Don't limit school board choices

LETTERS TO THE EDITORS

Don't limit school board choices

As a retired teacher, I was alarmed by Tuesday's front page article (Dec. 13) re: HCEA president Hughes' desire to require that members of state and local school boards have "experience" in the "education field" (read: "have been part of the powerful teachers' union"). The danger here is in handing the checkbook and decision-making skills to folks who may be more concerned about educators' job security and pensions than about the quality of education our current students are receiving and the taxpayers who must pay for it.

Why don't we invite the fox into the henhouse in every area of representative government? Oh, wait - in the case of too many of our representatives, we've already done that (e.g. the insider trading scandal in Congress)!

I appreciated comments by state representatives and local school board members who see the value in having boards made up of people with a variety of gifts and experience.

What if members of our federal government were mostly lawyers and politicians, with only a scattering of others who have ever actually earned a living in a real-world job? Oh, wait - the current mess in Washington (and in America) illustrates that we've done that, too!

ANN RITTERBUSH

Ringgold, Ga.

Post Office should not be abandoned

I am so old I attended the world premier of "Gone With the Wind" in Atlanta, Dec. 13, 1939. I'd like to comment on the U.S. Postal Service which I've respected all my life.

Congress should be ashamed of its 2006 action to rob the Postal Service of so much of its revenue. Now Congress is causing Americans to face limited service and some to face no service and closed post offices.

Our Founding Fathers never imagined such a national outrage when they established the Postal Service to operate on its own revenue without tax dollars to sustain it.

Maybe Congress could take some of the millions of dollars still being given to big oil, farming and other such things and use it to maintain full postal services. Then we could continue deliveries as always and not close post offices anywhere.

Think about rural areas which can't receive or pay bills by mail or receive medications.

I doubt for-profit delivery companies will frank congressional correspondence - or take mail to rural and small-town addresses without post offices. Hopefully, the recent decision to delay pending postal service action until spring will give Congress time to ponder its action to steal from postal revenues.

TERRIE EDWARDS FREDERICK

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