For the last decade, students at Asher Holmes Elementary school in New Jersey pledged allegiance in the morning not only to the United States flag, but to their own school and to their own teachers, the Asbury Park Press reports.
That will now change, after a board meeting in which school parent Valerie Kaufman expressed disapproval at the practice of having students pledge allegiance to their own school and teachers. As a result, the school has decided to turn the school pledge into their school song, according to Fox News.
“I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve never heard of a pledge of allegiance to the school, to the school district and to the teachers,” Kaufman told Fox News. “I don’t think it’s constitutional, I don’t think they should be doing it. I think we should do away with it.”
The school pledge, as recited by superintendant David C. Abbott in a video on the Marlboro district website, reads:
"I pledge allegiance to Asher Holmes and the Marlboro Township School District and to the teachers who help us learn, all that we need to know for the future. We promise to respect ourselves and others, to try our best and always be proud of our schools."
(Watch the video below)
“Frankly, I don’t see anything wrong with it at all,” Abbott said of the pledge. He noted that students had recited the school pledge for ten years without a hitch.
The school pledge will be re-worked over the summer into a school song for the next academic year, according to a district news release. The school pledge was originally written by a fourth grader, Marlboro-Coltsneck Patch reports.
Although both pledges are recited by students -- the school pledge once a week and the national pledge once a day -- students are not required to participate in the recitation, district director of special projects Kuflik Witchel told Fox News.