Maryland bill would ban hate symbols in public schools

Hereford High School senior Vita Shats had seen it weekly. The Confederate flag on T-shirts. The swastikas in bathrooms. She’d seen a fellow student with a Confederate flag on his belt, flaunting it in a Black student’s face. Two years ago, she talked to her school principal about implementation of a policy to ban those symbols — but was told it was beyond the school’s jurisdiction. So, she tried two superintendents. Neither got back to her, she said. There was no statewide policy regarding hate symbols in schools — and Hereford High didn’t have one, either — leaving Shats and students like her with few options.