Pillai-Diaz, 33, a volunteer with the Bush campaign and an English teacher, has had a publicity picture of the First Couple hanging in her classroom since the start of the school year, she said.

The photo became an issue last week.

Parents e-mailed an assistant principal accusing Pillai-Diaz of suppressing free speech because the teacher refused to talk to pupils about why the color photo hung in the room.

"Students said, 'You like George Bush? He's killed people,' " Pillai-Diaz said. "As a rule I don't talk about my politics in the classroom."

Pillai-Diaz told the assistant principal to take the picture down himself. Then she sought Principal Jim Warfel, who gave her an upbraiding.

"He said, 'You've caused more disruption, hatred and anger than anyone I've ever known,' " she said.

The teacher said the principal told her to "get out," so she left and headed to the South Brunswick Police Department.

UPDATE: God... this makes it even worse:

The White House-issued photo of the Bushes was pinned to a bulletin board that held portraits of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and a copy of the Constitution.

"I wouldn't touch politics in my classroom with a 10-foot pole, but [the principal] felt I was making a political statement," said Shiba Pillai-Diaz, 33, a seventh- and eighth-grade English teacher at Crossroads South Elementary School in Monmouth Junction.

"It was meant to be a picture of the current president, nothing partisan about it," said Pillai-Diaz, a Republican mother of one who volunteered at the party's convention in Madison Square Garden.

The principal et al. are trying to get her to either take down the photo, or add a photo of John Kerry. They want to shift the point of the photo from the fact that Bush is the sitting President, to the controversy of the coming election.

She's considering this President to be a part of U.S. history, just like every other President. The people asking her to take the photo down, however, seem to be trying to erase him from history. To turn his term into a memory, and to define him only in terms of being the guy running against Kerry. To transform him into something temporary and fleeting, like Prohibition.

To say nothing of that making it into a Bush/Kerry thing would force her to have the in-class debate, which she clearly doesn't want to do. I think she's simply shocked that putting up a picture of the President in a public school classroom these days is something you have to justify, or explain, or discuss... or defend.

Thanks to Kenny B. for the link.