Letters to the editor for Friday, Aug. 16, 2013

District should spend on smaller class sizes, not wireless devices

The Carson City School District will be spending $500,000 on wireless technology while increasing classroom size and decreasing the number of teachers and counselors. In exchange, students receive mobile devices and $10,000 is allocated for student field trips; however, $50,000 is for administrators to have shiny, new phones. What a wonderful idea. Little Johnny can now use his new “mobile device” to search Wikipedia while he’s having troubles at home because there are no longer any school counselors, and the over-worked teacher of 35 students in a class can now be blamed as to why Johnny just cannot seem to get along with other students.

Yet, we can spend 50,000 on new phones for administrators? What happens in two years when those contracts are up? Who will pay then? I have a better idea: let the administrators pay for their own phones, just as teachers are pretty much forced to spend their own money for many things in their own classrooms. Then that $50,000 could be added to the paltry $10,000 set aside for field trips. Let the students actually see more things in the real world.

What will happen when Johnny drops and breaks his mobile device? Will he be left behind? That’s OK — in three months the device will be outdated anyway, and the school district can justify more future expenses a year from now while the environment suffers in our grand need to upgrade to newer products that have even more bells and whistles.

Darren Jenkins

Carson City

Bednarski replaced by Appeal’s typical liberal-leaning columns

Enclosed please find an impromptu petition. The petition was created at an appreciation party for Ann Bednarski held on July 26. During his party, it was decided to create a petition to let the Nevada Appeal know how much Ms. Bednarski’s columns have been enjoyed by those attending. We are very disappointed to hear Ms. Bednarski’s columns have been discontinued by your newspaper, as we have enjoyed a change from the typical liberal-leaning columns we have endured for such a long time.

Our hope is for you to reconsider discontinuing her articles to the paper and to consider this petition as a reason to continue publishing Ann’s columns.

Signed: Dave Partee; Candi Sunderland; Patricia Papazaglow; Ronald Knecht; Maurice White; Gabriela Fasnacht; Richard Schneider; Ronald L. Smith; Kelly Bullis; Phyllis Askew; Patrick Moriarity; Lisa Partee; Ellen Hennessey; Peter Hennessey; Nance Koran and Judy Martin.

David and Lisa Partee

Carson City