No better time for change at FWCS
Four of the seven FWCS board seats are up for election this year. More than half of the board could be gone.
This is a chance for everyone who has problems with FWCS to make a difference.
If you are not registered to vote, and do not register to vote, then you should not complain anymore. Most elections for school board members and judges come down to name recognition.
I hope people do their homework this year!
As far as I am concerned, a school board that should have the public in mind, and allows the superintendent’s yearly evaluation to be confidential, is not interested in parents’ and students’ concerns.
My wife and I came up with a solution to FWCS: home schooling.
GREGORY J. CUMMINGS Fort Wayne
Public sector reps need new negotiators
Recently there has been media attention on the imbalance of salary and benefits between public-service jobs and comparable private-sector jobs.
We heard about the average salaries of San Francisco city employees being $93,000 a year.
We read about federal employees’ salaries being almost twice that of private employees.
We read about many seriously underfunded pensions of various state and city employees. Such fund-busting benefits as allowing people in their 50s to collect pensions is one cause of the underfunding.
Many people want to blame unions for these excesses, but the real culprits are those people who negotiate with the unions.
There will be tough negotiations coming up in the future where concession will have to be on the table.
It’s time to take contract negotiations out of the hands of government executives and in the case of teachers, out of the hands of school boards.
These groups have been way too cozy with unions to expect them to handle tough negotiations. It’s time for state legislators to establish new teams to do this job. New teams must be established with the skills and backbone to bring public-service costs back into financial balance.
JAMES GEHRKE Fort Wayne
Free speech in action in mosque debate
In response to Julia K. Gouveia’s letter regarding President Obama’s stance on the legality of the proposed mosque near ground zero: I say that no one I know or have read about is questioning the legality of the situation.
What is in question is the intelligence of building a mosque so close to a site where nearly 3,000 people were killed by people claiming to represent the ideals of Islam.
Just because something is legal does not mean it should be done without question. There is certainly nothing wrong with asking the president where he stands on the issue from a personal point of view.
Though everyone has the freedom of religion, it is not a crime to say that one feels that something should not be built in certain places because we all have freedom of speech.
SCOTT BURSON Fort Wayne
