Dear Editor:

Last Tuesday, (October 13) when the Contra Costa Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to pursue a study on Community Choice Energy (CCE), I was proud to state that my city – San Pablo — has already chosen to allow our residents and businesses to receive 50% or more renewable clean energy over dirty energy. It’s rewarding to know that I am lowering greenhouse gas emissions and also by me paying my utility bill it contributes to building the 10.5 MW Solar farm located in Richmond which is on a brownfield site and will be built by local union workers. It provides more local green jobs as well as clean air and health.

I hope the folks in Conta Costa will tell their leaders to support CCE so our supervisors can proceed without delay.

Lynette Robinson

San Pablo

Dear Editor:

CCA. Before long, everyone will know what these letters mean — just like we do PG&E. Community CHOICE Aggregation or CCE, Community CHOICE Energy. Lousy name, but a very good thing. The emphasis is on the word CHOICE. It’s the choice that residents, businesses, and schools in California have of 50% or more renewable energy instead of PG&E’s 28%. In case you’re keeping track of the numbers, that’s the amount of renewable energy the new California law mandates . . . by 2030. But, why wait?

Two Bay Area counties already have a CCA: Marin and Sonoma. Also a few cities: Richmond, El Cerrito, San Pablo and Benicia. CCA is available without putting solar on the roof, or buying anything. CCA provides solar and wind energy through the cables that we already have. In Sonoma county, most of the renewable energy is geothermal -– from the geysers. The renewable energy from a CCA does not include nuclear nor fossil fuels like natural gas. Certainly not coal. And you can always choose PG&E instead.

This past week, the Contra Costa Board of Supervisors unanimously declared their interest in CCA. Nearly every county’s joining the trend: San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda, Yolo, Mendocino, Humboldt, Santa Cruz, San Benito, Monterey, Los Angeles and San Diego.

CCA’s mean thousands of green jobs and an environmentally sustainable revenue stream for the economy. Lousy name, but a very good thing.

Carol Weed

Walnut Creek

Dear Editor:

Antioch’s Mayor, Wade Harper, is a failure. Antioch is no safer since his election. Let’s take a look at the facts.

His claimed primary, election campaign platform was to improve Antioch’s public safety. He boasted “The City of Antioch will be a safer city on my watch” and “Stopping crime now starts with Police Lieutenant Wade Harper.” His campaign crowed “How about we elect a City Councilmember who has experience fighting crime – well beyond talking about it.”

He also promised “more police” and “less crime” in his overzealous support for a “yes” vote on the Measure C tax. What a farce that also has turned out to be. He was one of its main proponents for its passage. Same Police, same crime results since.

Antioch’s Police manpower hasn’t really been increased, even with Mayor Wade Harper at the helm, with the approximate same number (90 currently) of sworn Officers, as before. Antioch’s crime rate hasn’t really been reduced, it’s just been an illusionary misleading ‘dog and pony’ show when publicly discussed by him and others. Mayor Harper should’ve been put to a more successful recall effort. Unfortunately it failed due to technical problems by the proponents, from the start.

Where are the 20 plus “more” Officers that were promised? And where is the “less crime” he promised? Fooled you, didn’t he? Antioch’s documented crime rate is 46% more than California’s average crime rate, and 49% more than the National crime rate average, as last reported.

Antioch’s 2014 total police reported person crimes proves it’s increased by an additional 30% more since his election. And Antioch’s 2014 total police reported property crimes proves it’s doubled (by an additional 101% more) during his Council tenure.

Let’s face it, Antioch’s Mayor Wade Harper is a failure and needs to be replaced. We can do better without him. His boasting promises to our community have been hollow and full of self-promoting emptiness that has cost Antioch overall.

Ralph A. Hernandez

Antioch

Dear Editor:

The Antioch School Board will soon announce its application procedure for appointment to the Trusteeship position generated by Barbara Cowan’s move to Oregon. The Board, as a whole, will decide on the tactical selection process particulars. Speaking, then, only for myself, kindly allow for some ruminations on a Trustee’s ideal constitution.

