Comprehensive Energy

To The Editor:

The increase in gasoline prices reflects the instability in the Middle East and attendant speculation in the oil markets. We need to address the huge runup in oil prices with comprehensive policies designed to provide solutions to our energy consumption problems. Unfortunately, past administrations have failed us.

The Obama administration should continue to promote democracy in North Africa and the Middle East, and hopefully democratic reforms in these countries will provide some stability in the region and thereby help decrease speculation in the oil markets.

The U.S. has to increase domestic oil production, including oil derived from our Western U.S. oil shale and Alaskan oil deposits; build new refineries; build nuclear power plants meeting stringent U.S. specifications, including strict siting requirements; increase power production from natural gas and alternative energy sources, e.g. biomass, wind and solar; promote public transportation; and conserve energy in our homes, businesses, vehicles and in our travels. Another way to conserve gasoline consumption is to decrease the speed limits to 55 mph or 60 mph on our expressways, and we have to enforce these limits. Unfortunately many states have increased speed limits to between 70 and 85 mph. Some studies have shown going from 75 to 55 mph will reduce gasoline consumption by 33 percent.

U.S. nuclear plants should be designed to withstand a 9.0 earthquake, tornadoes, category 5 hurricanes and floods, and have battery and diesel generator back-up to provide power to coolant water for at least one month. Existing plants can only withstand a 7.5 earthquake and have four hours battery backup; and spent fuel rods are currently stored on site. A reprocessing system must be established to neutralize or reuse these fuel rods.

We need the Obama administration to provide some leadership and implement a comprehensive energy strategy.

Donald A. Moskowitz
Londonderry, New Hampshire

Evil Gets As Evil Does

To The Editor:

When I write my columns at the end of every one I state “May God Bless Our Leaders and May God Bless Our American and Coalition Forces.

I state this again, but more poignantly than ever before. May God Bless Our Leaders, for our leaders acted decisively and May God Bless Our American Armed Forces for accomplishing their mission with strength and resolve which resulted in the demise of the murderous mastermind of September 11, 2001 Osama bin Laden. This evil terrorist, who planned and perpetuated the most brutal savage attack against our America killing close to 3,000 innocent U.S. citizens and destroying our beautiful Twin Towers 10 years ago, is finally no more. This just proves once again that good triumphs over evil, no matter how long it may take and that justice prevails. So now, we go on with our lives with a feeling of satisfaction at bin Laden’s death and as we did after September 11, 2001 when our beloved New York City was the target of his terrorist act. We continue to live in, to work and enjoy our lives in our city, our Queens and in our little Woodhaven. We go on. May God Bless Our Leaders, May God Bless Our Armed Forces and Coalition Forces and

May God Bless Our America.
Maria A. Thomson
President
GWDCBID

Do What You’re Told!

To The Editor:

Play the game. This was the phrase I was told when I began to see that the education program being forced upon our schools was hurting our students. This was the phrase I was told when I told my principal that our students, through this program, were being taught little content if any. This was the phrase I was told when I expressed my concerns to my colleagues that our students would be seriously lacking in reading and writing skills that would impact them for years after they’d graduate our elementary school. This was the phrase I was told after it looked like I would be my assistant principal’s next target if I didn’t stop pointing out this new program’s deficiencies.

The program I am referring to is the Balanced Literacy program also known as Teachers College Reading and Writing Project program. The highly scripted, whole-language based program has absolutely no research backing its efficacy and yet former Schools Chancellor Joel Klein mandated its use in most of the schools citywide when he first became chancellor. The DOE (Department of Education) signed a multi-million dollar contract with Columbia University’s Teachers College and the founder of the program, Lucy Catkins. Staff developers from the university soon fanned out all over the city to teach educators how to teach reading and writing through their workshop model. This involves very short mini-lessons and cooperative learning, which means students are left on their own much of the time. These staff developers cost the city $1,500 per day.

Reading anthologies (basal readers) were declared outdated and were thrown away in most schools. Students for the most part no longer have reading and writing workbooks of any kind, including phonics or grammar as it is considered “drill and kill”. Although some schools have adopted Foundations, a highly scripted, repetitive phonics program that once again, leaves kids behind. Little if any content is taught and students are left to read on their own in the “just right” books most of the time. The writing part of the program is even worse. Students’ mistakes are never corrected. Ever. The belief is that students learn writing skills naturally, at their own pace. How can these children compete in the world with poor reading and writing skills? Rest assured programs like this one are not being implemented in expensive private schools, where education “reformers” send their children. The parents there would never stand for it.

