Bush belongs on board

A picture is worth a thousand words — especially if it’s of George W. Bush and hangs in Crossroads Middle School. You may have heard about the face that launched a thousand lips, as talk radio and cable stations nationwide dropped their coverage of the Scott Peterson case for long enough to devote some attention to South Brunswick’s Crossroads Middle School.

During a school open house event late last week, language arts teacher Shiba Pillai-Diaz and a few parents had a spirited political argument stemming from a campaign photo of the president hanging on a classroom bulletin board. Pillai-Diaz was told by a school administrator the following day to remove the photo, left the building after a tense meeting with an assistant principal and has not returned.

Pillai-Diaz claims she was told at the meeting to pack her belongings and leave the building, and assumed she was fired for her refusal to remove the photo. Her account paints the picture of political correctness gone berserk.

In a released statement, McCartney claimed that the incident was part of a pattern of the teacher using her classroom as a venue for partisan rants and that she has made statements to students, like “You should be ashamed to be a Democrat.” McCartney said the teacher was never told she was fired, suspended or should leave, and he ultimately dismissed her claims as an attempt “to get herself national media attention.”

Some observers have suggested that placing a picture of Sen. John Kerry beside Bush’s would be a way to call it even. Bush is our president, like him or not. On Presidents Day, we don’t hang pictures of John Jay next to George Washington and Stephen Douglas next to Abraham Lincoln.

Kerry is just another senator unless he changes that in November. We encourage seventh- and eighth-graders to follow current events, but as far as his photo influencing their political views, Bush will, win or lose, be long gone by the time they’re old enough to vote.

The gap between the two stories is too great to judge who was at fault for this controversy. A better question is how both parties are going to straighten this situation out, assuming Pillai-Diaz ever returns. One thing is for sure: For the parents and school officials who confronted this teacher in the name of keeping politics out of the classroom, their actions have sure had the opposite effect.