(KNX 1070) -- A Florida middle school student was arrested after allegedly refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and telling a teacher that the flag is "racist" and the national anthem is "offensive to black people," according to several media outlets.
On February 4, the 11-year-old Lawton Chiles Middle Academy student in Lakeland, Fla., was charged with disrupting a school function and resisting arrest without violence, according to Bay News 9.
The incident started when a substitute teacher asked the class to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.
The substitute teacher reported in a statement to the district that she told the 11-year-old boy "Why if it was so bad here he did not go to another place to live?" To which the boy reportedly replied, "they brought me here."
"Well you can always go back because I came here from Cuba and the day I feel I'm not welcome here any more I would find another place to live," the teacher said to the student.
She wrote in her report, "Then I had to call the office because I did not want to continue dealing with him."
Polk County Public Schools spokesperson Kyle Kennedy said in a statement. The student was not arrested for refusing to participate in the pledge — students have the right to do so by Florida law and district policy.
Bay News 9 reports the boy was apprehended by a school resource officer because he wouldn't follow directions, threatened the teacher with violence, and said the officer and the principal should be fired.
"I'm upset, I'm angry. I'm hurt," the student's mother, Dhakira Talbot, said about her son who is in gifted classes and is often bullied.
"More so for my son. My son has never been through anything like this. I feel like this should've been handled differently. If any disciplinary action should've been taken, it should've been with the school. He shouldn't have been arrested."
A spokeswoman with the school district told Bay News 9 that students aren't required to participate in the Pledge of Allegiance, but that the substitute teacher wasn't aware of this. The spokeswoman added that the substitute teacher is no longer able to work at any of the district's schools and the district is still looking into the matter.
Talbot is working with the Poor and Minority Justice Association for assistance with the issue.
"I want the charges dropped and I want the school to be held accountable for what happened because it shouldn't have been handled the way it was handled," Talbot said.
