Many of the speakers wore red shirts in solidarity. Dozens of them took turns standing at the microphone to lash out at the members of the school board in front of them. The offense? A Tampa high school had dared to allow an imam and head of a Muslim civil rights group to deliver a lesson on Islam to students.
People in the crowded boardroom whooped and applauded when a speaker said the school system needed to protect children from a group that advocated hate and violence. And others cheered when another protester accused the school system of wasting students’ time on a subject that shouldn’t be allowed when Christianity had been kicked out of the schools. It was February 28, 2012, and the Hillsborough County School Board found itself in the middle of a battle over religion in the public schools, the kind of clash that has surfaced in numerous school systems around the country in recent years.
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