I’ve been asked how much an educational background benefits a Board Trustee. Truth be, it sometimes helps, often hurts. One can know too much, which can lead to micro-managing. By contrast, an enlightened trustee hires the best Superintendent possible, sets a clear vision with accountable benchmarks, and then gets out of the way.

The best Trustees simply have strong communication and bridge-building skills, and a seasoned touch. They can seamlessly switch from publicly praising to, when needed, privately and diplomatically prodding. Being transparent, accountable, fiscally sober and hard-working can not be overstated, as well.

For my two cents, Trustees also need good-old fashioned common sense, with an appreciation of tough love. Yes, we need adopt creative, positive behavioral interventions but we can’t abandon fair but strict, no-nonsense, behavioral standards if our schools and society are not going to go to hell in a hand basket. If we don’t curb systemic behavioral outbursts, and all the attendant distraction, we will continually spin our wheel on attaining academic improvement.

School Board is the retail world of politics and governance; it’s up close and personal. As such, it’s not for the thin-skinned or faint of heart. It calls for unending give and take with the sometimes clashing interests of students, parents, teachers, Superintendent, administrators, community leaders and colleagues.

As you can guess, though nobody has to go along, in this hurly-burly arena it helps to get along. Pure ideology simply counts for naught if nothing tangible gets done in the crucible of compromise and pursuit of the Golden Mean.

Superintendents, administrators, union leaders and fellow trustees come and go with elections, retirements and moves. By freely adapting to each new configuration you can maximize complimentary strengths and leverage mutual goals. We quickly learn that there are no permanent alliances, just permanent interests. It’s inevitable that we fall to the short end of some 3-2 or 4-1 votes, but we endure. Cycles come and go and even a dissenting voice has some resounding long-term value.

Fact is, not everyone will be on our preferred dance card, philosophically or temperamentally. We must, though, tango with the partners we have.

I, for one, wish we could harken back to a more civil political climate typified by Democrat Majority Whip Hubert Humphrey and Republican Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen retiring from a day’s vigorous debates to congenially tipping a few cold beers together.

Contrast this to the bitter enmity and hardened partisan divisiveness choking the corridors of power today.

Of late, the word loyalty surfaced. I welcome the discussion because loyalty is one of the enduring themes of man’s perennial philosophy. Nevertheless, I caution against blind loyalty at the expense of overarching principle or managing the collective good.

The three dicta of wise governance remain; balance, balance, balance. School Board cries for the amicable, not angry; the consensus builder, not partisan; the results-driven principled, not ideologue.

Granted, a tall order, but it can’t hurt to hope we get King Solomon, or an aspiring Solomon, to, pray tell, apply for the appointment.

Walter Ruehlig

Trustee, Antioch Unified School District

Dear Editor:

Polish a poison apple and it looks nice and shiny. However, bite into it and it can still kill.

The Iran Nuclear Deal is absurd. Since when did the United States of America negotiate with terrorists?

It violates the number one premise of negotiation; that everybody invited to the table share the same vision – peace in the Middle East.

Never, ever did Iran waiver from its belief that the “United States is Satan”; nor deny its ultimate goal to annihilate Israel.

Surveying a friend’s opinion regarding the issue, she said “two words that should never go together; Iran and nuclear”.

Political PR efforts marked by a thousand plus word stretch to explain the inexplicable failed to make me a bobblehead.

In a dozen words I can counter why the Iran Nuclear Deal is deadly. What part of Iran’s supreme leader’s chant “death to America” is unclear?

Cynthia Ruehlig

Antioch

Dear Editor:

The numbers cry failure. In 2011, according to the U.S. Department of Education, only 32% of American 8th graders scored proficient in math. This earned a 32nd ranking among 65 nations participating in PISA, the math test administered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

By contrast, Shanghai boasted a 75% proficiency rating and Korea, Finland, Switzerland, Japan, Canada and the Netherlands all scored above 50%. Distressingly, California, the Golden State, scored 24% proficiency. Little wonder our colleges are scrambling for interventions as a paltry 44% of American high school graduates are ready for the math needed in higher education and, ultimately, in higher paying careers.

Algebra, after all, is the gateway to academic mastery. It is the #1 trigger of dropping out in high school, with 70% of students who don’t pass algebra by ninth grade dropping out.

