What's on your mind? Call Sound Off, our weekly column of community comments, at 352-337-0368.
— The School Board is replacing two full school days with seven minutes at a time each day through the end of the year. In high school that is one minute per class. That is not adding any instruction whatsoever. There were other choices — a holiday this month, two teacher workdays and spring break. Instead, they short changed our children by two full instructional days.
— Canceling school on Wednesday [Jan. 3] was probably a good idea, but Thursday was just cold. For some kids, that might have been their only chance for a warm place to be and a hot meal, especially the kids who are on the backpack program.
— The mission of our public schools is to educate students, not to babysit. Mothers use teenagers as babysitters. If the elementary schools are closed, so are the high schools — always. Check out your neighborhood, church or co-workers who have teenage children and you will find wonderful caretakers for your small children. It works.
— Stop separating people by age, profession, ethnicity and income. Being around people of different ages, talents and ideas is energizing. Putting older people together in housing isolates them from the greater society. We are all people.
— I was wondering how the board of county commissioners and the county manager allow county employees and citizens to put up with sewer fumes for an entire year in the Wilson Building downtown. It’s ridiculous, and they need more work to get down done there. That’s not a way to treat people.
— Please do something to remove the panhandlers that are begging on just about every street corner. It’s not safe, it’s unsightly, and I don't like pulling up to a stop next to them as they all come running up to your car starting at you — basically demanding money — holding out their hands. This is a college town, and we have young women. We need to do something.
— Nathan Crabbe considers 2017 the worst year ever, never stopping to consider that those of us who detest Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama couldn't be happier. Perhaps Crabbe can get together with Leonard Pitts and Joe Scarborough to put on their “I’m With Hillary” T-shirts and have a good cry while the rest of us pop champagne and look back fondly on the greatest year ever.
— Amazing that not a single woman died in Gainesville in 2017 to be recognized in “leaders deaths in 2017” by the paper. All men.
— CNN and other organizations are reporting on several false and unproven statements from the tell-all book about President Trump and his administration. But there’s one thing Trump cannot deny: During his first 347 days in office, Trump made a total of 1,950 false and misleading statements. That’s an average of five per day ... By comparison, Obama made 38 false statements in eight years.
— If Trump is really stupid or demented or whatever else people are saying after this Wolff book, then why couldn't the Democrats beat him? There also seems to be a disconnect. If Trump did not want to be president, as Michael Wolff suggests, then why would the left keep talking about collusion with Russia to beat Hillary?