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Wednesday, April 06, 2011
Letters
Small Schools Bill Was Allowed To Die
In all of the newspapers' postmortems I have read about the disappointing 2011 legislative session, I have seen nothing about Senate Bill 2, School Capital Outlay, Grants & Consolidation. It passed the Senate Education and Finance committees unanimously, and then languished on the Senate floor for weeks.
This bill would have slanted capital outlay funding toward the creation and maintenance of smaller schools. It would have provided strict requirements for closing or combining small schools.
SB2 recognized many experts' preference for small schools. From Think New Mexico's issue statement: "Smaller schools have higher graduation rates, higher student achievement, lower levels of student alienation and violence, and higher levels of satisfaction among students, parents, principals and teachers."
Without the protection afforded by this bill, village and neighborhood schools are at the mercy of local school boards. They can be closed by noneducators whose eyes are on short-term financial rather than on long-term educational goals.
It is vital for all New Mexicans, whether or not they have children in our public school system, to monitor the actions of their school boards, and to voice their concerns when budget-cutting threatens their communities' welfare with the loss of their schools.
ADELE ZIMMERMANN
Embudo
Deep-Sea Mining Ruinous for All
Most of us are contentedly living here in New Mexico at an altitude well above sea level and in a rather dry climate.
But are we aware of another looming disruption of the biophysical system on our planet? Coming into view is deep-sea mining of our oceans for corporate profit.
The wholeness and health of our phenomenal oceanic body, which has benefitted and spawned life of all kinds on a global scale, is now threatened even further. Deep-sea mining for profitable ores by corporations is as unacceptable a proposition as harvesting all the world's birds to make feathered hats or all the world's orchids to make mulch.
If this intrusion into the depths of our fragile deep seas is permitted to go ahead, untold ecosystems, organisms and forms of life in existence at those depths will be destroyed forever, and resulting injurious chemicals will destroy surrounding marine life.
How can this possibly be justified for a few to profit? Do we really have a right to malign our Earth so disastrously for more copper, zinc, gold and silver? Has not our exploitation of the Earth's resources passed the acceptable? Is not this ruinous devastation of our marine life an atrocity? Denial of the consequences by the corporate few is fatal for all.
Even though we live at a high, dry altitude, we need to care for our oceans and their unique life.
NATALIE OWINGS
Glorieta
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