Mr. President, can you check with some School PR people before announcing another speech to students?

This past week, many of us who work in school PR lost quite a few hours from our normal tasks to deal with the issue of the President of the United States making a live speech to the students of America on September 8th. When I first heard that this was going to occur, I thought how cool. Whether you voted for the President or not, the message of staying in school and doing your best seems like a noble message that would be worth listening to.

Boy, was I wrong. Once the White House announced the speech, my telephone and in-box were inundated with messages from concerned parents. As a parent myself I found it hard to believe that a Presidential message could cause such a fury of criticism, tears, jeers, and fears. The e-mails were pretty calm. Most of them requesting information on what my school district was going to do - show the speech or not show the speech. We developed a statement, printed it out and posted it on-line. Directing people to the link became as easy as a couple of clicks and a "thank you for your comments" message.

The phone calls were a different matter and started to become a little exhausting after a while. There were a few that were easy to handle. Once people knew the position of the district, they were pretty content. Some people were overly polite when this disagreed with the district's position. Some people even began their conversations with "I'm sorry to be shooting the messenger but ...", and that was OK.

I also received a lot of phone calls from people who were committed to their beliefs. I heard from conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, people with kids in school and people who did not have kids in school. I heard from bigots, sectarians, and people who were in my opinion just plain "interesting". But no matter what side of the fence they were on, they were very committed to their beliefs.

My father spent a lot of time traveling the world in his career and was exposed to many different cultures. He always told me "It's easy to change an attitude but its hard to change a belief". I kept trying to remember that as I listened to the voice on the other end of the phone. Beliefs, beliefs.

Today the White House posted the speech that will be read tomorrow and from all accounts it looked pretty harmless and mildly inspirational. My wife and I read it and let my 6th grade daughter read it. Now we are pretty non-political in my house, so we really didn't discuss or analyze it too much. A couple hours later I asked my daughter did she remember anything about the President's speech. She said when it comes to school "I should try my hardest". That's pretty good for an 11 year old isn't it?

Quoting from the President's speech:

"Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed. And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself. Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide."

Being a school PR person, my focus is to tell our community about the good stuff our students and teachers are doing in school every day. Every school district has a million success stories to tell every day. When teachers, parents, and students take the responsibility for education - we will have more success stories to tell. We will have an opulence of success because children will be discovering the opportunities that education can provide to them. Hard work, commitment, and desire. What can be better than that?