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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

President's School Speech Gets High Marks

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Wednesday, September 9, 2009   

CHICAGO - President Obama's speech to students Tuesday focused on responsibility. He told them they could write their own destiny, just like Chicago student Shantell Steve, who will be graduating from Julian High with honors despite the fact that she had lived in foster homes.

Illinois Education Association president Ken Swanson says many teachers gave the speech high marks. He says he received no complaints from anyone who objected to the speech, and he can't figure out why some were concerned, when other Presidents have addressed the nation's students.

"It's a very good thing that the President chose to speak. I thought it was very good when Ronald Reagan chose to do so and when President Bush chose to do so."

Swanson says critics might not realize that the President sent stimulus money to the nation's schools to prove that he's committed to improving education.

"Absent that money, many people across the country would have been sending their children to schools with class sizes much larger, program cuts, and nowhere near the quality of education that they're getting today."

Swanson says those parents who had kept their kids home might not have realized that the President and Congress had sent a significant amount of money to schools across the nation.

"Billions were sent to states specifically to avoid program cuts and to preserve school staffing."

Swanson says that he thinks the President was simply trying to motivate students, nothing more.

"It saddens me that we've reached this kind of partisanship as a society and as a country. And I would be saying the same thing today if there were a hue and cry from the far left about President Reagan or President Bush addressing America's school children."

Some parents who kept their kids home said that they were afraid the President would be indoctrinating their children with his speech. Swanson says the only complaints he received were from teachers who were forbidden from airing the speech in their classroom.



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