Sixth-grader Bo Schneider stood at attention Thursday in the Woodlawn School gymnasium for the Pledge of Allegiance.

He lifted a hand to his heart and eyes to the flag. Thirty-one words of the pledge slid off his tongue, having long ago been committed to memory.

Bo said he found meaning in the daily declaration of patriotism.

“It honors all the people — veterans. My grandpa was in World War II,” he said.

The 10-second recitation before school each day at Woodlawn is welcomed by other students there, too, and their interest has nothing to do with a legal battle now in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court. Justices will grapple with a lower-court decision that public schools shouldn’t have students recite the Pledge of Allegiance because it’s unconstitutional to include the phrase “one nation under God.”

The Constitution guarantees there will be no government establishment of religion. A key issue is whether the pledge is a profession of religious belief.

Sixth-grader Kayla Clark said she couldn’t comprehend any harm that could come from saying the pledge with students at school.

“I just think it makes me feel better in the mornings,” Kayla said.

“I like saying the pledge, too,” said classmate Josh Drentlaw. “When I say it, I think of the (American) revolution and the war going on now. America does need support.”

Woodlawn School students Ryan Armstrong, left, and Connor Ballenger, foreground, recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Students at Woodlawn gathered Thursday, as they do every morning in the school gym, to recite the pledge. The pledge -- specifically its phrase one

Students in all 15 Lawrence elementary schools and two junior high schools say the pledge each morning. The pledge is recited by students en masse every Monday in two of the four junior high schools, but the high schools don’t have schoolwide recitations of the pledge.

Establishment Clause

The legal debate began when an atheist objected to the pledge his 9-year-old daughter’s teachers led daily in Elk Grove, Calif. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco agreed with the atheist, and the Supreme Court decided Oct. 14 to review that decision. The court’s ruling is expected in June 2004.

In a 2-1 ruling, the 9th Circuit Court concluded the words “under God” violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which requires a separation of church and state.

“A profession that we are a nation ‘under God’ is identical, for Establishment Clause purposes, to a profession that we are a nation ‘under Jesus,’ a nation ‘under Vishnu,’ a nation ‘under Zeus,’ or a nation ‘under no god,’ because none of these professions can be neutral with respect to religion,” Judge Alfred T. Goodwin wrote for the three-judge panel.

Congress added the words “under God” to the pledge in 1954.

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Hitting home

It’s no surprise the Supreme Court is called upon to clarify the murky constitutional line between God and government, said Austin Turney, the Lawrence school board president.

The issue hits close to home. For example, Turney said, at least one Lawrence teacher has been reprimanded for disciplining a student who didn’t want to stand for the pledge.

“The message was given back that this is going beyond what a teacher should do,” Turney said.

He also said a current member of the Lawrence school board — he wouldn’t divulge which one — had privately expressed reservations about reciting the pledge at the start of each board meeting.

Turney continues to lead the school board in the pledge, in part, because it was a tradition established two years ago by one of his predecessors as president, Sue Morgan.

Scott Morgan, who followed Sue Morgan’s lead during the year he served as board president, said the pledge was appropriate for meeting rooms and classrooms.

“If we ask our kids to do it, it seems appropriate that we do it,” he said. “It is a unifying pledge. At a basic level, it’s an appropriate restatement for what we have in common.”

Members of the Kansas State Board of Education also open their meetings with the pledge.

Defeated for re-election in April, Scott Morgan said the debate about the pledge illustrated what was right about the United States.

“I enjoy the fact that people object to saying it,” he said. “It’s fascinating to have a country like that.”