Protecting our water, questionable school funding, and more: letters to the editor
‘Protect our waters’
As nurses, we are deeply concerned about protecting our water. The Clean Water Rule protects 60 percent of the nation’s streams and millions of acres of wetlands that provide drinking water for 117 million Americans. Warming temperatures and more frequent intense storms like Hurricane Florence pose serious risks to the quantity and quality of our water. Protecting our water is a public health issue.
In Pennsylvania, we’re experiencing excessive rainfall. This is no time to repeal the Clean Water Rule, a rule that was years in the making and included input from thousands of stakeholders. I urge Administrator Wheeler to stop the plan to repeal this rule.
We are also deeply concerned about toxic fracking waste water coming in to Pennsylvania. Fracking waste water contains thousands of toxic and radioactive chemicals and poses a public health risk if it leaks into waterways. A 2016 Yale study noted fracking waste contained benzene, cadmium, lead, arsenic and mercury.
We must do all we can to protect our waters. Opposing any rollback of the Clean Water Rule is a critical first step.
Lastly, we recognize that the U.S. EPA is a public health agency. Now is the time for it to put public health first and scrap plans to repeal this science-based, common-sense regulation that will protect the drinking waters of Pennsylvania and the U.S. - Darlene Clark and Erin Kitt-Lewis, University Park, PA
‘Truly unjust’
Pennsylvania should be doing right by all her students, not just half of them. Unfortunately, half of our public school children are being shortchanged. In Pottstown our property taxes are among the highest in the state and still our schools are underfunded by more than $13M per year.
Despite our best efforts we struggle with overcrowding and high teacher turnover. Why? There are two main reasons: One, “Hold Harmless.” The state legislature created this rule that you can never give a district less than it got the year before. If a district was getting a lot of money when it had a higher student population, it gets the same amount even if the population drops.
This benefits shrinking districts at the expense of growing districts. It’s morally troubling, yet it’s politically easier for state legislators from these shrinking districts to ignore the problem.
Two, Fair Funding. Even though we have a fair funding formula to help allocate funding based on need, that formula is only applied to new money introduced into the education budget. In 2018 this was only 7.5% of the education budget.
Half of Pennsylvania’s students live in underfunded districts. These districts are disproportionately poor and even more disproportionately non-white. The current system is truly unjust. We need to support legislation that will phase out hold harmless and fully enact the Fair Funding Formula so all our kids get a fair chance. -- Laura Johnson, Raymond Rose, Marisa Swiderski, parents of Pottstown students
Thank You
On November 20th I invited readers to join me for 30 days to breathe in fear and breathe out love in response to the deep fear that is evident within our nation and the world. Today that invitation comes to a close and I want to say ‘thank you’ from the depths of my being to all who participated. I celebrate with you any insights you may have gleaned while participating and wish everyone a blessed and peace-filled holiday season and New Year. Thank you and blessings. - Maxine E. Marak State College, Pa