ANSONIA, Conn. – One word can change everything.

Instead of pledging allegiance to the “United States of America” during the morning announcements at Ansonia High School, a 15-year-old student substituted “ISIS,” and sent school officials into a tizzy, the Connecticut Post reports.

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The incident, which occurred before the winter break, prompted school administrators to remove him from the high school and call in local police, who turned their investigation over to the Department of Homeland Security. The student, who has not been identified, has spent the days since studying in a modular trailer at the district’s administrative offices, and his mother is not happy about it, according to the news site.

The woman, who also has not been identified, told the school board at a recent meeting that her son wasn’t removed “because of discipline” or bad behavior, but “because the principal … was allowed to be irrational and make an impulsive decision.”

She contends the student “did not breach any of the codes of conduct, did not misbehave; the thing that he was alleged was not even founded.

“It was not true,” she told the board, the Post reports.

And even if he did, her son has the constitutional right to freedom of speech, the mother said.

“He never threatened anybody, he never harmed anyone and Ansonia has not moved to deal with it,” she said, according to Fox 61. “It has been passed on to national Homeland Security where my student, who has never been aggressive, hostile, disrespectful, a threat to anyone in a school environment is now pushed through a federal investigation.”

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Board president Carmen Pitney countered that the incident “was verified by other students and that is why the principal and officer had to take action.”

School officials and board members are directing media inquiries about the ordeal to the district’s attorney, Floyd Dugas, who told the Post officials called in the feds “out of an abundance of caution.”

Dugas cited federal privacy laws for declining to comment further.

Regardless, the student’s civil rights attorney John Williams believes they overreacted – “exactly what the terrorists want us to do,” he told the Post.

The student should have been “sent to the principal’s office, been given a stern lecture and maybe a couple of hours of detention,” Williams said.

“To call the cops and Homeland Security is really out of line,” he said.

Folks who commented online expressed mixed reactions to the incident, though most seemed to agree with Williams.

“Tempest in a teapot,” SomeOtherGuy wrote in the Post comments. “Just a typically impulsive teen wanting to shock everybody to get some attention. Well, I guess he succeeded, but the administration way overreacted.”

“Put him on a plane and dump him into the arms of ISIS,” bandit1977 posted.