Many administrators, knowing the harmful effects of the program, went along with it in order to make their lives easier so they “played the game” as well. This troubled me most of all. Here were the people in charge of the school and yet in no way were they advocates for children. Many began to do what they were told to save their jobs. Educators who spoke out, me included, were quickly targeted.

Parents spoke out against the program at PTA (Parent Teacher Association) meetings but were quickly silenced by the principal who had all the right answers to parents’ questions. Still skeptical, parents continued to put their faith in the people they trusted to educate their children. The principal didn’t want the parents to know that Balanced Literacy could be hurting their children’s future. It pained me to look into parents’ eyes knowing this reading and writing program would leave their child with serious deficiencies in those important subjects.

I’m convinced the program was used in order to disgust and push out veteran teachers from the system and to disgust parents so much that they would want to remove their child from the school and seek out “choice” otherwise known as a charter school. Now our schools are increasingly being headed by inexperienced and very young administrators who are themselves proponents of this discredited program because either they don’t know better, don’t care and just want to get ahead or are simply “playing the game”.

What the city has done is a disgrace to our students. Many students are leaving elementary school completely unprepared for middle school and beyond. This was not the career I signed up for many years ago when I became a teacher and a teacher’s expertise and experience was respected and even coveted. Teachers and administrators should be advocates for children’s education. The way the DOE has set up the system, being an advocate is no longer possible. If this is the game we have to play, I no longer want to play it.

Jamie Christos
Douglaston

Class Size Matters

To The Editor:

The mayor tried to pass the buck to the state and the federal government, blaming them for the elimination of over 6,000 teaching positions. What happened to mayoral accountability?

And yet he added that if the state provided extra funding or mandate relief, he would not necessarily restore these positions, but he might spend it on the police or fire department instead.

He said he was very sympathetic to Governor [Andrew] Cuomo, but he mentioned no sympathy for NYC children, who will have to bear the brunt of these cuts in the form of the largest increases in class size in at least 30 years. While he commented that he would not put the city’s fiscal future at risk, he seems all too willing to put our kids’ futures at risk instead. This is not a budget which puts children first.

Already in the last three years alone, students in grades K-3 have experienced class size increases of 10 percent; leading to the largest class sizes in over a decade. More than a third of all kindergarten students are now squeezed into classes of 25 or more. Why should they have to suffer any more?

[The mayor] offered not a single proposal to control the huge waste in DOE contracts and consultants, which has led to numerous instances of lax oversight and corruption, including more than $3 million in stolen funds on one DOE tech contract alone, and another contract that has gone millions over budget, with allegations that a DOE supervisor was improperly involved with the consultant.

Nor does [he] have any plans to cut the growing head count of the central and mid level DOE bureaucracies, but instead targets all reductions to teachers.

The city’s overall spending on contracts has doubled to more than $10 billion in the last five years with a huge part of the increase for technology.

In the next year alone, the DOE plans to spend more than half a billion dollars on technology in its capital plan, with $350 million to buy computers to implement more online learning and testing.

Their ultimate goal seems to be depriving our students any contact with a real live teacher, but to put them all on machines instead.

The mayor claims he has no choice, but this is yet another excuse for his lack of leadership. He has many choices which he refuses to acknowledge:

Make the cuts elsewhere in the DOE budget, including to central, contracts, consultants and computers; draw more from the $2 billion still remaining in the city’s healthcare reserve; and support the retention of the millionaire’s tax, either on the state or city level.

The city’s richest one percent are still expanding their wealth rapidly but instead of asking them to contribute their fair share, the mayor chooses to make our kids pay the price.

Though a millionaire’s tax on city residents would also need Albany’s assent, it would be a far better campaign than continuing his obsession with eliminating teacher seniority protections, which has little chance of being approved.

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director, Class Size Matters
New York

Budget Story Reaction

To The Editor:

Your recent story about local councilmembers reacting to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposed budget is very interesting. While all of them profess their desire to help the middle class by making cuts, none of them talks about cutting spending.

It would seem to me that if we didn’t pay our municipal workers such munificent health benefits mostly paid for by the taxpayers, and giving such wonderful pensions, also paid for by the taxpayers, we would have a great deal of money to support our fire houses and our library system and other areas that the mayor is proposing cuts.

When legislators talk about “wasteful spending” they might consider pensions, salaries and benefits to the municipal employees who are able to retire at an early age as one area to save money and really help their constituents.

Kenneth Lloyd Brown
Forest Hills