Smith: The principal’s rainbow flag in Occidental pleased some, incensed others

As students and parents arrived for Day 1 and Day 2 of the new year at Harmony School in Occidental, they saw new principal-superintendent Matthew Morgan holding a rainbow flag on a pole.

It was meant to be assuring and inclusive. At least a few parents, certainly Brenden Dean, found it outrageous.

“I pulled my kids,” said Dean, a Bodega Bay father of three. He contends that for an educator to display a symbol of LGBTQ pride is inappropriate for an elementary school and suggests that Morgan is promoting a platform.

Dean’s wife, Angela, wrote the principal-superintendent in an email, “Sexualizing our children is disgusting ... Bottomline, you overstepped boundaries ...”

Morgan said Wednesday the school has a legal and ethical imperative to assure at-risk students that they are welcome and safe. He displayed the “symbol of diversity,” he said, “to be generally inclusive.”

Morgan said the flag received a mostly warm reception, though “there were a couple of folks, a few families, that have expressed they’re upset at the symbol.”

The Harmony Union school board intends to discuss “the use of social inclusion symbols” at its 6 p.m. meeting Thursday.

HHHHHH

A LARGE DIAMOND graces the ring that an utterly distraught Santa Rosa woman believes fell from her finger Saturday at the Montgomery Village shopping center.

“I am so torn apart I can’t even think straight,” said the woman, who received the ring as an anniversary gift from her husband, who died more than 20 years ago.

The woman asked not be identified because she’s had hard times since she was widowed and she doesn’t want to risk attracting more trouble to her life.

She’s clearly anguished over the loss of the ring.

She said she went to Montgomery Village to support the weekly concert, the beverage sales from which will benefit a free meal program.

“I was clapping my hands to the music,” she said. “All of a sudden, I look down and my ring is gone.”

If someone found it, he or she might already have discovered that it’s quite valuable. But it is invaluable to the woman who is offering a reward for the ring’s return and prays it will be surrendered to ER Sawyer Jewelers.

HHHHHH

BEAN BAGS VS. BULLIES: Is there a hotter game these days than cornhole?

If you haven’t watched or played it, which is unlikely, it has two two-person teams tossing bean bags at the hole in a raised, angled board.

Greg Courdy, who owns a Santa Rosa lighting company, loves the game. In a separate aspect of his being, he detests the damage done to kids by bullying.

So he thought: How about hosting a cornhole tournament and donating the dollars it brings in to anti-bullying efforts in local schools?

Courdy invites us all to come out to Corday Lighting on Airway Drive on Sept. 7. Starting at about 9 a.m., there will be free food and beverages, music, chances to buy into a raffle and silent auction - and a great deal of cornhole.

Courdy has relatives and friends who’ve suffered and suffer still from bullying. If dollars generated by the bag-toss tourney allow even one kid to avoid being bullied, he said, “we’re golden.”

You can contact Chris Smith at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.