Irresponsible Action by the Davis School District

As a junior in high school, I still fall under the public school system. As many of you know, President Barack Obama plans to make a speech to all American students K-12 on Tuesday 8 Sept at 12:00pm EDT. In response, the Davis School District sent the following letter home to parents today, Thursday 3 Sept:



It reads the following:

Thursday, Sept. 3, 2009

Dear Parents,

U.S. President Barack Obama plans to deliver a back-to-school message on Tuesday, Sept. 8, at 10 a.m. The message will be directed at students specifically on the importance of education. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Pres. Obama will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals and take responsibility for their learning. Duncan has asked schools throughout the nation to watch the speech together. It is being broadcast live on the White House website, www.whitehouse.gov. It will also be shown on CSPAN.

Davis School District supports providing students with the opportunity to view the President's address. As a courtesy, we want to provide you with the option to opt out of having your child participate, if you choose. Please return this signed letter to the school by Tuesday morning if you do not want your student to view the address. Alternative activities will be provided for those students.

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__ No, I do not want my student ______________________________ to view the national address by Pres. Barack Obama.

Signed______________________________________ Date_____________

This is blatantly partisan and I was upset upon receipt of this letter in fourth period today. In response, I sent the following letter to my elected school board member, Walt Bain:

Dear Mr. Bain:

My name is Jay Hutchinson and I am a junior at Davis High School in Kaysville. I live in Fruit Heights, and you represent my precinct. I write on not only my behalf, but on the behalf of my mother, who has seven children besides myself in the Davis School District, as well. We are appalled to receive this letter allowing parents to opt their children out of President Obama's address to students next Tuesday. To compare this action by the District to its policy on the showing of films in classrooms, 4I-201-7.1 states the following: "For all movies, videos, and clips thereof carrying a...PG...[or]...PG-13...rating,...parents shall receive written notification of the proposed showing at least five (5) school days prior to the movie or video's showing." Furthermore, 7.3.1 of the same section reads the following: "Parents who do not object within the five (5) school day notice period shall be deemed to grant consent for their child's viewing of a movie or video." In essence, you are treating President Obama's address to the nation's students as you would a PG or PG-13 movie with the small exception of there being only a two day notice period as opposed to five. This is completely ridiculous. There is no reason to suspect that anything contained in the address would be comparable to objectionable content found in films rated PG and PG-13. In addition, we doubt the District would have taken such action two years ago had the Republican President Bush chosen to make such a speech to the nation's students. Therefore we must come to the conclusion that this nonpartisan entity has appallingly taken an action based solely on partisanship and disapproval of the current President. This is disappointing and we hope that such improper action never be taken again in this District. A prompt response is requested.

Sincerely,
Jay Hutchinson
jay@jayhutchinson.com

It's true! The Davis School District is treating this address in a very similar manner to how they would a film rated PG or PG-13. Its full policy on videos and movies can be found at http://www.davis.k12.ut.us/policy/manual/Policy/4I-201%20Movies%20and%20Videos.pdf. If you live in the Davis School District or any school district taking similar action, I urge you to e-mail your elected school board official to complain about this irresponsibility propagated by this supposedly nonpartisan entity.

Update (8:50 pm)

Superintendant Bryan Bowles, to whom I sent a carbon copy of the e-mail addressed to Mr. Bain, responded 58 minutes after I sent the first message. This was his reply:

Jay --- The Davis School District is not taking a position one way or another. We have families who believe strongly that all children should hear the speech, and we have families who believe strongly that no children should hear the speech. We strongly support your right to make the best decision for your family.

I received this White House web site yesterday; it may be useful to you: www.whitehouse.gov/mediaresources. It talks about the President's intent for the speech. This decision, unfortunately, puts our schools in a no-win situation between those who strongly want the speech to be heard and those who strongly do not want the speech to be heard, and it paints us as the bad guys when we should be the advocates for all families and children. We are not the bad guys here.

We cannot choose not to have the speech broadcast at school. We can, however, offer parents the option to have their children in another room in the school engaged in another activity other than the President's speech. The opt-out is a great solution that gives parents the option to have their children listen to the speech or not listen to the speech. This speech is nothing like a video; indeed, no notification needs to be given at all. We don't notify parents of every guest speaker in every classroom; however, this speech is a highly controversial event with parents polarized on both sides of the issue. I have had no less than 30 email in support of viewing the speech and another 30 strongly opposed to any child hearing the speech. Ours is a neutral position that allows individuals to participate in this historic occasion or to opt-out by moving to a location in which the speech is not being played.

I repeat: We fully support the right for each family to makes choices for their children. It is unfortunate that a situation beyond our control puts us in a no-win situation in which we are attacked. Had the President chosen to deliver his speech at night on television like his State of the Union addresses, we would not even be in this equation. By no fault of our teachers, administrators, or school board members, we have to field the controversy when we should be advocates for children and families.

