Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata confirmed Friday that the district had taken disciplinary action against the Enloe High School teacher who publicly criticized a student and warned he might rescind the teen’s college recommendation letters.

As noted in today's article, teacher Joseph Hoffman was suspended without pay for five days. All sides acknowledge he publicly criticized Jay Zhang's letter to the editor in front of his students and had talked about rescinding the teen's college recommendation letters.

“I support Jay Zhang’s rights to free speech,” Tata said “I applaud that young man for speaking his mind and exercising his free speech rights. I don’t believe any teacher should threaten to take action against a student for exercising his rights to free speech.”

Seemed worth the effort to compile today's front-page story "Alleged retaliation threat probed at Enloe" with the letter that started the whole thing and with the subsequent letters we have run in the aftermath of Jay Zhang's letter first running on Feb. 3.

Click here for Zhang's letter.

Other letters:

A closer look

More to education

Click read more to see other letters in the pipeline.

Is an Enloe High School student facing repercussions for having questioned the lack of diversity within the classes on campus?

As noted in today's article, Wake County school officials say they're investigating allegations that Enloe social studies teacher Joseph Hoffman told his classes on Thursday that he was considering rescinding the college recommendation letters for senior Jay Zhang.

The reason Hoffman was allegedly upset was over this letter to the editor in Thursday's N&O in which Zhang talked about "the glaring academic and cultural divide between the magnet and non-magnet students."