Flag Lesson Turns Into Star Search

Teacher Gloria Feerst didn’t think twice when she took the American flag off her classroom wall so students could count the stars for a math and history lesson.

They counted: 45, 46, 47, 48 . . . Wait a minute, what happened to the other two stars?

“I was surprised and shocked,” said Feerst, who teaches students with learning disabilities at Calabash Street Elementary School, which was built in 1959--the same year Alaska and then Hawaii joined the Union.

Problem is, the school never updated its Stars and Stripes.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Principal Susan Shaffer, who has run the school for three years. “We counted over and over . . . there are certain things you should be able to trust.”

Teachers did a quick check and found about 10 classroom flags that were shy two of the requisite 50 stars. Many more had small tears or holes; a few were watermarked.

The outdated 2-by-3-foot flags were confiscated in January and have been rolled up in Shaffer’s office, held with rubber bands, ever since.

“We do the Pledge of Allegiance without the flag now,” said second-grader Garrett Brooks. “Now, I look at a globe.”

Another second-grader, Jonathan Shapiro, was concerned.

“I wasn’t too happy about it,” he said. “I thought we had lost two states.”

Purchasing managers with the Los Angeles Unified School District unrolled and counted the stars on some 302 classroom-sized flags from their stock room Tuesday. They also put their longtime distributor--Oklahoma-based Liberty Flags--to the fire. Had the company been supplying the district with outdated flags?

“We buy per spec and those specs don’t change, unless the Constitution changes,” said George Silva, deputy director of purchasing for the school district.

Both the school district and the distributor said all their flags checked out. The district then dispatched 30 fresh flags to Calabash.

But the missing stars have left school district officials wondering.

“Our schools have been here for so long, no one ever noticed it,” said purchasing manager Marc Monforte. “If it happened [at Calabash], it could happen at another school. It could be one of those things that snowballs.”

All schools in the district were alerted Tuesday to double-check their flags.

“I’m curious now,” said Warren Mason, a cluster leader overseeing 29 San Fernando Valley schools. “I’m going to look at the flags myself.”

Today, Calabash Elementary will also receive 25 new flags from the local posts of the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars in a Flag Day ceremony on campus. Six Calabash students will read essays about what the flag means to them. Then the old flags will be taken away to be burned, as is customary, and the new flags will be presented. Including will be one donated by Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) that flew over the Capitol in Washington.

Calabash Elementary School is now flush with flags bearing the correct number of stars.

“We’re not going to add any more states, so I can use them all,” Shaffer said. “I’m going to always tell new teachers from now on that on the first day of class, you should always count your stars.”