Source Weekly

Dear Editor,
John Sabo's Opinion piece “Let Beck Shine A Light” (Source, 10-1) leaves me no choice but to congratulate him for having the stomach to listen to the Fox News “talk jocks” (David Brooks quote) and no doubt Rush too – his stomach must be cast iron! Sabo criticizes the Source writers who, “continue to bash these guys and this network,” justifiably so. If he's looking for sympathy I doubt that he'll get it.

I am responding to Ace's negative response (Source Weekly, 9-24) to the lighthearted, humorous article on goose poop. Of course the Source Weekly could have filled that space with a more pressing issue – let's see there's the swine flu worry, the always ever fascinating question: “Why does the Forest Service insist on performing controlled burns during the nicest day of the year” thus yet forcing us to breathe even more smoke than we breathe during the actual fires – or even better: the weak education system in central Oregon.

While all you seem to see these days in the media are stories about how some corporations and their lobbyists are mad at the legislature for finally raising the $10 corporate minimum tax, there's a much larger group of Oregonians who are happy with the work the legislature did this session – Oregon's 80,000 uninsured children.
On October 1st, the two laws that the 2009 Legislature passed to provide Oregon kids with health insurance coverage go into effect. Many of us in the Legislature believe those two bills – HB 2009 and HB 2116 – will eventually be considered two of the most important bills we passed this session.
Unlike the debate over health care in our nation's capital, legislators from the House and Senate, Governor Kulongoski, hospitals, insurers, and providers came together to solve a problem that has been plaguing our state (and most other states) for decades… and we succeeded.

In H. Bruce Miller's recent article “Shrinkage Might Not Always be a Bad Thing,” he states, “Is a little shrinkage necessarily a bad thing? Certainly not for the schools. The overcrowding problem will be eased. Teacher/student ratios will improve and there'll be more of everything from library books to pencils to go around.”
Hmm. Well, some schools in the Bend-LaPine district are actually experiencing greater-than-projected enrollments this year, while others are indeed shrinking. Due to an equally diminished budget, hiring additional teachers is not an option for schools with expanding populations. Where do the needed teachers and administrators come from? They come from the schools that are shrinking, resulting in larger class sizes. As a specialist teacher at a school that has experienced a significant drop in enrollment and a few staff rearrangements, I can attest to the fact that in most grades, our classroom sizes have increased and our student/teacher ratios have gotten worse.