Parent to Jones Elementary School: Let the president speak

This is loyal reader James’ letter to Jones Elementary School administrators, urging them to air President Barack Obama’s speech to students on Tuesday. The school principal has said the speech would be recorded, reviewed, and shown in the school auditorium on Thursday. You can vote in the Ashvegas poll here and read background here.

To all:

The principal of my son’s school, Ira B. Jones Elementary, notified
parents by phone on Saturday evening that the school, and therefore
presumably the district, has decided to postpone the in-school
delivery of the President’s “Back to School” message in order to “give
staff a chance to review its contents.” Implicit in the wording is the
both the notion that “something is wrong with the President’s
message,” and also very real threat that the speech will not be shown
at all.

She also informed us that parents would be given an opt-out option —
as for sex education (my words, not her’s) — if they do not wish for
their children to see the delayed speech, and that alternate
activities would be offered by the school for the children who have
been opted out by their parents. These alternate activities presumably
would be funded via general tax revenues rather than volunteer
donation, despite the frankly political nature of the disruption.

In my view, this obviously is a concession to partisan political
opponents of the President, who have been badgering administrators in
response to inflammatory radio and television stories about the
President’s speech to school children.

In my view, such a concession politicizes the Asheville City School
classrooms by turning them into venues for political vendettas against
the President.

It also forces parents to participate in a de facto referendum on the
President as part of the normal daily routine.

These, of course, were the goals of the political partisans in the
first place. Mission accomplished.

This is unacceptable.

The schools should not have made themselves party to partisan movments
of any stripe, and certainly should not be handling the valid message
of a sitting President as if it contained so much pornography or
infestation. This is absurd on its face, and dramatically partisan in
spirit and execution. Our children deserve a better model of
responsible civic behavior than now will be available to them. Shameful.

I want the Asheville City Schools administration to understand that a
host of parents in this district are honored to have the President —
any President — speak directly to their children in a formal school
setting. We are dismayed and disappointed that the ACS has chosen to
concede their neutral pedagogical status to the demands of rank
ideological partisanship.

A number of us already are contemplating pulling our children out of
classes on Tuesday September 8th both in order to watch the
President’s comments live and also to disrupt the school day as an act
of civil disobedience.

Just as Presidents Reagan and Bush, Sr., were able to speak in the
past, Let The President Speak. Let The President Speak Now. Let The
President Speak Without The Filter Of Partisan Malignancy.