CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The Flour Bluff High School principal issued a response to students and parents after a campus administrator disrupted a See You at the Pole event Wednesday morning.
See You at the Pole is an annual event that invites students and parents to gather to pray around the flagpole as a symbol of unity. It's something that has been going on for more than 25 years across the nation, and on Wednesday morning a large group of students walked out of the Flour Bluff High School cafeteria to take part in the tradition.
The mother of the teen who helped organize the event too to Facebook Wednesday, saying her daughter worked hard to get students to attend, even bringing donates and an encouraging message for attendees, but the assistant principal ran out and "screamed everyone way."
According to a letter sent to parents by Principal James Crenshaw, a miscommunication led to the incident. Crenshaw said the school administrator on duty was not aware of the planned gathering in front of the school, and upon seeing the students exit the school building, the decision was made to bring them inside out of an abundance of caution.
In his letter to parents, Crenshaw said "we wholeheartedly support the free speech of our students. At no time do we ever intentionally take away their right to gather in a recognized area of the school. I have personally apologized to the student’s family for disrupting the gathering of the 'See You At the Pole' event. We welcome students who would like to take part in a reschedule of the event to do so."
Although See You at the Pole isn't an official school event and is student-organized, over in Ingleside Wednesday the local police department decided to embrace their school district's event. Officers joined students hand-in-hand to pray with them.
"The police are their friends. We want to help them," Ingleside Police Chief Tammy Burr said. "We are not the bad guys taking everyone to jail. We are all about community policing. We want to be involved in our community and we want the community to know we are there for them."
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