Letters to the editor, Sept. 28, 2009
Wrong targets for school cuts
Suffer the little children. That’s exactly what will happen, courtesy of the BUSD’s decisions at its last meeting. I applaud the decisions not to lay off the elementary band director, raise kindergarten and first grade class sizes, or cut bus funding for extra-curricular activities. Otherwise, it was business as usual in the BUSD. Cuts are being made in the wrong direction, although reducing district office budgets is a good start.
However, laying off teachers is not the answer, especially at BJHS, which is in its 12th year of Program Improvement status. Imagine the following scenario: Eliminate positions at the district office that provide duplicate services. Reduce hours of district staff across the board. Cut expenses by having students provide their own supplies, such as paper, pencils and notebooks. Reduce paper and ink consumption by having students write out assignments instead of filling out dittos. It is my belief that students learn better by writing out answers to questions in complete sentences as opposed to filling in blanks as this does not develop their thinking processes.
I hope and pray that the board will remember to put the needs of the students first when making any future decisions. In closing, I commend Barbara Rose for having the courage to suggest district office cuts as quoted in Tuesday’s Desert Dispatch.
Antoinette Holmeyer, Barstow
Funny liberals
I’ll bet that readers thought, as I did, that Barstow’s liberal sage, Carol Jensen didn’t have a since of humor. But then as I’m reading her latest snippet (“What we say can hurt us,” Sept. 21), her one-liner had me laughing so hard I almost peed my pants.
When she joked that Jerry Springer was the cause of all the rude name calling like “racist white bigot” the liberal left like “Jimmy Carter and Nancy Pelosi” have been calling any Caucasian voter that verbally disagrees with the president’s policies, I thought, “she should be on Saturday Night Live or the Comedy Club”!
Wait a second, she was joking, wasn’t she?
Steven Beavers, Barstow
