A BOLD BOARD
On August 18, this city’s School Board made history. Through
its courageous action, the Rochester
school district became the first large urban district in the country, so far as
I know, to challenge federal policy forcing districts to release students’
contact information to military recruiters, with or without parental consent.
Prior to the board’s historic 6-1 vote, the district had
accommodated itself to President Bush’s nefarious No Child Left Behind Act. It
released information to the military without a serious prior effort to notify
parents of their right to “opt out” of this disclosure. Now, through the bold
efforts of Willa Powell and others on the board, explicit notification of
parents’ “opt out” choices will be included in a letter accompanying the
Emergency Contact form.
Furthermore, the district’s new policy states that “all
schools shall withhold all student information [from recruiters] until October
15th, at which time the District will only act on responses received.” The No
Child Left Behind Act requires that information be released even if
overburdened parents fail to return the form, but the district’s new policy
states that it “does not interpret the absence of a signed form as opting in or
out; rather the district commits to maintaining privacy until the family makes
its wishes known.”
This is a bold step, which could jeopardize the district’s
considerable federal funding if challenged. We should all be proud that the
board voted to restore the district’s integrity safeguarding student privacy
and limiting the district’s ties to a military enterprise that discriminates
against homosexuals, preys on poor black and Latino students, and resorts to
deceit and harassment for its deadly marketing.
Prior to No Child Left Behind, the district prohibited all
military recruitment in schools, since it violated the district’s anti-bias
Values Policy. We are now preparing a broad counter-recruitment campaign in
city high schools to oppose the military’s discriminatory and predatory
presence, and to fully restore the district’s compromised integrity. We invite
others to join us by contacting Metro Justice at 325-2560 or MetroJustice.org,
or Rochester Against War at 256-3458 or march12RAW@yahoo.com.
Douglas D. Noble, Brunswick Street, Rochester
ANOTHER OPTION
Regarding “Fighting Words” (Family Valued, September
7): Another reason to home-school. Since when is it OK for parents to put their
school-age kids in harm’s way?
Naomi Pless, Cattaragus Drive, Rochester
STOP THAT SOUND
I’ve had it! When did it become socially acceptable to sit
on one’s lazy ass in an idling vehicle and use the car horn as a doorbell? I
live in the 19th Ward, and it is commonplace, all hours of the day and night
and into the wee hours of morning, to hear some moron blasting their car horn
to summon someone from their house.
The other day, my boyfriend and I stood on the front steps
and glared at a woman sitting in her car, honking merrily away until another
woman came out of the house across the street. If our eyeballs could have fired
heat-seeking missiles, she would have been like a scorched cartoon character.
Instead, she saw us staring and waved.
This is just another example of how our society has grown
increasingly disrespectful. From the horn-honkers to the insanely dangerous
drivers to apathetic “customer service” personnel down the
evolutionary chain to the criminals in our nation’s capitol: Disrespect seems
to have become as American as apple pie and baseball.
If we didn’t have such a high murder rate in this city, I’d
call the police and request some sort of noise watch in my neighborhood. As it
stands, all I can do is cover my head with my pillow when yet another idiot
parks on the street and lays on his or her car horn at 3 in the morning and
mutter to myself: “I’ve had it!”
Beth Abdallah, Thurston Road, Rochester
CATAPULT THAT PROPAGANDA
Do
I feel safe after September 11,
2001? Has President Bush shown leadership that makes our country
safe?
President
Bush botched up Katrina and made another Viet Nam out of Iraq. As Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak predicted,
President Bush produced 100 new bin Ladens.
In
invading Iraq and attacking
its mosques, Bush has assaulted the holiest shrines of Islam. That error
resulted from President Bush’s ignorance of other cultures. Since Islam is the
state religion of huge numbers of followers in many parts of the world, Bush
now confronts those followers willing to die in what they conceive to be a
defense of their faith.
If
Bush had diverted a fraction of the cost of killing those people to
understanding and improving their economically-backward nations, it’s clear
where we in the West would be today: on a forward-looking path to a peaceful
future.
I
do not feel safe after September 11,
2001, but maybe President Bush thinks I do. When the president
was suburban Rochester earlier this
year to make a speech about Social Security, he seemed to think making me
believe him would only take repetitive exercise, kind of like, shall we say,
athletics? “See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and
over and over again for the truth to sink in,” he said, “to kind of catapult
the propaganda.”
“Catapult
the propaganda ….”
After
my election to City Council, I will press Council to send a message to the
president calling for a quick end to this disastrous and worsening war.
Harry Davis, South
Avenue, Rochester (Davis is a
candidate for the Rochester City Council on the Red, White, & Blue Party
line.)
WRITING TO CITY
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This article appears in Sep 21-27, 2005.
