Many Lee's Summit, MO residents filed complaints with the Lee's Summit School Board about Shrub's recent visit to my old high school, citing the disruption of regular class time to hold a partisan campaign rally.

-- Modified on 9/15/2004 12:40:46 AM

Gee, let's see...

About 200 days of school a year and 12 years. That's about
2400 school days.

And they want to bitch about losing one day because the kids got to see the POTUS in person.

No wonder public education sucks, no priorities...

It would be different if the President was there to discuss some relevant issues.  Instead, Shrub was disrupting class time to hold a campaign rally to drum up support for his "Moving America Forward (into an oncoming train)" platform and to badmouth Kerry, which easily could've been held anywhere else in town.  If I was a student now, I wouldn't want to be subjected to the bullshit of a candidate I don't support, even if I wasn't actually old enough to vote.  The only benefit of it to me would've been getting out of class.  In my view, those objecting have a legitimate gripe.

The president has a right to visit schools, but should not have that right if the visit is as a candidate.  Mr.Kerry has the right to visit schhols as a senator, but should not have that right if his visit is as a candidate.
    KCSHYGUY should answer you question, since you posed it to him.  But I would like to go back a few years and ask you a question.  How would you have felt if Clinton (the democratic incumbent at that time), in 1996 while running against senator Dole, had visited a school in such a fashion as president Bush II did?  Your outrage should cut both ways, as should that of KCSHYGUY.

to the political process and Bush & kerry should be able to speak at schools. Listening to a political speech can be educational if you take time to talk about it afterwards.

BTW, campaign or no campaign, GWB is POTUS and an opportunity to listen to the President in person is pretty damn rare.

I am not sure the link I pulled the following info from would have worked for the board here, but I copied it from the site.  This was posted on the Kansas City Star newspaper website last Thursday.  I didn't think to go there for information first, but this has a bit more info I wasn't aware of, stuff that wasn't in my original link.  If anyone would like the actual link, let me know.

Quoted from the Kansas City Star website.

Posted on Thu, Sep. 09, 2004

Board will hear from Bush rally objectors

By MARÁ ROSE WILLIAMS The Kansas City Star

Some Lee's Summit residents upset that Republicans were allowed to hold a Bush campaign rally at a public high school will take their objections up with the school board tonight.

The meeting was requested in a letter sent to the school district Wednesday.

President Bush and several other Republican politicians spoke at Lee's Summit High School on Tuesday morning. The by-ticket-only event was attended by 15,000 people; 2,000 were students and school staff. Only students with parental permission could opt out of attending. Nine chose not to go.

In the letter, residents complained that a partisan rally “should not have been held in a facility that was paid for and is maintained by taxpayers' dollars during student instruction time.”

Jane Gibler, author of the letter, said hundreds of residents have signed the letter objecting to the rally for a variety of reasons.

Board president Patti Buie and Superintendent Tony Stansberry defended the district, saying they felt that having a president speak at the high school posed a once-in-a-lifetime educational opportunity.

Residents want the board to apologize for the partisan nature of the event and for any offense it caused. The letter also asks “that in the nature of fairness,” the board invite the Democratic Party and John Kerry to use the high school for a similar event, and to consider a policy against holding any other political campaign events during the school day in the future.

The board will hear from residents at 7 p.m. today, but no decision will be made on the issue at that meeting, Buie said.

END OF ARTICLE.

I wasn't aware that this was basically a mandatory event for the students, and that only parental permission would be accepted as reason for not attending.  I can vouch for the estimated faculty & student attendance (being a former student there), since the school does have around 2,000 students (9th through 12th grades).

I would agree that seeing the President in person (whoever he is) is not a common everyday occurrence, so to a degree, I'm not surprised only 9 students bypassed the opportunity.  I wonder how many students would've bypassed it if they would've known beforehand it was going to be just a partisan political campaign rally.  In that case, students shouldn't be FORCED to listen to him, especially those who object to his policies or what he stands for.  I can't say whether the school informed the students ahead of time what the purpose of the President's visit was, but it looks to me like the school may not have given full disclosure of his visit.  Again, it would be different if the President was there to discuss relevant issues, such as education, instead of asking for votes.  A school is not the place to do that.

One poster made a good followup point:  Shrub really wasn't there as "President"; he was there as a "Presidential candidate".

I didn't know the full scope of the protest until I read this article.  I'm a lot more outraged now than I was before.



-- Modified on 9/14/2004 5:53:25 PM

Even I would agree on being intrigued about seeing an "opposing view" President, even at school.  My beef is that Shrub's visit wasn't "Presidential" in nature.  If it were, I wouldn't object, as long as it served a Presidential purpose, and not a self-serving Presidential campaign purpose.

By ticket only.


Hmmmm. Was this also a fund raiser?

The outrage is well deserved.

I think you just needed to request a ticket from his website.  Kerry was in KC not long ago where he held a rally at Union Station.  It didn't cost anything to attend.  Our local news media indicated that if you were interested in attending, you needed to go to his website to request a ticket for admission.