You should always write your elected officials when you are concerned about a situation, and you should expect a thoughtful response from them. You have obviously spent some time thinking about the situation, how would you have handled this situation? If you found out Wednesday morning that the President of the United States would deliver a speech to all school children the following Tuesday morning, and families called (non-stop yesterday and today) both strongly opposed to the speech and strongly in favor of the speech. What compromise position would you have taken? What balance would you strike --- especially when you didn't create the controversy?

I am including a sample of an email from an individual who is opposed to the President's speech. I am including it so that you can see how those who are on that side of the spectrum feel. This is only one email at random: I am extremely upset about the attempted indoctrination of my children scheduled for September 8th. My feelings would be the same coming from a democrat or a republican president. This is simply out of line. Period. It is quite obvious that this plan has been in the works for quite sometime. The agenda is also obvious considering the fact that it was kept so hush, hush. I called two schools today and both pretended to be ignorant about it. Funny thing is that my daughter brought home an "Opt out" paper. This scandal was obviously known about. I don't appreciate being lied to. And I don't appreciate principals being conveniently unavailable to answer questions. The paper my daughter brought home explained that there would be alternate activities provided. My response is...don't bother. I will provide my own alternate activity. My children will not be attending at all that day or any other day that contains anything similar or related to this kind of non-sense. Likewise, I will not allow them to be penalized in any way for not attending. If that ends up being the case or if this sort of activity continues you may consider my children withdrawn from public education and we will be happy to home school them.
Additionally, I am a business man. I have thousands of contacts in my email address book. I assure you that every one of those contacts will receive the suggestion from me that there optional activity be to keep their kids home from school all together. Your attendance, or the lack thereof, will tell your pocketbook that this kind of agenda will not be tolerated.

I am interested in your solutions.

Bryan.

I responded thusly:

Dear Superintendant Bowles:

I can see your predicament. However, I feel that this situation could have been handled more effectively without any notification. As reasonable people, we understand that the purpose of this address is not to "indoctrinate" anyone. It is simply a message of encouragement to students from the leader of our nation. In reading the message from that concerned parent, I would suppose that his view on this address is rather radical and unique. In light of that, the volume of paper used to print these opt-out letters, one of which I have sitting directly in front of me, is rather large and could have been used for more worthy causes. If a parent really believes that his or her student is going to be "indoctrinated" during this speech, he or she should contact the school and request that his or her student be kept out of the activity. If there were a parent who wasn't aware of the address until his or her student came home that day, their child's summary of the address would likely relieve all fears. I'm not sure how many schools sent out opt-out letters (I know that Viewmont High simply called each parent as they would notify that parent of an absence), but the three schools to which my siblings and I go, Davis High, Fairfield Jr. High, and Morgan Elementary, all sent out opt-out letters. That's a decent amount of paper just right there, paper that could've been saved by allowing parents to take the initiative if they really didn't want their child to view this uplifting and motivation address. Essentially, I argue that since this address is naturally good-hearted and positive, it shouldn't be the school district's job to tell parents that this is happening. As you said, you don't notify parents of every guest speaker. Parents worried enough to e-mail you objecting to this address, I believe, should be told by e-mail of an alternative. But no effort should be made to notify each and every parent.

I very much appreciate such a prompt response.

Sincerely,
Jay Hutchinson

Update (9:00 pm)

That was pretty quick...

Superintendant Bowles sent me his response no less than twelve minutes after I sent mine. Here's the text:

Thank you, Jay, for your thoughtful response. Actually, the letter I sent you was fairly typical of a stack that I have. In all cases, I feel strongly that parents must be informed of what is happening out of the ordinary at school. I may be wrong, but it is how I approach public education. I really believe that parents have a right to have input. Further, parents think I am sneaky and untrustworthy if I don't make full disclosure of situations. I believe in communication. I may go overboard sometimes, but I would rather err on the side of too much instead of the side of not enough. I'm not sure I felt that same way before I was a parent myself, but I now have a son at the university, one in Australia on an LDS mission, a daughter in high school, a daughter in junior high school, and a daughter in elementary school. As a parent, I want information.

You are obviously bright and thoughtful --- a junior with an impressive 3.793 grade point average and five AP courses. It will be a pleasure to watch your many life's successes.

Bryan.

I appreciate these kind words from the Superintendant. While I still hold to my opinion concerning this issue, I resolve my criticism Superintendant's action as nothing more than a conflict of ideology.

Comment below or e-mail me at jay@jayhutchinson.com. Leave me a voicemail at 801-513-1529. Follow me on Twitter at twitter.jayhutchinson.com.