San Diego Unified School District allowed teachers and parents to decide for themselves whether they wanted students to see President Obama's speech to America's school children on September 8, 2009. La Mesa/Spring Valley school district outright banned the viewing of the speech, but that's no surprise, given that Rick Winet and friends have a majority on the board.
Up in Washington, Amalia Cudeiro started out her tenure at Bellevue School District by going on a "listening" campaign. But she doesn't think students should be allowed to listen to the President of the United States. No, that's not necessarily true. I'll bet she would have let the kids listen to George W. Bush or George H.W. Bush (the latter did address the nation's students during his term).
Politics Bellevue School District: We Didn't Ban Obama's Speech Because We're Right-Wing, Teabagging, Evangelical Racists
We Did It Because We Did Zero Research and We're Beholden to Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories
Posted by Dominic Holden
September 8, 2009
...Bellevue School District won't allow its students to watch the president's national address to students this morning.
The district's superintendent, Amalia Cudeiro, decided to ban—or at least suspend—classrooms from airing Obama's speech last Friday.
She posted a notice on the district's website, stating that "the tape will be made available to any teacher who wants to use it in a balanced discussion, so long as it fits within the education objectives of the class." And she sent district staff a message saying that, when she made the decision, "none of us had seen the script of the speech and we received multiple contacts from parents and community members who were concerned that this was going to be a political speech rather than just a motivational one."
But school district spokeswoman Ann Oxrieder says there was no evidence that the speech would contain inappropriate content.
Despite the uproar stoked by the radical right, other local school districts didn't block the speech, instead choosing to let parents or students opt out.
Was the Bellevue district concerned that the objections were based on rumors and speculation—and that there was no indication the speech would contain the socialist "indoctrination" messages that Glenn Beck and other right-wing pundits warned it would?
"At that time nobody had time to research," says Oxrieder. "We just knew that people were saying it was going to be a political message. We didn’t know where it was coming from. It was coming from our families."
Oxrieder doesn't know if the school district aired similar addresses to students by former presidents George HW Bush and Ronald Reagan.
"I don’t think there is any reason to worry because we have read the script now," Oxrieder says. Of course, they're still not airing the speech.
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