A priest heading a private Catholic school has expelled three pupils from the same family after one of the siblings submitted an election speech mirroring language used by former President Donald Trump.
Jimmy Heyward was kicked out of St. Bonaventure Catholic School, a TK-8 institution in Huntington Beach, California, for refusing to tone down references to patriotism in his speech as part of his campaign for Commissioner of School Spirit and Patriotism, according to his mother Hattie Ruggles.
13-year-old Heyward was set to address his peers on May 16 at St. Bonaventure, which promotes itself as “the best Catholic school in Orange County,” when principal Mary Flock told him he would not be able to speak if he did not delete “ALL parts about patriotism,” Ruggles said in an online petition.
In his three-and-a-half-minute speech, now posted on the social media platform X, eighth-grader Heyward called for students to respect the National Anthem, the Pledge of Allegiance, veterans, and other aspects of American patriotism.
“I can promise to make pep rallies great again. I will make the school spirit great again. I will make patriotism within SBS (St. Bonaventure School) great again. And mostly, I will make SBS great again,” he said, echoing the Make American Great Again (MAGA) rhetoric of President Donald Trump.
Ruggles said her son was also criticized by some classmates for his campaign poster and hat that mimicked Trump campaign’s style. “Instead of just writing something like ‘Vote for Jimmy,’ he was really thinking out of the box and thinking this would be cool to do something in the style of a real presidential campaign,” the mother of four said.
“I think if it was flipped and had he mimicked Joe Biden’s campaign, and used his slogan, it would have been fine,” she added.
Ruggles and her husband, Ed Heyward, shared an email from Flock to the parents of pupils at the school, justifying her decision to stop Jimmy Heyward from delivering his speech.
“If a speech does not receive final approval, we adhere to our established guidelines, which means the student will not be permitted to deliver the speech,” the email said, claiming that “school administrators felt encouraged by the words of patriotism but were discouraged by what is perceived as some negative comments and sought adjustments to make it more positive.”
“This incident reminds us of the importance of maintaining a respectful and inclusive environment within our school community,” the email added.
On June 11, Fr. Vincent Pham, parish priest of St. Bonaventure Parish, which established and runs the school as part of its ministry, wrote to Heyward’s parents that a decision had been made “to terminate your family’s enrollment from St. Bonaventure School for the next school year.”
“This morning we received an email terminating Jimmy, Alice, and Livia from the school and will not allow them to return next year,” Hattie Ruggles wrote on Facebook.
Pham told the parents that the expulsion of the Heyward children was a result of “serious violations of the Christian Code of Conduct and the Parent Electronic Communication policy.”
The actions include speaking rudely to the school’s administration, posting disparaging remarks about the faculty and administration on social media, holding a protest on parish grounds, promoting a petition to remove the school’s principal, and threatening the administration if demands were not met, Pham’s letter explained.
Ruggles challenged the school administration’s version of events revealing how the administration called the police when her husband, who had gone to the school to speak to the principal, and vice-principal Caleb McFarren, refused to leave and “walked to the opposite side of the gate, away from everyone else and all students/faculty” when he was asked to vacate the premises.
Ruggles, who has kept updating the petition which at the time of writing had garnered over 7,000 signatures, called for Flock to be fired immediately.
In a twist of events, an email sent from Fr. Pham on May 24 to all parents at St. Bonaventure School, said that Flock “will not be returning to St. Bonaventure next school year.”
