A number of top-ranking Howard County school system officials say that they like the way the showing of President Barack Obama's speech to the nation's students was handled, despite having little time to adequately prepare for it.
The school system was given a couple of days' notice about the speech, which made it difficult to coordinate a better plan to share it, according to Sydney L. Cousin, superintendent of Howard County Public Schools.
Most Baltimore-area districts let individual schools determine whether they showed the speech. Harford County decided not to broadcast the address. Howard County schools gave principals the authority to decide whether students would be able to watch the speech. School officials, who did not poll the principals, were unsure what administrators from the county's 72 schools did.
"We respect the president of the United States, and welcome the opportunity for him to address our students," Cousin said at a Sept. 10 school board meeting. "We would have liked more of a chance to prepare to fit the president's address into our schedule. Some showed it live, some recorded it to show at a future date. This is not an excuse. This is an explanation of how we did it."
The president's speech to the nation's students sparked a dispute among parents and politicians. Some conservatives expressed concerns that Obama would use the speech to promote his agenda. Others thought that the speech was a valuable classroom lesson. School systems were flooded with phone calls from both sides. The Howard County school system's public information office received a couple of dozen calls in the week leading up to the speech, which fell evenly on both sides of the argument, according to Dave Bruzga, administrative director of secondary schools in Howard County.
Howard County principals were given three options: show the speech, allow parents to have their children opt out of watching the speech, or not show the speech at all if it interfered with previously scheduled activities in the school.
Principals did a "good job of using their judgment," and "given more time, we could have made this more of a teachable moment," Cousin said.
"The message was an encouraging one for everyone," Cousin said. He urged students "to stay in school. We teach that everyday. That is our mission. For that reason, we want students to get that message from as many different sources as we can."
