To the Editor:
The question was asked last week, “Would our tax dollars be better spent on FUSD, healthcare, roads, fire prevention or left in our own pockets for when we fill our tanks?” I would ask, why continue to support institutions that are failures? Especially California’s education system. That’s the biggest and most costly failure! Prop. 98, passed in 1988, presented by California Teachers Association, requires 40% of the entire State Budget to go to K-14 education and has gone up every year for the past 10 years at an average cost today of $28,000 per student for nine months of classes. Second most costly behind New York.
Prop. 98 is based on a formula using State Revenue, attendance and economic swings. It is taken from the General Fund including local property taxes and adjusted to income growth and student enrollment. BUT, today schools are closing because enrollment is down by at least 10% since parents realized how badly our public education system is failing all students. Many families are fleeing California or choosing to not have children. While others have home schooled, switched to Charter or religious schools.
The Teachers Union prevents even the worst of the worst teachers from being removed because of Tenure which is given in less than two years of employment . While the State has made the huge cost of trying to expel or remove disruptive, harmful students from the class almost impossible. You see, it’s all about the money and how to keep the 40% flowing into the pockets of power.
Less than 1/3rd of students (mostly Black and Latino) can read at their grade level. Which is equal to the 70% of inmates in prison that didn’t finish high school. Reading is the most important skill taught in schools. Without it all other academic subjects cannot be learned. But since Phonics is not taught in schools today less and less can read. The ability to understand a language and learn to read is not given priority, money is!!!!
Healthcare is another huge cost, but the mismanagement of those dollars is also ignored especially by the pharmaceutical industry, medical complex and grifter nonprofits. Then roads are mentioned. Well, what happened to all the tax dollars spent so far on the Bullet Train to nowhere?
Fillmore has all three fire preventions within walking distance, City Fire, County Fire, Forest Fire. It’s one of the few institutions that seem to be doing their job.
In answer to your question Pat Collins, I would have to say that I would be better served choosing a much better Administration in Sacramento with accountability for our tax dollars, than to just throw more money at it. But that is what leftist do. They never address their failures, just ask for more money or tell you you’re a bad person if you even try to question.
Jean McLeod,
Fillmore, Ca
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To the Editor:
Don’t sell yourself short. You appear to have explicitly understood my first paragraph last week, so I will forgo clarification. “Potshots” are taken by people who want to make cheap political points. The issues that I raise are factual and can be checked online. I raise them out of concern that all is not well with our country, and it transcends mere politics.
In 18 months of the Trump II administration, we are not as well, or better, off. Trump rejects “affordability” as “fake news,” insists that skyrocketing food and gas price increases are “peanuts,” has said he is not burdened by domestic economic issues during the Iran War, and is generally crushing the middle class to benefit billionaires. Meanwhile, Trump and his family have openly made billions in grifts all over the world, as families struggle to just “keep up.”
Trump let loose DOGE on our government, handed Elon Musk our private information for whatever purpose, cut services like SNAP, and health and medical facilities, imposed illegal tariffs, but finds plenty of money for ballrooms, massive arches, plans to refurbish the Kennedy Center, reflection pools and putting his name on anything that will stand still. He doesn’t seem to understand that the millions and billions he is spending on vanity projects, with permission from the Republican Congress, is hard-earned tax money we gave the government – not him – for protection, necessities, and general welfare.
He doesn’t seem to realize that, because of his mistreatment of international allies, we are no longer the free world’s “indispensable nation,” and that former allies have been forced to consider China as the reliable superpower of the future.
Trump appears unwell both physically and mentally. He falls asleep mid-meetings, has some concerning wounds to his hands, has an inordinate number of cognitive checkups, and cannot control his impulses. The Iran War is one such urge, with the overlooked consequence of the “Straitjacket of Hormuz.” Last weekend, he angrily ripped off his microphone, yelling at and bullying Kristen Welker, and stormed off from the interview when fact-checked that no court, including SCOTUS, had found that the 2020 election was stolen. It is alarming when a president with the nuclear codes cannot emotionally control himself. To me and others, these are troubling issues, Martin, and I haven’t even mentioned “Epstein.” Some people are unwilling or unable to confront the evidence in front of them, resent others for doing so, and condescend to facts as “potshots.” I understand that. But it is tragic for our country’s future when they say that they are “bored” by it.
Kelly Scoles,
Fillmore, Ca