A lack of good people entering teaching field

To the editor:

The Sunday commentary, "Why aren't our teachers the best and brightest?" finally makes some sense of the crisis situation we are facing with our classroom teachers. With the lack of good people entering the profession and the vast majority with less than stellar credentials, the profession is in a "dumb down" mode to better serve that lower-level majority. This has many of the better-qualified teachers leaving the classroom.

I recently retired from the classroom after 35 years and my biggest peeve was I could no longer tolerate the way our school district treated me as a professional. They required all teachers to attend in-services given for the purpose of showing us how to do a job an experienced teacher already knew and was very good at doing, insulting qualified teachers and wasting our valuable time. They required yearly evaluations that were given across the board, treating experienced and inexperienced alike with no consideration of any degree of success in the profession. They supervise teachers by placing some inferior educators in the role of administration and admonish highly qualified classroom teachers on the whim of these individuals.

I could continue with this list, but it is too long to print. Most importantly, I was becoming less of a teacher due to the way I was treated as a professional.

If we as a society cannot stop this attitude of "those who can't do, teach," we as a nation will continue to lose our position as a world power simply because we are too dumb to hold such a prominent world position.

Jim Hayes

Las Vegas

Sports team

To the editor:

On Saturday, as I was exiting the early voting site, I was asked to sign a petition to put a new sports arena proposal before the Legislature. I asked what sports were concerned. The first to be mentioned was an NHL franchise. I asked the woman if she realized the commissioner of the NHL has stated there would be no new hockey franchises for at least eight to 10 years.

I then stated that this city already had an ECHL team that it basically ignores as a red-hair stepchild. In Sunday's Sports section, the Wranglers season opener was quite a game, from the description written. Too bad it was on Page 13C, bottom right corner. And any information on the NHL? Of the 12 games played on Saturday, there were three lines on Page 10C.

Needless to say, I refused to sign the petition. As much as I love hockey, I am also a realist when it comes to my money and how the government wants to spend it. Hockey will never make a go here. No major-league sport will. Las Vegans can't even support their minor-league teams with pride.

Pamela Tette

Las Vegas

Favors Small

To the editor:

I was very surprised with your endorsement of incumbent Carolyn Edwards for School Board in District F. She is certainly one of the longtime problems with the School Board, and it is time to get rid of her. She is among those responsible for getting a low-income clinic placed at the school in our neighborhood, which has contributed to the lowering of our already depressed property values.

Ken Small is a local businessman who actually has children who attend school in the district. Ms. Edwards has had her chance, and the schools keep getting worse. It's time to give Ken Small a big chance.

Marcia Romano

Las Vegas

Scare tactics

To the editor:

If one is to believe Steven G. Gilbert's Sunday commentary on coal, one must conclude that the people employed at the Reid Gardner coal-fired power plant must be either the walking dead or are descended from the only mutant form of life that can exist in such a toxic wasteland. I say that Mr. Gilbert relies on scare tactics to present an argument that is not supported by facts.

The coal-fired power plant of yesterday might resemble his description in some remote way, but not so today. The coal-fired plant of today's world utilizes a variety of advanced technology to clean the emissions that are the result of combustion of the coal to produce the energy to make the steam that makes the electrical energy that our country is so hungry for.

One of the by-products of the new scrubbers, for example, is gypsum, which can be used in the manufacturing of sheet rock. The fly ash that Mr. Gilbert is so woefully concerned about is sold to various industries for making everything from steel to fertilizer. Mr. Gilbert would have us believe the plant in Moapa should be fenced in and all electrical production should halt, leaving the southern part of Nevada vulnerable to peak market demands for wholesale power that would have to be purchased to offset the loss of the cheap power produced by Reid Gardner.

Why is it that the kooks from Washington seem to know what is best for the people of Nevada? Mr. Gilbert, support your facts with some real science and correct data.

Robert Gant

Las Vegas

Likes coal

To the editor:

One item on President Obama's agenda is to eliminate coal-fired power plants. This is yet another big mistake of this administration. Clean-burning coal is cheap, plentiful and efficient. The ads against coal burning show furnace stacks emitting billows of smoke. In reality, all you can see coming from the modern, clean-burning furnaces are heat waves -- and no smoke.

The environmental extremists want to shut down the coal plants in the United States, but that would have a minuscule impact on the environment because China has many more coal-fired plants than we do and is building more all the time. Eliminating coal plants would raise our electricity bills drastically and further cripple our economy.

Richard Hopkins

Ely