How will they staff the new schools?

In response to your June 29 article on the school district breakup:

A $150,000 consulting fee paid to Michael Strembitsky, a Canadian educator, is absolutely outrageous to say the least. Las Vegas schools are not Edmonton schools and are more diverse in their student population. The problems are more serious than Mr. Strembitsky could imagine.

If the current superintendent and the other administrators in charge cannot handle the situations here, they all need to be fired.

Another level of administrators that Ms. Strembitsky proposed is absolutely ludicrous. The district cannot retain its existing staff of teachers — every year there are hundreds of vacancies. Now, with the proposed construction of up to seven to 10 new schools in the next few years, where are you going to get qualified teachers to staff these schools?

Walter Coldstein

Henderson

Lone Star hero

Dallas Police Chief David Brown deserves a Medal of Valor for his decision to use a bomb to bring an end to the recent shooting, ensuring that more people weren’t killed or injured.

I’m sure he was well aware of the “Monday morning quarterbacking” he would receive, but knowing how quickly the situation could have gotten even more out of hand, he chose to bring it to a quick and just conclusion.

I hope only that the cowards making anonymous threats to him and his family are found and prosecuted and that the threats cannot be carried out.

Bill L. Wilson

Henderson

Absent teachers

In response to the Sunday article about high teacher absenteeism in the Clark County School District:

I teach and one of my former colleagues recently resigned from the district to return to Montana, where she’ll work as a school psychologist in a children’s psychiatric hospital. She went on to say that, these days, a psychiatric hospital is less “crazy” (her word, not mine) than public school and that the demand put on teachers in recent years is simply exhausting.

I find her comments both insightful and tragic. Perhaps after reading them, the article about absenteeism makes more sense.

Nonetheless, I hope readers absorb them so they know what it is like to teach. They already know about the low pay, long hours, overcrowded classrooms, issues with materials and the lack of respect and support — not only from parents, but from some in the community at large and even from within the school community itself. It is also my sincerest hope that those reading this holding leadership positions in the district might contemplate the information mentioned above and reflect on how they can and will use their power and position to support, assist and empower teachers, not to overwhelm and inundate them — or, even worse, run them off.

Any school district requires far more teachers than administrators to be effective. It is no question that both teacher shortage and retention is and has been a problem for years and, to that regard, the system is broken. The bigger questions should be: How can we fix it and who has the guts to try?

Jill Wilson Panozzo

Las Vegas