School Board should match values to action
I’m confused.
As a Volusia County teacher of 21 years (all at the same high school), I have a fair amount of educational experience. When we teach students to write essays, we teach them to support their argument with facts. So when our School Board says its priorities are:
* Quality education for students;
* Safe and healthy schools;
* Teachers’ salaries and health care;
* Good-faith bargaining;
How is the School Board supporting its thesis?
First, outsourcing custodial jobs to private companies has resulted in schools becoming filthy. Our school was routinely given awards for being the cleanest in the county. Not anymore. In a year where we experienced a virtual flu epidemic, we don’t even have regularly cleaned bathrooms or soap, and garbage often stays on the floors for days.
Second, because of our School Board’s apparent lack of desire to keep its promise of adequate teacher compensation and benefits, including hiring a Tampa-based attorney who alternately insults and ignores his adversaries, it offers a proposal that eliminates dental insurance. Even with a multi-million-dollar rebate from the insurance companies this year, it will actually cut teachers’ salaries.
The county has millions in a “rainy day” account. Let me point out: It’s raining.
(READ: Volusia salary talks stall)
This lack of respect not only affects new and experienced teachers, who are leaving in record numbers, but also prospective teachers. I’ve heard from numerous education students that our county is the last in Central Florida that they would consider; this young talent refers to us as “Vo-loser County.” We have more than 100 classrooms without teachers.
We are not asking for anything unreasonable. We fully understand that Tallahassee has let our whole state down in funding education, but the reality is that the funds do exist to accomplish what should be our common goals.
Our School Board needs to revisit its thesis and do major revision. Right now, it is earning an F.
Jeff Brown, Holly Hill
— Brown oversees the Digital Audio Recording Academy and teaches dual-enrollment and honors English at Atlantic High School.
Look more deeply
The May 17 letter, “Macron’s fuss,” uses clunky rhetoric and faulty logic to support withdrawing from the Iran deal, advocating for 18th-century isolationism.
The first four sentences praise Trump’s use of “insane” to describe the Iran deal. This level of critical analysis from Trump and his followers shows that there is no deeper understanding beyond that it was President Barack Obama’s deal, and so the deal must go.
The writer quotes George Washington’s opposition to “permanent” alliances. Key portions of the Iran deal expire in 2026; by definition, it’s not permanent. Or the writer may be referencing alliances like the United Nations. If so, Washington expressed his concerns 149 years before the founding of the U.N. Washington had no way of foreseeing two catastrophic world wars leading to a global alliance to prevent these atrocities from reoccurring. It is not advisable to discount all alliances based on a rigid ideology born of fear.
Finally, the writer refers to the Iran deal and the Paris climate accords as “dangerous.” The Iran deal crippled Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon. That makes the world safer — the opposite of dangerous. The Paris climate accords were voluntary agreements to treat the environment better. No semi-competent thinker can find them “dangerous.”
The letter perfectly embodies what is wrong with so many Trump voters: knee-jerk reactions to certain concepts. The writer should set aside dogmatic ideology and research the things he is convinced that he hates. He may be pleasantly surprised to find them quite beneficial.
Karl Gennett, Daytona Beach