AUBURN – The national anthem isn’t a particularly easy song to sing, but Auburn school students have made a serious effort to get it right.

That’s won them praise from a national campaign.

Auburn has been named one of 129 All-Star Cities for including “The Star-Spangled Banner” in schools and civic events. As many as 300 students from all of the city’s schools will be on hand at 10 a.m. today to celebrate and see Mayor John Jenkins accept the honor.

“And of course, they’ll sing the national anthem,” said Fairview School music teacher Brian Gagnon.

Gagnon and other music teachers in Auburn promoted the song last fall as part of the National Anthem Project, an effort begun in 2005 to encourage schools to teach the anthem and encourage communities to sing it more often.

Gagnon led a group of Auburn chorus of students to Portland in September for Maine’s National Anthem Day.

Since then, Auburn students have popped up throughout the community to sing. They’ve attended three City Council meetings and three School Committee meetings and have performed before Maineiacs games at the Colisee and at Portland Seadogs games.

Gagnon said it made sense to apply for All-Star City status since the schools and the students have done so much work.

“We’ve talked about all aspects of it,” he said, including the history of the song and the proper way to sing it.

“It’s one song that ranges from very, very low to very, very high,” he said. “It’s easier for some to sing the one part and not the other. But it can be done correctly, and that’s what we’ve taught the students. Anybody can do it, if they use the proper technique.”

And even if they can’t, he urges people to sing it, anyway – as long as they do it respectfully.

“The Star-Spangled Banner”

By Francis Scott Key

(first of four verses)

“O say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,

Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,

O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?

And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;

O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?”