Ohio lawmakers want K-12 schools to post public policy on the Pledge of Allegiance

Schools will be required to publicly post their policy on oral recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, if a bill introduced in the Ohio House of Representatives becomes law.

Ohio schools are already required by law to have a policy on whether or not students recite the pledge.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Gail Pavliga, R-Atwater, and Rep. Tracy Richardson, R-Marysville, would require school districts to make their pledge policies publicly available and post the policy on the district website if there is one.

School policies cannot require students to recite the pledge and prohibit students and staff from intimidating any student to coerce them into participating.

Pavliga said she is a patriotic person and has observed that sometimes people don't know things like the national anthem or when to kneel or put their hand over their heart.

"I just think that the school policies need to be there, and then the parents as taxpayers need to understand what the policies of those schools are so they can then reflect what they would like to do with their children," she said.

The bill has not yet been assigned to a committee. Pavliga believes the bill can pass before the end of the legislative session in December because it requires just a three-sentence change to Ohio Revised Code.

How did we get our laws on the Pledge of Allegiance?

Students reciting the pledge can be traced back to an 1892 event honoring the day Christopher Columbus voyaged to America, according to the Free Speech Center . Religious objections and exemptions to the pledge followed afterward, with Mennonites taking issues with the perceived promise to bear arms in 1918 and Jehovah's Witnesses objecting to saluting the flag as idolatry in the 1930s.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1943 that students could not be compelled to salute the flag after the children of Jehovah's Witnesses were expelled for refusing to participate in the pledge.

Erin Glynn is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio lawmakers want K-12 schools to post public policy on the Pledge of Allegiance