Closing of St. Brendan school raises questions

Closing of St. Brendan school raises questions
EDITOR:
As St. Brendan's, the school I have known and loved my whole life on the West Side of Youngstown, gets ready to become another statistic in the record books, I am still, after all the council meetings asking myself some questions, questions the parish body as a whole should be asking themselves:
1. Did I honestly do everything I could to help this school survive by supporting the work of the church through stewardship of my time, talent and treasures?
2. Did I regularly attend weekly Masses, showing my faith in action?
3. Did I become involved in the activities at my school through volunteering in the Home and School Association or work at our parish activities?
4. If I didn't have anyone in the school, did I care enough to help or did I think it was a drain on our finances and wanted to see it close?
The leadership of our parish also must address some issues:
1. Did we look at the condition our parish will be in without the school, taking into account the possible loss of revenues from our two major fund raisers, plus maintaining and heating an empty building and paying tuition subsidies to other schools?
2. Did we address the possibility of losing young families since we no longer have a school?
3. Did we look at what the upper West Side would look like with no Catholic school to minister to the children?
4. Did we exhaust every means we had to keep the doors open?
5. Did we communicate honestly and effectively with the parish body?
6. Did I give honest answers to this issue, or was I just a "yes person?"
The Diocese of Youngstown needs to ask:
1. Did we offer any help to this school or just dismiss it as "changing demographics?"
2. Are we willing to let this part of town be left without a school?
3. Are we concerned for the future of this parish?
These are all brutal questions. Can we all answer them honestly?
We must now look to the future and preserve the past. We also must find it in our hearts to forgive and forget some of the things that happened this past week.
RICK MYERS
Youngstown
Proponents of Arctic drilling resort to sneaky maneuver
EDITOR:
Proponents of oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will stop at nothing to get what they want. They have already indicated that they will go as far as using a back-door scheme to hide their Arctic drilling proposal in the federal budget bills this year. This sneaky attempt to include Arctic Refuge drilling in the federal budget bill is not only deceitful and a discredit to the democratic process, but it reveals the fundamental weakness of the push for drilling.
Proponents of drilling know they cannot pass this through the normal process for controversial bills, so they are resorting to a procedural tactic to prohibit an open and honest debate. This tactic stands directly in opposition to the will of the American public. Americans have repeatedly opposed drilling and Congress has rejected it every year since 2001. They know that drilling in the Arctic Refuge would ruin one of our last wild places for perhaps six months' worth of oil that wouldn't get here for 10 years or more.
Drilling for oil in the Arctic Refuge would have little to no effect on the price of gas and would do nothing to decrease our dependence on foreign oil. I encourage my fellow Americans to contact their elected officials today and let them know we will not tolerate this dishonesty and do not want to see drilling America's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge included in the budget.
MARK PHILLIPS
Girard