LETTERS: Rx for city schools; safety gets short shrift at YSU; Kasich sounds stuck up; Ryan’s new view

Closing charters, getting parents involved would help city schools

To ask the superintendent of schools to be replaced will not help the present conditions of the Youngstown City Schools. What the governor needs to do is close the majority of charter schools. It has been reported that more than half of them are failing, yet they are not held to the strict rules of the city public schools.

The state is willing to give millions of dollars to private schools where students in academically distressed schools can have free tuition; of course this applies to most of our city’s schools. Those millions could be used to update school equipment and teacher salaries.

Private schools are not required to admit students that may not meet their standards.

How many minority students will be admitted to a private school? I feel not many.

I would suggest that the superintendent and school board work relentlessly to upgrade the academic status.

I must say without the complete cooperation of the parents, it is almost impossible to improve schools and get the students’ interest. It may take the school board going door to door to encourage the parents’ cooperation in the learning process. If nothing is done, we are fighting an endless battle.

Maybe laws have to be passed to make parents more responsible for their children’s education.

Olla L. Tate, Youngstown

Are grades more important than lives of students, staff at YSU?

On Jan. 26, dangerous weath- er conditions struck the Northeast United States, including Youngstown.

Snow fell heavily overnight into Monday morning causing dangerous driving conditions, closing and delaying many schools in the Northeast, while Youngstown State University stayed open.

News reports on the snowfall that Monday morning relayed information on multiple car crashes, loss of control, or stuck with spinning tires in western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio.

Despite warning of the impending winter storm, YSU remained open, encouraging students and faculty to risk their lives traversing the dangerous roads.

YSU is primarily a commuter school, which was not ideal for many who had to be on campus at 8 a.m. or before.

The university has a habit of staying open when most lower-level schools would either have a two-hour delay or completely close.

For example, spring semester 2014, there were two days back to back that were approximately negative 20 degrees. The first day the university had sense enough to close, and the following day it was open. Many classes were scarce for students as they deemed it unsafe to be out.

Why close on one day, and then reopen the next with the exact same unsafe conditions?

The university seems to have no consideration for the safety or lives of students and faculty during the winter months. Does YSU put more emphasis on education than safety?

Though it is understandable with the tuition we pay that university officials would like to remain open as much as possible, perhaps they should weigh the cost of a lost class day against the cost of a potential lost life.

There are not many days where it is unreasonable to be outside, but for those that are, if traffic accidents are being reported because of the road conditions, should the university really be open?

Laura McDonough, New Castle, Pa.

Kasich sounds like a stuck-up candidate for president in 2016

Ohio Gov. John R. Kasich’s appearance on Chris Wallace’s “Fox News Sunday” show left me cold. He was so full of himself with all the platitudes: balanced the budget and eliminated the deficit; millions of dollar surplus for a rainy day; 300,000 new jobs, winning re-election with a mandate of 60 percent of the vote. He sure sounded like a candidate running for president to me.

First and foremost, yes, he balanced the budget and built the million-dollar surplus, but he did it, to a large degree, on the backs of Ohio’s poor and underprivileged by decimating the Ohio Medicaid and food stamp programs. None of us wants abuses, but across-the-board reduction of these services and in effect elimination of the support of the elderly, widows, and unemployed that is so desperately needed is unconscionable.

I have seen this first-hand with family members and friends, and it is devastating. I consider myself at 86 in the elderly category. Jobs are hard to find. Some of my family have searched hard for two years before finding a living-wage job, and costs for food and utilities continue to rise. There is also a ripple effect to these policies of Gov. Kasich.

Along with the cuts in human services, the staff that administers these services are cut, and they also have families to support. To cover their lost service jobs, a so- called cost-cutting electronic phone call-in function is now in place. That may be all right for future generations but many of my generation are not computer literate and we are left behind because of it.

I question some of his claims such as job growth. To hear him talk you would think Ohio was one of the top states in that category. We are 23rd nationally in job growth. When you balance new jobs vs. jobs lost, you have something like a net 67,000 new jobs from a dismal unemployment rate. The Mahoning Valley employment lags behind Ohio’s average, and 24 percent of our families live on less than $20,000 annually.

I voted for Gov. Kasich both times. He won the first time by the closest of margins and the second time, he rode the pushback from Obama’s low approval rating. Thirty states now have Republican governors; Kasich should not get too high on himself.

Tom Page, Boardman

Rep. Ryan’s new pro-choice view ignores constitutional protection

In regards to Congressman Tim Ryan’s statement in which he changed his philosophy on abortion to pro-choice: “We hold these truths to be self evident; that all men are created equal.” The constitution does not say “born equal” Therefore unborn children are citizens entitled to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

This is not a religious subject nor is it a matter of how a leader feels. It is about what our forefathers lived, fought, and died for: the right for all created people to live. It is that simple.

Do not worry about contraception because no one is going to hide in your home to check.

Instead of using tax money to pay for abortions, why not pay for DNA testing so that the fathers of unplanned children will have to help support them?

Deanne Dereich, Stuthers

US must fight domestic terrorists

How safe are we? Due to the recent occurrences in Paris, we must ask ourselves just how secure are we? We have seen attacks on Americans become more frequent. Examples include the Boston bomber, the Ohio native who wanted to attack the Capitol with pipe bombs, bomb threats made against our airlines.

It is evident that we have a clear and present danger here in America, and it is time we all came together to put an end to this ever present danger. Our government needs to stop worrying about what happens in the Middle East and focus on what is happenng in this country.

We have terrorists in this country, whether they be foreign or domestic, who pose a danger to our way of life and our security. We must stand resolute against these and all individuals who threaten our way of life. God bless the Land of the Free.

Jim Eidel, Beaver Twp.