LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

WORSE IN EDUCATION

Editor:

While watching the Channel 8 news recently, they reported on a recent survey that put Nevada 45th in states that were business friendly.

One of the criteria for this poor rating was that we have the “worse” public school system in America.

Is it any wonder when our “RINO” Republican governor is going to pour all of this money into a “union-driven disaster” with little or no consequences for failure. Nobody gets fired if they fail.

Once again, the only guarantee we have is that the union employees will retire in their 50s with fat pay and benefits. At what time do the parents of these poorly educated kids stand up and fix this lousy public school system? They are the only ones who really care.

It’s all about the money to the people that run it.

Norv Azevedo

Fallon

CHIEFS FOR CHANGE

Editor:

I see by a recent LVN article that Dale Erquiaga is all excited about being admitted to the organization Chiefs for Change.

The group had fallen from a high of nine state school superintendents in 2012 to only four before admitting Nevada superintendent of public instruction Erquiaga and loosening its requirements to encompass chiefs of school districts as well.

Erquiaga mentioned how pleased he is that now he can discuss with school leaders in other states some of the 34 changes our Legislature approved regarding education.

He went on to cite a need to look for help with new ideas and programs that will work. This fixation on education reform, I believe has been carried to the point that now there are probably more people involved in attempting to reform education than in the actual business of educating children.

Pity the poor administrators, the poor teachers, the poor students who must accommodate all the new stuff. This stumbling from one failing program to the next for the past 50 or so years has gained us nothing but a long list of experiments that fizzled.

Might it not be time to return to the methods of the past that actually worked...to forget the new gadgetry, to reject the Common Core curriculum that seeks to indoctrinate rather than educate, to emphasize the basics that have prepared Americans in the past to be movers and shakers on the world scene.

No, Mr. Erquiaga, I don’t believe we need your new unproven programs and your newfound friends in Chiefs for Change. Put my money on the old-fashioned methods that have succeeded and you can keep the change.

Jim Falk

Churchill County

KNECHT SHOULD ACT, NOT COMPLAIN

Editor:

Nevada Controller Ron Knecht reached a level of tone deafness I didn’t think possible by an elected official with his June Nevada Appeal and LVN op-ed describing NDOT’s “Zero Fatalities” campaign as “typical nanny-state smug preachiness.”

I’m sure his column extolling the unrealistic literal goal of zero fatalities scored some points with fellow members of his anti-government, clown car Republican mind-set, who like him are increasingly rendering themselves irrelevant, demonstrating their current elected position is an accident of history and ensuring they are replaced when they are up for re-election.

If Mr. Knecht had any sensitivity before he wrote his piece, he would consider that the Zero Fatality campaign raises safety awareness that prevents tragedies such as the brutal death of Vincent Yowell last December. His death followed several other pedestrian fatalities at a dangerous north Reno intersection prompted a community effort led by Gov. Brian Sandoval and Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve to erect a traffic light at the unsafe location.

Perhaps our state controller should follow Gov. Sandoval and Mayor Schieve’s example in finding a solution to a public safety problem instead of beating his chest with his own smug preachiness.

William Puchert

Carson City