Good questions arise from school closing
In her Sunday story on the closing of Falling Water Elementary School, TFP reporter Kendi Anderson is to be commended for correctly identifying what is perhaps, after the home environment, the most vital element in a child's successful educational experience: "the relationships that exist within the schoolhouse."
Those relationships include, but are not limited to, children and their families being known by all the teachers in a school; teachers and administrators knowing and trusting each other across many years, and families and other community members knowing and trusting all those involved in the operation of the school.
Implicit in all of this is the requirement that the size of a school be relatively small.
And yet this school joins a list of now-closed neighborhood schools in favor of mega-schools with enrollments of 1,000-plus students, all in the name of cost efficiency.
Two questions.
Where is the evidence that the construction of these mega-schools is producing good results? And if the concern is dollar-saving, why not cut out some of the bloated administrative structure?
Would those teachers in the trenches even notice their absence?
Gary Lindley, Lookout Mountain, Ga.
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Vote Freeman-Rice ticket in November
So this year for president, I'm voting for Morgan Freeman.
Reagan may have been "The Great Communicator," having co-starred with a chimpanzee and serving as spokesman for 20 Mule Team Borax, but Freeman can explain string theory, the possibility of 17 dimensions and time/space warps to the common man, and provide a wormhole for every American!
Freeman already has served as president at least twice, and, best of all, also has been God (in movies, but virtual reality is better than no reality, which seems to be the plank of both the Republican and Democratic platforms and candidates)!
Freeman is a former fighter pilot - an Air Force vet - and is a native Tennessean, born in Memphis. And Condoleezza Rice would be a good choice for a running mate and vice president (from Alabama, a former Democrat and a Led Zeppelin fan. What's not to like?).
In 1988, faced with the disheartening choice between George H.W. Bush, and Michael Dukakis, I wrote in Chuck Yeager (causing turmoil at the Red Bank North voting site).
If neither the Democrats nor Republicans steal my idea, I will again vote for a write-in candidate: Morgan Freeman!
Ron Williams, Red Bank