Corridor schools make viewing president’s address to schoolchildren optional

Students in Iowa City and Cedar Rapids will be allowed - but not required - to watch President Barack Obama's address to schoolchildren Tuesday, school officials said Friday.

“We have gotten several calls asking what our decision is going to be,” said Gary O'Malley, assistant superintendent of the Cedar Rapids school district. “Some parents have expressed a concern, and other parents have expressed some support.”

Obama is to expected to urge students to study, stay in school and be responsible for their own education in his back-to-school address Tuesday. The broadcast will be aired on C-SPAN at 11 a.m. CDT.

Other presidents have addressed students directly: President Ronald Reagan did it in 1988, and President George H.W. Bush followed suit in 1991.

This time, however, some school districts in Texas, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Virginia and Wisconsin have decided not to make the speech available to students. Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, for one, a potential presidential contender in 2012, said Obama's speech is “uninvited” and that the president's move raises questions of content and motive.

The White House on Friday dismissed the furor as pointless.

“I think we've reached a little bit of the silly season when the president of the United States can't tell kids in school to study hard and stay in school,” presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters. “I think both political parties agree that the dropout rate is something that threatens our long-term economic success.”

In Iowa City, school district officials are allowing each administrator to decide whether to show the address to their students.

“We are not requiring that it be viewed by all students,” Iowa City school Superintendent Lane Plugge said. “We wanted to make sure that if it is viewed, there's a learning connection.”

Plugge said teachers who feel the address will have some relevance to their classroom teaching may show the broadcast. If students in those classes don't want to watch, he said, options will be made available.

In Cedar Rapids, the speech will be available for students to see if they want, but they won't be required to watch. Students will be allowed to leave class to watch the address but will be responsible for making up anything they've missed, just as they would for any other absence, O'Malley said.

“We try to protect classroom time, but there is also a variety of circumstances where kids miss class but have to be responsible for what they missed,” he said.

Jerry Arganbright, principal at Iowa City's West High School, said teachers are deciding on their own whether to show the broadcast, and some are taping it for students to view later.

“This is not atypical of how we would handle anything like this,” he said. “We don't want to overreact one way or the other on these things.”