PULLED FROM CLASS FOR “BLACK LIVES MATTER” T-SHIRTS

Two brothers, age 8 and 5, were removed from their Oklahoma elementary school classrooms this past week and made to wait out the school day in a front office for wearing T-shirts that read “Black Lives Matter,” according to the boys’ mother.

The superintendent of the Ardmore, Okla., school district where the brothers, Bentlee and Rodney Herbert, attend different schools had previously told their mother, Jordan Herbert, that politics would “not be allowed at school,” Herbert said Friday.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma has called the incident a violation of the students’ First Amendment rights.

On April 30, Bentlee, who is in the third grade, went to class at Charles Evans Elementary in a “Black Lives Matter” shirt, which Herbert said he had picked out himself to wear.

That evening, Herbert learned that the school’s principal, Denise Brunk, had told Bentlee that he was not allowed to wear the T-shirt. At Brunk’s direction, he turned the shirt inside out and finished out the school day.

On Monday, Herbert went to the school to ask the principal what dress-code policy her son had violated, she said. Brunk referred her to Ardmore City Schools Superintendent Kim Holland.

“He told me when the George Floyd case blew up that politics will not be allowed at school,” Herbert said Friday, referring to Holland. “I told him, once again, a ‘Black Lives Matter’ T-shirt is not politics.”

Neither Brunk nor Holland responded to emails or phone calls seeking comment Friday.

On Tuesday, Herbert’s three sons — Bentlee; Rodney, who is in kindergarten; and Jaelon, a sixth grader, all of whom are Black — went to their schools in matching T-shirts with the words “Black Lives Matter” and an image of a clenched fist on the front.

Later that morning, Herbert received a call from Rodney’s school, Will Rogers Elementary, telling her that she needed to either bring Rodney a different shirt or let the school provide one for him, or Rodney would be forced to sit in the front office for the rest of the school day. Rodney did not change shirts and he sat in the office until school was over.

Herbert later learned Bentlee had also been made to sit in his school’s front office, where he missed recess, and did not eat lunch in the cafeteria with his classmates.

Jaelon, 12, encountered no issues at Ardmore Middle School because of his T-shirt, his mother said.

“It’s our interpretation of not creating a disturbance in school,” Holland told The Daily Ardmoreite newspaper. “I don’t want my kids wearing MAGA hats or

Trump shirts to school either because it just creates, in this emotionally charged environment, anxiety and issues that I don’t want our kids to deal with.”