On Tuesday, Lebanon voters will decide whether our schools and our young children are worthy of a substantial investment.
The renovations proposed will bring Mount Lebanon School, Hanover Street School and Lebanon High School up to code and prepare them for the future education of the youth of our community. I strongly support this article.
A point of clarification: A previous letter to the editor stated that the School District didn’t hold true to its word regarding the selling of buildings after opening the middle school. In fact, the junior high, the SAU building, Sacred Heart Public School and School Street School were all sold, as the School Board committed to doing.
The current School Board has worked diligently to communicate about this project with community stakeholders, including teachers, administrators, parents and other citizens of Lebanon.
The current renovation project is an investment in the city of Lebanon. Our children deserve adequate facilities, and our hard-working teachers and staff deserve a workplace suitable for the challenging and important work that they do every day.
I will be voting in favor of Article 2 on Tuesday, and I encourage others to do the same.
MICHELLE HARKINS
West Lebanon
Recently, the Valley News has featured contrasting opinion pieces on charter schools.
In a Feb. 22 column, “Conservatives are playing the long game,” Steve Nelson traced school choice to Ronald Reagan: “In his spirit, a movement arose to create a nation of shining charter schools on the hill — a nation where equitable public education for all would drown in the bathtub. …” On Feb. 25, there appeared a Washington Post commentary by Conor P. Williams, “There’s a progressive case for supporting charter schools.” Nelson writes that he is roused to speak by a case now before the U.S. Supreme Court. At issue is whether the state of Montana may give tax deductions for donations to organizations that grant scholarships to students attending religious schools.
There is a lot to think of here. When a California legislator has just introduced a bill to penalize retailers if they have separate sections for boys and girls clothing and toys, then one must wonder if this arrangement based on private donations sufficiently buffers a religious school from state intrusion.
The reader might never suspect that Nelson is the former head of school of Manhattan’s Calhoun School, as he has noted in past columns. Yearly tuition at Calhoun is $52,600 for K-2 and $54,680 for 3-12. Membership in the Parents Association is $100 per family. In deriding the school choice movement, is Nelson weakening the branch on which Calhoun’s independence rests?
We can lack imagination. It is not inconceivable that a “Finally Woke” regime will yet close all private schools. The Supreme Court’s 1925 Pierce v. Society of Sisters decision striking down “progressive” Oregon’s 1922 law compelling public school attendance through eighth grade could go by the wayside as the Supreme Court is either abolished as a “relic” or packed with additional Finally Woke justices.
It could happen here.
ROBERT WISE
North Pomfret
Transportation accounts for one-third of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, making it the single largest source of emissions in the country. As a result of the Trump administration’s decision to freeze federal fuel economy standards, automakers that would otherwise have been required to increase the average fuel efficiency of their cars annually will now be able to continue to meet the current standards, without improving further, until 2026.
The rollback of regulations designed to decrease carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels will have severe consequences for climate change. On top of their drastic climate consequences, these standards will force U.S. consumers to pay more to drive their cars, reduce the competitiveness of U.S. vehicle manufacturing and, according to the Trump administration’s own analysis, cost Americans 60,000 jobs.
Although states are generally prohibited from passing their own emissions standards, California possesses a waiver granting it this authority; its standards are currently stricter than those of the federal government. In New Hampshire, we can choose whether to adhere to the national standards or to the more stringent California standards. HB 1444, a bill introduced in the New Hampshire Legislature, would have the state adopt California’s standards. Our current national emissions standards are not doing enough to promote clean transportation technology and combat climate change.
New Hampshire can and must take responsibility where the federal government has fallen short. I urge our state representatives to vote yes on HB 1444 to combat climate change and ensure a more resilient and sustainable future.
ARIANNA KHAN
Hanover
I don’t know if I am a liberal because I am a Christian, or if I am a Christian because I am a liberal, but it’s one or the other (if not both) that compels me to respond to William A. Wittik’s letter expressing fear that people of faith — by which he means evangelical Christians — “face the battle of their lives to preserve religious liberty” (“Are people of faith ready for the battle of their lives?” March 2).
Christ’s entire ministry was directed against two things. One was a government run by (and for) the wealthy and entitled, who developed and maintained a domination system by which a tiny proportion of the population owned the vast majority of the wealth and resources of the world’s most powerful empire. The second was a religious elite that collaborated with the government in order to retain its own influence and prestige, while conveniently ignoring the desperately poor who were being crushed by a sinfully unjust and inequitable economic order. Sound familiar?
If Christians are to win the “battle of our lives,” we must do what Christ calls us to do, and follow the scriptural imperative to feed the hungry, care for the sick, clothe the naked, visit those in prison and welcome the stranger.
CHARLIE BUTTREY
Thetford
What a remarkably nasty piece Los Angeles Times columnist Virginia Heffernan wrote (“Democrats’ crotchety geezers and their tired shtick,” Feb. 29).
She doesn’t pretend that the three “crotchety geezers” have anything that distinguishes them in their campaigns, only that they are “provincials, each born at the dawn of the 1940s,” so they are “bickering over the remote and confused to tears by the Roku.” Bernie Sanders “didn’t even bother to use an ear horn to hear the questions. He just said whatever popped into his head.” No credit for a successful elected career or consistent positions on dominant issues or his overwhelming success with every age and ethnic group except older white men in Nevada.
They may have “convinced themselves they’ve always been right … on labor, gay marriage, taxes, civil rights, crime, feminism, guns and all those wars. But what are the chances they’ve been right all this time, by the standards of 2020?”
Huh? You don’t think those are the issues that this election is about?
This is ugly ageism, plain and simple.
RICHARD DYBVIG
Tunbridge
This is in reference to Los Angeles Times columnist Virginia Heffernan’s piece (“Democrats’ crotchety geezers and their tired shtick,” Feb. 29).
Heffernan makes an enormous leap of bad faith on Leap Day. She writes, “If you’re over 40, think of the mystification you may still feel about the blockchain or #gamergate. That’s got to be how someone nearly 80 feels about reparations, identity politics, trans rights and #MeToo.”
I beg your pardon, but as I near 80, I and my octogenarian friends find that we are more passionate than ever about reparations, identity politics, trans rights and #MeToo. We watch the debates, we inform ourselves via the Valley News, The Atlantic, The New Yorker and The New York Times and we discuss these issues as well as the wealth gap, the need for universal health care, the splintering of public education, climate change and abortion and gun rights.
We are actually more engaged than our children and their children. We read Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jill Lepore, Richard Blanco, Tara Westover, Jenny Nordberg and others too numerous to mention.
We volunteer, we have a voice and we vote!
PAT WHITNEY
Sunapee
Dan Mackie’s recent column on “OK Boomer” (“Over Easy: A boomer’s lament,” Feb. 22) was one of his best, in my opinion.
I’d just like to note that, in there with sex, drugs, Jimi Hendrix and ideals of peace and love, was the “back to the land” movement, a practice that involved steep reductions in exploitation and combustion of fossil carbon. Also, and likewise, vegetarianism.
OK Hippies!
PETER MALSIN
Hanover