LETTERS: Teachers need community support, advocacy

State of education

Frozen teacher pay? High dropout rates? Low test scores? Crowded classrooms? Major recruitment efforts to fill almost 1,000 positions? Regulation changes to allow retired teachers back in classrooms?

In this community with enormous resources, where is the outrage? Why are teachers alone protesting this travesty? It is in part the system, but it is also indifference. As a retired teacher from another state, I considered returning to teaching. My pension was earned and paid elsewhere. Why not return to my profession and passion? For the record, I was a good high school teacher, honored as teacher of the year for my school and school district. Why did I retire? In large part, it was the frustrations from fighting a broken system and apathy.

"Teaching" and "learning" are both active verbs requiring complex reinforcements, because even the best teachers do not operate in a vacuum. Every single mind lost is our collective loss. Teachers face staggering professional challenges: class sizes, varying skill levels, language barriers and parental shortcomings are part of a list too long to address here. Compound that with the fact that all teachers have the same personal issues and money concerns as everyone else.

While higher teacher salaries do not necessarily equate to better teachers, attracting and retaining good teachers does require that they are paid competitively and supported on multiple levels, so they are not fighting alone. These are not just "their" kids; these are "our" kids. Surely, we can do better. The education system in general and teachers' pay specifically are everyone's concerns.

William Butler Yeats said, "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." Good teachers light these fires. Community support and advocacy for these teachers can help provide the matches.

Margaret Breaux

Las Vegas

Railroads the solution

Regarding the article on the fire near Cajon Pass, if the picture on page A4 doesn't depict the consequences of a failed transportation system, nothing ever will ("Blaze burns cars, blocks traffic," July 18 Review-Journal). The virtually solid line of trucks overwhelming this roadway is proof that national development of an efficient method of transporting people and things went awry a century ago, and no one seems interested in correcting the problem.

We build highways for passenger cars and glut them with trucks until neither the passenger cars nor the trucks can effectively and efficiently utilize these roadways. While I have nothing but respect for truckers, they are forced to operate their vehicles in a mix of vehicles with conflicting purposes, mobility and size. Moreover, interstate roadways only require paved shoulders on the right side, which impedes first responders. The wildfire along Interstate 15 and the resulting traffic jam should never have become so extensive. Amazingly, no serious injuries were reported.

Our politicians have fantasized about a high-speed rail system to move people between Las Vegas and Los Angeles (only to Victorville, Calif., in one version), when we really need an efficient rail transportation system to move people and materials across the continent. If one wants to travel to/from Las Vegas by rail, one must drive 100 miles to a passenger railroad station in Kingman, Ariz. Does it seem practical that a metropolitan area of 2 million people doesn't have a rail passenger station?

Let's lay some railroad tracks, modernize freight handling and build paved shoulders on both sides of roadways that lack alternate escape routes. I seriously doubt that there was any freight on any of those trucks on I-15 that couldn't have been transported by rail just as quickly, at less cost and with less pollution. We should have tracks carrying freight from Los Angeles to New York, without having to go through Chicago or New Orleans to do so. And people on passenger trains can leave their shoes on and carry a bottle of water all the way, both ways, without being patted down or X-rayed.

Kenneth F. Hines

Las Vegas