LETTERS: Teachers should be on budget team

To the editor:

As I read the article, “Team to inspect school budget,” in the May 17 Review-Journal, I couldn’t help but chuckle at the idea of the Clark County School District adopting “sound business practices.” As a retired teacher, with 25 years in public high school mathematics, I cringe whenever I see committees such as the one Clark County School District Superintendent Pat Skorkowsky assembled.

Why? Because education, while a business in the sense that there is a budget and employees like other businesses, has a product that is much harder to quantify than if it were a manufacturer or retailer. Look at the committee makeup. To me, there is a glaring omission: not one member of the committee is a currently active classroom educator. There are two retired superintendents, a former School Board member and lots of impressive titles on the committee, but when, if ever, were any of them last in a public school classroom?

The superintendent is quoted as saying, “We’re going to look at programs, practices and people.” How can the committee judge programs, practices and people without anyone in the room having current working knowledge of such? Shouldn’t there be a teacher and administration presence to answer some of the nuts-and-bolts questions that arise?

For example, former Station Casinos CFO Glenn Christenson said he doesn’t yet know where the waste is occurring within the district. “I’ll be able to make that decision once I get in there,” he said. How will he know? What if he looks at a special education program that has a full-time teacher, and possibly an aide, who are servicing a dozen students who need special services, and compares it with a high school English class with one teacher and 30 students? On paper, the teacher-to-student ratios would make a business leader question if the special education money is being wisely spent. But ask a teacher, and you may hear that a dozen students are too many for that program.

With no teacher on the committee, though, how will Mr. Christenson and his colleagues learn?

The expression “You can’t force a square peg into a round hole” is apt here. You can’t apply a pure business model to an educational model. There are too many variables present. I’m afraid the bottom line will be detrimental to our students and to those dedicated professionals who work hard to teach them.

LES GILBERT

LAS VEGAS

No ordinary weakling

To the editor:

In response to Janice Herr’s letter to the editor (“The right is wrong,” May 21 Review-Journal), I can’t help but believe that this is another Democrat with blinders on, blaming President George W. Bush for all our ills and praising President Barack Obama for everything from jobs to lowering our debt.

Wake up and smell the roses. The national debt is not going down; we are at $17.5 trillion and counting. On the day George W. Bush took office, Jan. 20, 2001, the national debt was $5.7 trillion; the day he left office in 2009, the national debt was $10.6 trillion. Mr. Bush added $4.9 trillion over eight years. President Barack Obama was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2009, at $10.6 trillion, and has proceeded to add nearly $7 trillion to the national debt. President Obama has set more negative records than any president before him.

Ms. Herr is missing the essential strength of President Obama. It is no ordinary weakling who can turn a once-respected country into an international joke, reduce Congress to a gaggle of sniveling sycophants, or turn our medical system into a failed third-rate socialist nightmare with the stroke of his pen. It is no ordinary weakling who can shatter our Constitution and disrespect the sons and daughters who have served and spilled their blood to protect it, and turn the people of our once united states into a herd of competing minorities who are afraid to raise their voices to protest the ruin of our country.

So don’t denigrate the nonentity ruler who has overcome his ludicrous incompetence to do what no other king or dictator has been able to do in our 238-year history: He has destroyed America.

JOE SCHAERER

LAS VEGAS