Another study, and it’s the same old song
To the editor:
After reading the comments from School Board President Carolyn Edwards, one wonders what has gone on in her brain over the past 20 years. But I digress.
The Clark County School Board hired a consultant — also known as an out-of-town guy with a briefcase, calculator, embossed business cards, classy stationery and, of course, the bill to pay for them — to try to wring out inefficiencies in our educational system. The ostensible goals would be to save the taxpayer money and get more resources into the actual classroom. These are laudable goals.
The consultant’s findings were interesting, but not earth-shattering revelations. However, the most interesting comments and findings made were in the final two paragraphs. Teachers in this district carry a 20 percent higher load than teachers in the three comparable districts cited in the study.
So let me get this straight. The School Board is willing to go to arbitration to cut teacher pay, yet agrees with the findings of a study that we should be doing just the opposite. This is disingenuous at best, hypocritical at worst.
The sad part of this whole sorry episode is that one didn’t need to hire a consultant with a big bill to reach these conclusions. You could have walked down the hall of any school, taken a peek and seen that the average teacher of a required subject was overworked. Of course, this would have meant having to face the people whose salary you want to cut. And the un-answered question remains: If we have a “crippling lack of tracking,” how are you going to track all those teachers who don’t have to give a standardized test?
I guess we will continue to balance the books on the backs of the math, science and English teachers.
So there we have it. Another study, another bill, more platitudes and proclamations, more catchy slogans and still the same old song.
Paul Ruth
Henderson
Terrible crimes
To the editor:
I cringe every time I see any news on the terrible crimes against little Alyssa Otremba.
In Saturday’s Review-Journal, a criminal justice professor was quoted as saying, “No matter what their opinions were, if you overreach and label a kid as a sex offender, that could be detrimental for life. … But this kid (the suspect) has shown he was on his way.”
Yes, indeed. Detrimental to the life of Alyssa Otremba.
God bless Alyssa Otremba’s family and friends.
Susie Russell-Melendez
Las Vegas
History lesson
To the editor:
While Steve Sebelius’ Sunday column, “Choose sides in war,” has some merit, its omissions are troubling to an American historian of more than 40 years.
Mr. Sebelius writes that, “In this country, Christians … do not commandeer airplanes full of innocents and deliberately fly them into occupied buildings to make a point.” True, but Mr. Sebelius selectively overlooks the thousands of lives lost in both North and South because of racial bigotry. Often death came at the hands of groups or persons who exalted Christ’s name — but killed!
Perhaps some citizens may readily recall the Christian juror in the 1964 Mississippi murder case (James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner) who said she would never vote to convict one of the accused murderers because he was a “preacher.” The young men who beat up and killed James Anderson in Mississippi in June of this year by running over him with a truck in Jackson, Miss., were not from Muslim homes.
Mr. Sebelius also writes that, “In America, we strive to make room for people of all faiths, or of no faith at all, to live together equally before the law.” Not totally true — now or in past days.
Who could forget the tortured history of the Mormons, with all its ugly violence? Surely, as an informed journalist, Mr. Sebelius must be familiar with the recent ugly attacks upon Muslims in Murfreesboro, Tenn., who have witnessed destruction of their property and have been victims of intimidation. They desire only to worship and live peacefully among their fellow citizens. Those people and their innocent little children did not engage in the evil of 9/11.
The last lines of Mr. Sebelius’ column come precariously (frightfully) close to doing what he accuses his enemies of doing — engaging in the wholesale indictment of a particular faith and all those associated with it. From my perspective as a longtime Christian reared mostly by a Baptist minister, that approach is dead wrong — in fact, un-Christian.
That minister also taught me something about patriotism, tolerance and the built-in strength of an Americanism that did not have to bend to an oppression that affronts the U.S. Constitution.
Jimmie L. Franklin
Las Vegas
Gun laws
To the editor:
Gerry Hageman thinks Nevada is one of the most violent places on planet Earth (Saturday letter). He needs to buy a gun.
Mr. Hageman doesn’t need to worry about the good people who “carry,” but the few bad people who do. He lives in a fantasy world of liberal illusion.
In that world, all threats and crime are abated by government control. Bad people with knives, guns, baseball bats, pipes, explosives, etc., are neutralized because someone in a government chair wrote some words on a piece of paper and called it a law. Then the law became all powerful and changed human nature because the Nanny Government said it would.
The only people who lie down on the floor when a threat presents itself are people who are helpless, sort of like bunny rabbits and kittens. Show me one man or woman with a concealed carry permit who would willingly wait for the predator to finish his spree without meeting that threat with an equal force.
KEITH WROBL
Las Vegas
