Letters to the Editors

With its problems, district should not have kept Hinesley

What is wrong with this picture:

A school system that doesn't furnish each child with the books and materials necessary to learning and their daily lessons;

A school system wherein classroom teachers furnish a portion of those materials from their own meager salaries;

A school system in which the layers of bureaucratic fat in central administration defy logic and common sense;

A school system in which central administration requires teachers to submit mind-numbing quantities of paperwork that inhibit their basic job duties (teaching the students);

A school system that cannot pay a decent, livable salary to the teachers fulfilling the basic function of any school: educating the next generation of citizens;

A school system that guts/eliminates programs in order to keep the bureaucratic fat that contributes nothing to teaching;

A school board that rewards its chosen superintendent for this performance with salary and benefits unattainable by anyone else in the school system.

The Pinellas County School Board! That is what is wrong with this picture!

The School Board members rationalize their out-of-touch, over-the-top, wrongheaded decision by declaring that they "don't want to inflict the trauma of a national search for a superintendent," or they "didn't think their decision would have any long-term repercussions." (The key words in these euphemisms: "didn't think").

The School Board's utterances are nothing more than a politically correct smoke screen for the truth: We don't have the guts to do what is right, which is to find someone who can do the job without demanding an outrageous ransom for lousy performance.

I hope the voters of Pinellas County remember this charade!
-- Michael L. MacDonald, Clearwater

Dog park in Tarpon Springs should not get public money

Re: Tarpon puts dog park plans on hold, story, Dec. 3.

My initial reaction is "Bravo!" for Tarpon Springs leaders. They are recovering their senses. I wish them a full recovery and hope they will cancel the entire ridiculous notion of developing a dog park, even partially at public expense.

Perhaps recent events have improved the perception of our leaders at all governmental levels, these events being the hideous attack and resultant deaths of Sept. 11, and the subsequent recognition of other disastrous events occurring before and since that date. For example: recession in the United States, slaughter or starvation or both in Afghanistan, Israel, Palestine, Sudan, Niger, Indonesia, Philippines and Somalia.

A dog park, indeed! I do not expect all of us to have the same priorities or even to have reasonable priorities at all; however, it is imperative that government is reasonable and wise in the expenditure of the people's treasure.

Nancy Dively and others who want a dog park should buy land and develop such a park totally at their own expense. To spend any public money on a dog park is indeed absurd.
-- Charles L. Sodaro, Tarpon Springs

Trout Fishing in America plays fun, good-time music

Saturday evening it was my great pleasure to be present at a city concert at Coachman Park prior to the Island Estates Boat Parade. The featured group was Trout Fishing in America.

The name is as unusual as the music they play. Delightful ditties, clever lyrics. No raucous, loud guitar that hides lack of musical ability. No screamed lyrics that cannot be understood. Just fun-filled, good-time music. The group is an anomaly among current no-talent, so-called musicians.
-- Abe Bodenstein, Dunedin

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