Don’t shortchange students in district plan
Whether or not the school district reorganization plan will be successful remains to be seen. I did however read one glaring red flag in the Review-Journal’s reporting of it on Sunday (“Support builds for overhaul of CCSD”). The story noted that, “If principals cannot fill classroom vacancies with fully licensed teachers, they can pocket the difference it cost to hire a cheaper substitute and use the extra on salary incentives and more.”
Seems as if a disincentive has been written into the plan to fully staff a school with licensed teachers. If the principal likes the idea of using this extra money for a pet project that he or she could not ordinarily fund, what incentive does the principal have to fill a vacancy with a higher paid, licensed teacher?
I hope no one makes the assumption that this would never happen because the kids come first. If you believe that is the attitude of all administrators, then I’d like to talk to you about a bridge in Brooklyn.
Robert Bencivenga
Henderson
Voter fraud fraud
Please forgive me for being a little bit snarky, but I personally wanted to thank recent letter writer Wayne Colla (“Voter fraud”) for his investigative reporting. He has “personally witnessed” that “thousands upon thousands of non-citizens are being registered to vote throughout this country, including Nevada.”
Since he is a witness, I hope that he has reported this to election officials, county officials and state officials including the Nevada attorney general. Of course, when those officials actually investigate these claims it turns out that in-person voter fraud is practically non-existent.
Yes, there are always allegations. But there never seems to be any real proof. In both state and federal courts, in case after case, the presiding justices have firmly expressed their opinions that voter fraud is not an issue that requires this type of legislation. Before a Pennsylvania court, the state actually admitted that there had been no evidence of voter fraud there.
Perhaps Nevada is different, but I have not heard of any such evidence in a Nevada court.
Bob Litt
Las Vegas
Prosperity and Democrats
Letter writer Aric Miller (“The end of the Republican Party?” Monday Review-Journal), seems to have missed the point. Rather than blaming the current inept Republican Party leaders, why not look back at their failed policies of the past 30-something years of concentrating on hating gay people and hating abortion. These long term, dead-end policies of intolerance, which most voters really don’t care that much about, have led them to their current sad situation.
The result of these policies of hate and distraction is Donald Trump. An impossible candidate.
Some people may not like Hillary Clinton, but if you look back over 80 or so years, what matters most to voters are jobs and the economy. And it is an indisputable fact that Democratic administrations have virtually always outperformed Republican administrations in this regard. Almost every time, periods of great prosperity were caused by Democratic policies, while periods of recession and economic downturns have almost always been caused by Republican policies.
A quick unbiased Internet search of “democratic versus republican administration prosperity” will answer this right away. The top four economic performing administrations were JFK, LBJ, Bill Clinton and FDR. The bottom five performing administrations were Geroge H.W. Bush, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George W. Bush and Herbert Hoover. Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan were both toward the middle. Case closed.
James Fuhrman
Las Vegas
