I’m glad this school district backed down from a wooden, literal and absurd application of a particularly inane law.

A geography teacher put on paid leave for refusing to remove Mexican, Chinese and United Nations flags from his classroom will be allowed to return to school today after district officials backed down.

But Eric Hamlin, who teaches seventh-graders in Jefferson County, hopes his experience will inspire a backlash against a Colorado law that restricts display of other nations' flags.

"This hasn't been a teacher-versus-school- district issue," Hamlin said. "This has been a teacher taking on the state statute, with the school district stuck in the middle as the enforcer."

Carmody Middle School principal John Schalk put Hamlin on paid leave Wednesday after the teacher refused three orders to take the flags out of his classroom.

The school district cited a state law prohibiting the display of any flag but the American, Colorado or local flags on public buildings, including schools. Temporary displays for instructional or historical purposes are exempt, but the school principal did not consider Hamlin's display temporary enough.

District officials agreed Thursday that Hamlin could keep the flags up for six weeks, then exchange them with other flags from his collection of more than 50. The district said he could keep his next set of flags, 25 of them from Middle Eastern nations, up for 12 weeks.

See, the display is educational, part of a legitimate educational display in a classroom, which is clearly contemplated under the statute. Not that such logic satisfies the legislator who sponsored the current law.

Former state Rep. Carl Miller, who sponsored legislation in 2002 strengthening a 1971 law restricting foreign flag displays, said the school was right to put Hamlin on leave and should not have let him return so soon.

Miller, a Democrat from Leadville, disagreed with Jefferson County Superintendent Cindy Stevenson, who said the outcome was a "win-win situation."

"The only win-win I see is that Mr. Hamlin wins, China wins, Mexico wins and the United Nations wins," he said.

Miller said he and former Democratic Sen. Alice Nichol, co- sponsor of the legislation, intended for temporary displays to last a few days, not weeks.

First, the legislation has no time-limit. Second, the exception allowing for educational displays does exist, and using the flags during a period of time that it takes to cover a unit or set of units is quite appropriate.

What this really shows is that Colorado has a truly stupid law on the books, and that there needs to be a revision of that law by the Colorado legislature.

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