Sunday Opinion: School turmoil, filming cops and saving Thurman
Morning folks. Here’s the final pre-fundraiser edition of Sunday Opinion. Don’t forget that tomorrow is the big day. Call early and call often. Now to the good stuff.
The Plattsburgh Press-Republican opines about the sudden departure of Peru’s new school superintendent, who was hired, worked a few weeks, went on leave, then resigned. He was paid an undisclosed severance as he went out the door.
So apprehension of district taxpayers is not without merit and concern. They’ve been fleeced before. Just who are the elected School Board members representing?
Meanwhile, the Albany Times-Union is chiding Governor Andrew Cuomo for not listening to school leaders around the state who say that deep cuts in education aid are affecting classroom quality.
How about a reality, too, where the governor’s office works more collaboratively with school officials, rather than so glibly dismissing the concerns that they so plainly spell out?
How about collectively assessing the longer-term effects of laying off some 7,000 teachers in New York, almost 4 percent of the statewide total? Is that too severe a cut, as the superintendents so strongly suggest?
The Watertown Daily Times weighs in on lawsuits around the country where police departments and other public officials are trying to limit the ability of citizens to photograph or videotape police officers who are doing their duty.
This is about videotaping police in a public place. The taping doesn’t create a risk to the officer or interfere with police. Police who have no reluctance to record others should have no objections to being videotaped, if they are acting within the law.
The Glens Falls Post Star’s Ken Tingley uses his column to profile Evelyn Wood, the town supervisor in Thurman in Warren County, a community that has one of the toughest budget years in the North Country.
She’s had the job nearly one year and it looks like it’s hers for another two years since no one has bothered to challenge her in the upcoming election.
That’s either because Wood is doing one heck of a job, or maybe more realistically, no one in their right mind would want the Thurman job.
That’s not a knock on Thurman; it’s just that the rural Warren County burg has had the year from hell.
So there you go. A quick survey of what people are thinking and talking about on this weekend’s editorial pages. If you find something else of interest to the North Country, place it in the comments below.
Tags: opinion
All of these editorials make some good points but the big story in the Post Star today was the one on “Earth nears seven billion mark” in number of humans.
This is insane.
How can we ever dream of controlling pollution or provide jobs and education when the population keeps growing like this. We are creating a situation where people are a dime a dozen and valued as such.
As usual, the population growth is most explosive in countries, especially Africa, where one Uganda man? said, “My father had 25 children (but) I have only 14 so far.”
And we are supposed to help them stave off starvation?
This is insane!
You would think with that many children being born in Africa, half a dozen could get together, even if they have to share the one shovel the village owns, and dig themselves a well.
we’re ALL fleas on the same dog. The earth will soon crumble under the pressure we have placed on the resources, and then and only then can those that are left begin to rebuild -hopefully a better -new world.
Maybe you guys have missed it but the big news from Africa is that hedge funds and other investor groups are buying farmland in Africa to grow vegetables and flowers for the European market while Africans starve only a few hundred miles away. Does anyone remember the Irish Potato Famine, when the British exported corn from Ireland while the Irish peasants starved?
Commodities are the long play right now.
Corn farmers today are in the energy business not the food business, over 1/2 of the corn produced in the US now goes for non-food production. We have land in the Midwest selling for 7000-9000 an acre, this is FARM land not development land.
Now this is bad in many ways, but it is also good for a country who’s largest single industry or sector is agriculture.