This is Viewpoints for Wednesday, April 6, 2016
Same old results?
According to our school superintendent, Curtis Jones, the fact that taxpayer money, which Commissioner Mallory Jones took from the blight funds to buy Alexander IV for future benefits, just tickled Jones. Apparently, the millions of dollars taxpayers have allotted him is so great he is spending money to help other organizations.
Back when the board of education was held accountable, 1930 to 1970, our academic status was exemplary. Our dropout rate was very small. Our teachers came to class prepared and produced students that exceeded the results of most students in other areas.
I would suspect the honeymoon time for the retired military man should be ended. Many months ago he called me about the same concerns I still have today — dropouts, poor grades, questionable staff and teachers. Just today the state is processing the closing of a charter school which he should have ended much earlier. They were a disgrace to all of us. Those monies could have been used to get far better teachers. What taxpayers get are more fancy buildings to house the same old results.
Bibb County has been willing to accept mediocrity from our BOE and our interim superintendents. The last one hired a friend to be the head of secondary classes at Howard, thereby passing over tenured men and women with a long history of leadership. When I questioned him about that he originally denied it, but upon availing him of the facts, he submitted his guilt.
What will it take to make things better? Remove the current board, put Jones on notice that excuses and bravado time is over. Cut administrative personnel substantially and use those monies to hire gifted teachers.
Hey, this school system has failed miserably when compared to all other school districts. Google these facts.
— Joe Hubbard
Macon
Once charter schools are approved they are public schools but governed by their own board, not the county board of education.
— Editors
What's the point?
Reading Dr. Bill Cummings' columns on Christianity is a little like reading a summary of a football game played long ago. Lot of superfluous detail, much of it of questionable validity; conjecture and subjective assessment. But never a word about the most important factor: who won the game?
One reads Dr. C's columns in anticipation of the "good part," only to be repeatedly disappointed by his cheerful, but insubstantial, apostasy. What we are left with are dubious "facts," unrelated to the central unifying event that they refer to. That event, of course, is the resurrection of Jesus Christ, by which he confirmed who he was (and is): the manifestation of the creator in the flesh. Talking about a "Kingdom of God," without mention of its "King," is an empty exercise.
If that tomb was empty on the Sunday following the Passover on which he was crucified, then not only the relationship between Peter and Paul, but the miracles, the entirety of scripture — indeed, our entire space-time environment — adhere into glorious cohesion and coherency. If not — well, Shakespeare's Puck said, "what fools these mortals be."
The only thing more foolish than edifices and tomes and traditions and endless woolgathering devoted to a long dead Jewish carpenter, would be the rejection of him if he conquered death, and appeared to his followers to explain how 'these things must be' (Luke 24:26,27; 1 Cor. 15:1-8).
— W. Wade Stooksberry II
Macon
Any benefit?
Re: March 4 news brief about coronary artery bypass, thank you for this interesting blurb but due to its brevity, it was lacking some information which I think would be important to readers. I believe there has been good evidence since the late 1970s/early 1980s regarding benefit to mortality and morbidity rates from bypass surgery to the proximal main and left anterior descending arteries.
So it would be interesting to know what benefit there may be to bypassing other arteries and whether it supported the evidence showing a lack of benefit to bypassing the smaller terminal vessels.
From the information provided, the study did not address any comparison between bypass surgery versus stunting.
Perhaps there will a letter from a cardiologist.
— Stella Tsai
Macon
Oops, hypocrisy alert
After years of yelling at the Democrats that "We are a nation of laws, not of men," a number of Republicans are now saying that if their man is leading in the delegate count, he should get the party nomination whether he has met the nominating requirements or not.
By threatening to walk if he doesn't, they have enjoined that nation governed by men and not laws that they so strongly have reviled.
— Dan Topolewski
Kathleen
This story was originally published April 5, 2016 at 6:25 PM with the headline "This is Viewpoints for Wednesday, April 6, 2016 ."