• Front page
• Receive letters on your RSS reader

An item headlined “4 questions for state higher-education director David Skaggs” appeared in the May 12 Rocky Mountain News.
It states that “(Gov. Bill) Ritter and Skaggs will host a higher-education ‘summit meeting’ June 8-9 in Colorado Springs to discuss how to increase funding.”
Why will the summit focus only on increasing funding/spending? Why not have substantial time devoted to reducing costs and operating more efficiently?

Fred E. Hammer, Parker

READER COMMENTS

Ritter and Skaggs were both bought and paid for by the educational "system" controled by the NEA. Thats your answer right there. It`s not the agenda for the NEA to cut costs. It`s their agenda to get more dough and bennies for there union members.

This is all just another reason why people need to push for CHOICE IN EDUCATION!

VOUCHERS NOW!

Why are our children, their education, and the future of America so important that Ritter et all have the gall to think that people should be willing to spend more money on them, even if it means spending less on their own luxuries? Hasn't it been established that the only thing in America that you can't improve with more money is education? Wouldn't it be sufficient to just increase class size so that we would need fewer teachers? Haven't we done enough for the children by saddling them with paying for the war in Iraq and paying China back for all the money it has loaned us?

We've managed to escape our responsibility for the war in Iraq by restricting its impact to maybe a million families while the only way it affects the rest of us is in the newspapers and on TV. Can't we also manage to escape our responsibility to our children? After all, isn't this the ME generation? How in the name of hedonism can we do for ourselves if we have to shoulder our responsibility to those fighting in Iraq and our responsibilities to future generations? Please let us continue to spend our tax money on having a good time.

Truth,

OUCH!

No vouchers, my kids are out of school and I don't want my tax dollars used to send peoples kids to Jesus Camp. Vouchers take away money from public schools period. You want to send your kid to church school, then pay for it yourself!!!

Obvious,
The taxes spent on this farce system called "public schools" is my money, so if I want vouchers for choice & competition than that should be allowed. After all public education doesn't work very well as it is currently run, and their only solution is more money Give me a break, then they tell your kids to have sex and do drugs.

"After all public education doesn't work very well as it is currently run"

Probably the understatement of the new century.

Truth and Obvious, I have a question for you (maybe two).

Would you, blindly support, adding additional funds to public education, either through some sort of tax increase, or fees, without any accountability for how that money is spent?

And if so, what tools would you like to see implemented that would demonstrate the benefits of that increased funding?

My comment is, we have thrown money at the school system for decades, with deteriorating results. These are not opinion, but fact based on grade level achievement, drop out rate and so forth. I am all for paying for accountability, but no blank checks from me with out a comprehensive study of the system now, and an appropriate over-haul with demonstrable results.

Eliminate the requirement to teach in Spanish as well as English and POOF, more funds without any additional taxes.

Great Dan2. Just continue letting our children down till we have another one of those comprehensive studies. The administrative people who I think you blame won't suffer, they'll continue to draw their salaries. The children will be the ones who will suffer. Sorry you don't care any more about them than you apparently do.

You think maybe smaller classes would make things worse? Of course it would make things better for the children. What it would make things worse for would be your pocketbook. To me, that is the real focus of your interest.

But what so many people who, like you, have too little interest in our children fail to realize is that it's not just the children we are short-changing. It's also ourselves, and the future of our country. When you hold the administrators feet to the fire. you mainly burn the children.

You remind me of someone who says, the doctors are not doing a good job. I'll be darned if I pay them more money to do a better job until there is another one of those comprehensive studies. Sure, more people are likely to die, but at least we have the satisfaction of knowing we didn't let those doctors get away with anything.

So we need to give our troops in Iraq everything they need despite the gross amount of waste and graft that is going on, resulting in the theft of billions of dollars. Of course.

But you don't want to give the children everything they need until the waste by the administrators, not the children, stops. Sorry you hold our children in sure low regard.

In the thirties, in the middle of the Great Depression, children brought their books home to study, and to give the parents the tools they need to help the children study.

Now that we are well past the Great Depression, and are living high on the hog, we don't have enough money to allow the students to bring their books home. The reason of course is that it would cost too much because children sometimes lose or damage their books.

If those who would rather use their money for themselves rather than to educate our children better can figure out a way to finance letting the children bring their books home without having to pay the extra cost, I'd like to hear it.

Of course, we can continue to hold our children hostage until we are satisfied that there isn't waste, and when that happens we can start educating our children better.

What a perverted idea, penalize the children until the adults straighten up.

I've always wondered how many of the vocal anti-teacher, anti-Union, people got an "F" - or whatever equivalent failing grade - somewhere in their own school experience as children.

Most of them surely soud like children who are now fighting back, and taking it out on today's teachers, for the negligence and lack of effort that marked their own childhood experience, as well as the embarassment at the time.

POST A COMMENT

• 'Kid Nation' reality show a new low
• Rivers a shameful hire
• Too little news
• ‘Diesel’ fumes
• Unlocalized story a disservice to readers
• Riled up by Christian music
• Darling of the left
• Solutions too costly