Given the crisis my summer visit to a tutorial program at Antioch’s Deer Valley High especially intrigued me. Walking into the classroom I was immediately struck by the fact that you could hear a pin drop as 20 some-odd students worked independently on fundamentals.

The program, called Math Intensive, is designed to take students markedly deficient in basic skills to grade level proficiency. Developed by John Crowder, a tutor, teacher, and private school administrator the class, with 21 three-hour instructional days, was open to everyone but was taken mostly by African-American males.

Crowder recently partnered with Angel Luevano, a teacher and leader of Todo Unidos. They then teamed with the education group Parents Connected to pilot this program at Deer Valley.

Twenty-one key concepts necessary for success in a rigorous Algebra program were both pre and post tested. The results were very encouraging. The average student’s score rose on Algebra I readiness rose from 35.4% to 49.6%, an increase of 0.7 per cent per instructional day.

Most promising was the transition out of ‘basic concepts.’ Students went from 64.7% to 90.1% proficiency in topics that included multiplication, fractions, math terminology, exponents, radicals, proportions and solutions of equations. Essentially, that’s a remarkable jump from a D to an A- level.

Crowder himself admitted shock by the results of the short program. Beyond the startling statistics he said he was most amazed that “Students who had given up on math, if not on their school prospects, and possibly even on themselves, had such a quick turn-about that they could not only learn but learn well.”

Bridget Swan remarked of her son Jordan, a DVHS Junior; “He has never before been so engaged with math.”

Jordan acknowledged he was finally understanding what was before him.

What’s working?

#1. Buy-in: After an introductory presentation prospective students and parents interview and agree on expectations. Nobody is begged. #2. Zero tolerance: Cell phones, electronics, back talking, goofing off, tardiness and excessive absence are disallowed. #3. Assessment: Students take a 260 question placement pre-test, daily quizzes, and a post test. #4. High expectations: 80% correct qualifies for moving on. #5. Immediate feedback: Results and corrections come in minutes, not days or weeks. #6. Teacher- student ratio: A supportive 8 to 1. #7. Continuous review: Every test is cumulative.

With a class of 24, and given that a student moves thru the program into 80% plus proficiency and Algebra 1 entry in generally anywhere from four to twelve weeks, one open entry class could cycle some 95 students a year.

Regrettably, we spend so much of our time and energy with high-risk students on traditional punishments or alternative behavioral intervention programs. Much, though, of misbehavior is fueled from an inability to keep up with peers in reading and math and the endless loop of simmering frustration and inadequacy that failure develops.

Two things can’t occupy the same place at the same time. Position academic success into the equation for failing students and positivity can help replace rage and acting out.

Math Intensive is the type of systematic, rigorous, no-nonsense, personalized intervention we need adopted. The alternative is to embrace the definition of insanity by doing the same things we’ve done before and expecting different results.

Walter Ruehlig

A.U.S.D. Trustee

Dear Editor:

Earlier this week it was revealed to the public that one of the side deals made in the Iranian nuclear agreement included Iran being in charge of inspecting itself at one of its largest and most infamous nuclear development sites. The absurdity of that thankfully seems to resonate with more and more congressmen and senators and the revelation seems to be slowly tipping Democrats who had tenuously said they were going to support the agreement.

Thanks to legal roundabouts and parliamentary magic, the administration was only required to get one-third of one house to vote for it. The most efficient of routes, it would seem, would be to get thirty-four senators to vote for it, but that is proving to be harder than expected.

Last week, the soon-to-be Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a long-time supporter of the Israeli cause and major benefactor from Israeli-American political action committees, came out publicly against the deal, along with New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez. No doubt that these defections have boosted Republican hopes, especially for recruiting the entire Democratic Jewish Caucus, a whopping 7 senators including Schumer. The bar is set so low, however that there is a good chance that even this would prove not enough unless more Democrats defect from the Administration’s party line.

It’s important to know how the vote will go down, considering that the stakes are so high, if not for us, then for the allies that will suck us into a conflict if the Iranian hardliners are able to create even one warhead. The larger issue has been developing for decades, and the failed foreign policy of the last 6 years has directly led to the desperation for a deal that the administration now feels.

