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All state officials should sacrifice portion of pay
Pennsylvania is without a budget and has been for a few months. Our legislators and our governor are having trouble balancing the budget.
Because there is less income this year, many families in this area are having trouble balancing their household budgets. Increasing our state taxes is going to put an even greater burden on struggling families.
My sister-in-law works for the telephone company as a salaried employee. She has to take furlough days, which results in less income.
Many construction workers are having great difficulty finding work. When they do have an opportunity to bid a job, they have to bid it much cheaper than they would have even a year ago. There is less overtime at many businesses, so people have less income than they would have had only a year ago.
My husband sells building materials. Our income is about 22 percent less this year than in 2007. We have 10 children, so we are facing some big challenges.
My challenge to our state leaders, to our public servants, is to take a pay cut of 22 percent. Legislators, vote yourselves a pay cut. Governor Rendell, take a pay cut. All of our judges, take a pay cut. You are there as an example to the hardworking voters of this state. Think about all the good you could do for the people in this commonwealth by your sacrifice.
You need to take a pay cut only until this recession is over. Are you up to the challenge?
State lands must not pass into the hands of drillers
As a mother of three, I watched in disbelief as Pennsylvania’s Legislature recently moved to the brink of a budget balanced by handing over our state forests and public lands to huge gas companies, so that these operations can ax thousands of trees, cut hundreds of miles of roads, erect miles of pipeline, gouge out drilling wells a mile deep in the earth, and inject up to 340 different chemicals into the water and rock below to extract gas.
This is the future for our state forest lands under one budget-related proposal.
The process used to free the gas from the Marcellus Shale and pump it to the surface is called “fracking.” It injects millions of gallons of water into the earth under high pressure to fracture the rock and release the gas. This water is loaded with chemicals to facilitate the process.
Some of the water used in these operations is recovered and either treated on site, transferred to an industrial treatment plant or discharged directly into our waterways. The remaining 40 to 75 percent of the chemical-laden water is left underground, to potentially enter reservoirs, leach into aquifers, poison wells and threaten public water supplies. And this doesn’t even take into account the leaks, spills and other violations that occur.
Right now, gas companies are drilling and profiting on private property in Pennsylvania without being charged a severance tax, as is levied in most other gas-deposit states.
This deal for the gas companies means a free pass on profits, and a free ticket into our public lands, along with the environmental destruction and health threats that accompany these fracking operations. This is not just about us; it is for our children and their right to inherit these priceless state forests. We must stand up to big gas company lobbying and stick up for our clean water, our wildlife and wilderness areas.
Stop this sell-off and sell-out. Call your state representatives and Gov. Ed Rendell (the state information center is 717-787-2121) and tell them, “No way, you’re not giving away my state lands to the gas drilling profiteers.” Please call today; there is no time to lose.
To see photos, videos, research, reports and more, please visit the Web sites of PennFuture, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Earthworks, ProPublica’s ongoing reports on gas drilling, along with the Web site for the powerful new documentary “Split Estate.”
Supplemental services a boon for area students
The Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) results for last spring recently have been published and – though few parents realize it – a terrific opportunity is about to be made available to thousands of students in our area.
One of the many consequences of these test results is that they determine which schools are required to offer Supplemental Educational Services (SES) to selected portions of their populations. This consequence is a result of stipulations made in the No Child Left Behind Act.
That federal law has been much maligned in some circles and certainly is an imperfect piece of legislation. However, SES is one of the act’s positive aspects because it has the potential of helping millions of children be more successful in school. Unfortunately, it is a poorly understood (even by many schools offering it) and extremely underused program. While it has helped about 2 million children nationwide, that number is not even 10 percent of those who could have been helped. The usage in Pennsylvania is even lower.
The vital point for families to understand is that, in most instances, SES is not just another after-school tutoring program. Organizations or individuals wishing to provide Supplemental Educational Services must go through an approval process with the state Department of Education in order to be listed as an “approved provider.” While schools can go through the approval process, families can, and usually should, select from the many private, independent options available to them.
The amount of funding to be used for each eligible student varies from district to district but is generally more than $1,000 per child. That is $1,000-plus worth of valuable extra help that hundreds of thousands of children in Pennsylvania can have once their caregivers understand, and ask, for the service.
There are important economic corollaries to the argument for promoting wider participation in SES. One is that hundreds of millions of dollars that could be spent paying dozens of businesses and hundreds of private educators and tutors are being kept by school systems. Another is that revisions being considered for SES might soon mean that even the schools could lose unexpended funds. (Use it or lose it.)
Lastly is the very real fear that if there is no interest in and support for this program, it could be scrapped altogether.
More than 25 years ago the report “A Nation at Risk” highlighted the flaws and failures of our educational system. Despite a flurry of ideas and initiatives, nothing substantive changed and our schools now face even more severe challenges than they did then. We must not let this opportunity to make a difference for many of our children be lost when all that is needed to save it is better communication and understanding.
Student’s positive attitude impresses an ‘older folk’
Kudos to the high school sophomore from Weatherly who wrote to say she was inspired by President Obama’s speech regarding education, which was shown recently in her history class.
She was especially inspired by Mr. Obama’s statement, “What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.”
In this perceptive student’s words: “It felt good to hear that I can affect the future … I felt like I was really worth something.”
She goes on to say she was “appalled at how many people were criticizing this speech that so inspired me.”
I find it sad that some people, mostly older folks (such as me), are missing the point on some of the issues that our president is trying to deal with.
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