New Canaan's Furor Over Obama's Speech Simmers Down

It appears the firestorm in New Canaan over Obama's address is finally over. Despite Board of Education chair Kathy Smith receiving more than 800 e-mails in response to the school district's plan for presenting President Obama's speech to students, and other board members receiving hundreds more, just two speakers stepped up during the public comment period at the board's regular meeting Tuesday night.

Superintendent of Schools David Abbey said at the meeting that he had watched the speech with a middle school class live Tuesday, and with another class a half hour later. He said the seventh-grade teacher he observed had prepared a lesson plan, introducing key concepts and vocabulary ahead of the speech and providing follow-up classroom materials and homework afterward. That social studies teacher delivered the same lesson using the speech to her Wednesday classes too.

"For us it was never a one-day event," Abbey said, "We always looked at this as an instructional opportunity, as opposed to simply viewing the speech and moving on."

Abbey expects 80 percent of students at Saxe will ultimately see the speech in their classrooms. Teachers and administrators are also considering using the president's remarks as part of 8th grade leadership training.

At the high school Abbey said the speech was available in common areas, and it was discussed in some classes. However, Jane Himmel said in an e-mail to Abbey, principal Tony Pavia, and the board Wednesday that her daughter and other students were not informed about how and where they could view the speech live. Himmel’s son Michael, an NCHS senior who had earlier written a letter to the principal asking that the speech be broadcast live to high school students, told the board Tuesday he had to skip class to see it.

"When President Obama gave his speech I really regretted that there wasn't any kind of opt-in," Himmel said, referring to the provision in the school district's plan to allow parents to opt-out if they didn't want their children to see the speech. "There's a sense of cohesion when everyone, all students around the nation, see the speech and hear it at the same time—especially students from New Canaan (who) really don't feel with the rest of the nation a lot of the time. And also the students that would go to look up the speech, and download it and watch it, are really not the ones that needed to hear it most."

Later in the meeting, after he had left, board secretary Alison Bedula said she sympathized with Himmel's desire for an opt-in.

"I hope he won't be be given an unexcused absence," Bedula said.

Elementary school students did not see the speech in their classrooms Tuesday. Abbey, who said the president's speech carried a "fine message," explained that teachers and administrators wanted more time to evaluate how to present the speech to the younger students.

"If you look carefully at the speech you'll notice the vocabulary is sometimes fairly sophisticated—somewhat challenging at the middle school level, more easily accessible at the high school, but it's very challenging conceptually and linguistically for, certainly, students in K, 1, and 2," Abbey said.

Last Thursday, the Republican Town Committee blasted Obama's speech and the suggested lesson plans the White House had distributed to accompany it, prompting many parents to urge the Board of Education not to show it in schools at all. Three days later, Tom Brokaw slammed the district's plan for dealing with the speech on "Meet the Press". That in turn provoked a Labor Day visit from Rep. Himes who said anything short of broadcasting the speech live to all students was censorship.

The Board of Education put out a statement Wednesday in response to the furor.

"Anytime the President of the United States makes a statement supporting and encouraging education, the Board and Administration feel that is very positive, and we welcome it," the statement read. "The Board of Education strongly supports the approach to President Obama’s speech developed by Dr. Abbey and his team of educators... We feel that the approach is educationally sound for each grade level of the school system and respectful of the variety of perspectives expressed by the New Canaan community since the announcement of President Obama’s speech."

The Republican Town Committee also sent a message to its e-mail list Wednesday encouraging their membership to thank the board for its responsiveness to the controversy over the president's speech and for giving parents the opportunity to opt-out.

"We believe the many parents who had expressed their concerns to the RTC were relieved once they received the official communication from Dr. Abbey on Friday stating that their children would be given an opportunity to opt-out of the exercise," the e-mail read. "This was still not clear to parents (or the RTC) at the time of our e-mail to you on Thursday afternoon, and as you now know the speech itself only became available on Monday (Labor Day) at noon."