You may recall back in 2009, during the Arab Spring, that there were major demonstrations in the streets of Tehran. These weren’t TEA Parties with a couple hundred people, but actual streets filled with Iranians, both young and old, ready for modernization and liberalization.

The demonstrations occurred when Mahmoud Achmedinejad fraudulently stole the “election” by stuffing the ballot boxes so much that many NGO observers pointed out that there were more ballots cast than there were legal voters. This was because Achmedinejad was of course the choice psycho-in-arms of the Supreme Ayatollah Khomeini. The (believed to be) legitimate winner was Mir Hossein Mousavi, a reformer who decried the corruption and extremism of the Supreme Ayatollah and his lackey President Achmedinejad.

Rather than back the so-called Green Revolution and its de facto leader Mousavi using our extensive network of operatives, the administration decided that it would be better for the U.S. to not get involved instead of taking advantage of the best opportunity for a regime change in 30 years.

Despite the administration’s claim at the time to not want to get too involved in Middle Eastern affairs, we have dropped bombs on five different Middle Eastern countries during this administration, compared to the previous administration’s two. Not to mention that we’ve waded into the politics of everyone from Egypt to South Sudan in less than seven years’ worth of leadership.

Iran, as happens with any dictatorship, will eventually have a revolution that will replace the current system with a democratic one, but we cannot have any more unforced errors like we had in 2009, and like what the Senate is currently considering.

Foreign policy is not a game to be played lightly, it is after all the real-world game of thrones. The idea of a deal is good, but it must have an ironclad inspection clause with inspections only to be carried out by either the U.S. or the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). We have been at a stalemate with Iran since the ’80s and we cannot simply walk away at this point, as much as I believe we should never have been involved with that tract of sand. A non-interventionist foreign policy requires a clean slate (cleaner than a server can ever be), something we will never get so long as the current system of governance in Iran exists. For now, this is the consequence of our insufferable meddling.

We need a deal, yes, but one that does not jeopardize our allies and our men and women in uniform. We can only hope that when that regime change comes, and we’ve had ours, we are prepared to not make the same mistake. That mistake of course, being our involvement at all.

Devon Minnema

The author is a 20-year-old Woodland College student, Syndicated columnist based out of Dixon CA. Columns “Real Men Read The News” and “One in a Millenial,” and fourth generation Solano County farmer.

Dear Editor:

Since April, when I first spoke out against Governor Brown’s Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP), the Administration has continued to push forward this flawed, fiscally irresponsible proposal, now rebranded as California WaterFix and California EcoRestore. Under any name, this plan further threatens the Delta’s fragile ecosystem and does not deliver one ounce of new water.

This effort does not in any way “fix” the water concerns of the farmers, families and small-business owners in the Delta region. In fact, it threatens to harm their ways of life while undermining efforts to restore the sustainability of the Delta itself. I call on the Governor to stop trying to push the same old plan he proposed more than three decades ago − which voters rejected − and instead focus on California’s more urgent need to improve, modernize and stabilize our State’s water supply.

Two weeks ago, the Department of Water Resources unveiled the “Water Fix” plans’ environmental documents, attempting to fast-track it with a meager 45-day comment period, an insufficient time to examine a plan that aims to alter the Delta forever.

Rest assured, my letter calling for a 180-day comment period hit the Governor’s desk soon after. Through our efforts, I am pleased to announce that the comment period has been extended to October 30, 2015. The public will have time to properly review and voice their concerns about this revamped version of BDCP, which now has been thoroughly gutted of habitat restoration components.

I’ve made it clear to Governor Brown that I stand with the people of the Delta and will not waiver in my opposition to any effort focused on building the twin tunnels and threatening to harm the health of the Delta. When he’s ready to start the real work of using 21st century solutions to manage California’s water system, to produce and conserve more water and to create comprehensive drought and flood-prevention solutions, I am eager to help.

Please join me and voice your opinion about the BDCP/ California Water Fix proposal. Comments must be received electronically at BDCPComments@icfi.com or mailed and postmarked by October 30 to BDCP/WaterFix Comments, P.O. Box 1919, Sacramento, CA 95812.

Assemblymember Jim Frazier

Oakley