Obama address no big deal for Fox Valley schools

While President Obama's back-to-school Webcast scheduled for Tuesday has sparked controversy across the nation this week, the topic made little more than a ripple in Fox Valley school districts.

School officials across the Fox Valley said they have gotten few calls from concerned parents. They have mostly told parents the same thing: the decision on whether to show the speech will be left to principals and teachers, and students who don't want to watch the speech don't have to. One district is forbidding the speech in classrooms.

Elgin Area School District U-46, the state's second largest district, has received a few calls from parents asking if the district is requiring all students to watch the address, district spokesman Tony Sanders said.

"We're not going to mandate that all schools watch it," Sanders said. "We're going to leave it to our principals and their teachers."

The district will honor requests from parents who ask to have their children excused from viewing the speech, Sanders said.

At Elgin High School, Principal Dave Smiley said he received just one e-mail from a teacher about the logistics of showing the 11 a.m. speech.

"It's a nonissue here," Smiley said.

Obama's speech would not be the first time a president has spoken to schoolchildren. President Reagan got a warm welcome in Geneva in 1982, when he held a question-and-answer session with an eighth-grade civics class at St. Peter Catholic School.

During his Geneva visit, Regan promoted tuition tax credits for families that sent children to private schools. Students asked about Reagan's recent firing of airline traffic controllers, gun control, inflation and his economic policy.

Central Community Unit District 301 Superintendent Todd Stirn said his Burlington-based district received only a few calls.

Without any official instruction from the state board of education or U.S. Department of Education, District 301 will focus on its planned lessons Tuesday morning, not the president's address.

"With any school district, you need to be politically neutral," Stirn said. "Because it's a live, televised event, you have to look at the age level of the children; is it tied to the curriculum?"

Stirn said the speech might be suitable for a government class but not for a group of first-graders.

"We are going to follow our regular classroom routine," said Jan Harnish, principal of District 301's Howard B. Thomas Elementary School. "We're just getting used to that."

Cary Elementary District 26 was one district that sent an e-mail Wednesday forbidding teachers from showing the Webcast or using White House supplied discussion materials in the classroom.

"The district's philosophy is to present controversial subjects in a fair and impartial way," Curriculum Director Mary Dudek wrote.

Ken Arndt, superintendent of Carpentersville-based Community Unit District 300, has heard from about 20 parents about Obama's scheduled address. Arndt doesn't see what the fuss is about.

"Only in America would the president of the United States' address to schoolchildren cause any controversy," Arndt said. "It's unfortunate that everything in America has to be adversarial."

Arndt said he is leaving it to principals and teachers to decide whether it is appropriate for their students to watch. For his part, the superintendent said Obama's speech could be a valuable lesson.

"We definitely need to place a higher priority on education in the country ... and the president is a perfect person to promote that," he said.

Some District 300 parents, apparently, disagree.

"They think it's going to be used for covert political activity or that the president is going to make it very political," Arndt said. "This is getting way overboard."

The parent response in Crystal Lake High School District 155 has been more muted. Only a couple of parents have expressed concerns, district spokesman Jeff Puma said.

"They're just concerned about what the message might be," Puma said. One parent asked if teachers would provide students an alternative to watching Obama's speech. "The answer is yes," Puma said.

The District 155 spokesman said administrators met late Thursday to discuss the president's planned speech but that based on what they've heard, district officials don't have a problem with the topics Obama may cover.

"Persistence and goal-setting and staying in school are obviously important," Puma said.

Decision: Districts report low number of calls