Parent believes North Oldham student's art display encourages hostility toward police

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A parent of a North Oldham High School student is again raising concern over a piece of art that is hanging in his daughter's classroom.

The artwork depicts two scenes: A flashback to 1930 with a member of the Ku Klux Klan wearing a white hood and pointing a gun at an black man with the Confederate flag below it; the other side of the picture says 2015 and features a police officer pointing a gun at an African American child with the American flag below it.

"This Honors English class read the Pulitzer Prize Winning book, 'To Kill A Mockingbird,' by Harper Lee, and were supposed to do art, based on the book," said parent Dave Hamblin in a Facebook post he wrote Tuesday.

"The book is a beautiful piece of art describing social and familial dilemmas of the early 1900s, and has NOTHING to do with the hatred filled propaganda coming from some in this country today," Hamblin wrote. "The 'art' is not from a student in the class, it was from a student last year and the teacher liked it so much she placed it back on the wall."

Oldham County Schools spokeswoman Tracy Green told WDRB on Wednesday morning that the student work on display that has been called into question is in response to an assignment about racial injustice and is a piece by a student from a previous year's class.

"When discussing social injustice, people will likely be offended by some topic," Green said. "The drawing is a student's artistic representation based on the lens through which the student viewed that issue and the student has a First Amendment right to share that opinion."

Hamblin, who works as a police officer, said he sent out a request to take it down and it "seems that the school and school administrators believe this to be an appropriate form of discourse and educationally noteworthy."

"The teacher stated, 'it's a really good example and shows how racial violence has evolved.' My daughter was subjected to this yet again, and my requests to the school to abstain from this obvious hostile learning environment were met with deaf ears," he said.

"My daughter is not unlike other children of first responders. She fears for my safety every day, and believes me to be a man of honesty and courage. She is proud to say I am her father and tells others what I do for a living," Hamblin wrote. "What this propaganda creates, are future cop haters, which endanger me, and 800,000 other courageous protectors. We speak of tolerance, we speak of changing hostile environments, we speak of prejudice, and we speak of racial relations, yet, when it comes to hostility toward police, their families, and profiling them through bigotry we are expected to tolerate it. I will not, nor will my child."

"When I saw it, I could see immediately why [my daughter] didn't feel comfortable with it, because I didn't feel comfortable with it," Hamblin told WDRB in an interview Wednesday. "It's comparing a race-based ideology, or the KKK, to that of professional workers who serve their country day-in and day-out. There's propaganda and there's the First Amendment. They're two different things, especially in a government-run classroom."

Green said Oldham County Schools are "very thankful and supportive of all law enforcement personnel, especially the local agencies we work closely with every day."

"As educators, we play an important role in preparing our students for the world that exists outside our own buildings," Green said. "These topics can be divisive and upsetting to people on all sides of these issues but part of our role is to give students an opportunity to discuss those."

Green added that while the district "supports Hamblin's right to post on social media about this topic, he has yet to contact the school's administration to discuss his concerns."

Green says Hamblin isn't the only parent who has complained, and that she has received complaints about the art. She says the decision on whether or not to take down the picture is up to the teacher.

"We believe that our role as educators is to prepare our kids for the world beyond the classroom and sometimes things are gonna be controversial," Green said. "So at this point, they're continuing on with that assignment. It's up to the teacher if she feels like it's causing a distraction and wants to take it down she can, but we're certainly not going to ask her to."