Dear Editor:

Dear Editor:

As I was reading the opinion column by Lou Davis (The Way I See It, May, 2012), I had to check the date on the paper to see if this was some kind of April Fools’ joke.  Perhaps before writing such an “opinion”, Mr Davis would like to read and maybe, reread his column before it goes to press.  Yes, Mr Davis, I will agree with you that there are racial divides in this country that I have never seen since the days of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s.  But since when are women in this country considered a different race than men?  You make no mention of any fact about race in this country and instead begin a diatribe against womens’ rights.  On this, the 40th anniversary of Title IX, women must still fight for even the most basic of rights in the workplace.  The last time I checked the figures from the U.S. Department of Commerce, women were still only making a portion of what men were making for doing the same job.  Where is the equality?

In the same paragraph, you mention the “Occupy Wall Street” movement.  To be honest, I don’t agree with the way that they go about things.  Where is the message that we can stand behind to fight this and to find a solution?  And, I don’t agree with the violence that seems to be a part of every rally.  However, they are trying to send a message and to be honest, if I were in there shoes, I would be afraid to be a spokesman for any cause, let alone fighting big business, in this country.  If you are of a certain age, you remember the last ones to stand for a cause that was out of the mainstream and what happened to them.  Martin.  Bobby.  Jack.

Your fixation on demeaning women is deplorable. You make them out to be second class citizens.  Women must fight daily to preserve their rights that are being taken away by a government of old, Caucasian men.  I don’t care what political party they are affiliated with.  Since when does anyone have the right to tell another how to live their life.   As a man of color Mr. Davis, you should understand it better than most of us could ever.

 When it comes to health care, I will always stand up for the working man.  The tone of your article sounds much like the newspapers of the early part of the 20th century.  Perhaps you don’t remember child labor.  Working 6 or 7 day weeks.  No benefits.  That is what the working men and women of this country stood for against repressive business owners and won the freedoms that we take for granted today.  You worry about religious institutions being mandated to cover contraception costs.  OK Mr. Davis, who will pay for the unwanted children? The possible risk to women who can’t afford health care when they are pregnant.  And again, what right does any man have in saying what I may do with my body.  When are the people of this country, who are losing their jobs to overseas competitors, going to stand up and say “Enough is Enough’?

Your rhetoric reminds me of a history class that I took many years ago.  The stand against women or any minority.  The belief in a Supreme Being that will lead us through and will fight our battles as long as we let our leaders tell us what to think.  Allowing any business or government to run over the working men and women and tell them they should be happy with what they are given.  You Mr. Davis, of all people, should be at the front of the line to not think as you are, but to see what is really happening.  You see, the place that I am talking about is not the United States of the 21st century.  It was Germany of the 1930’s.

Keith C. Walters, Antioch

Who would argue that teaching is not a demanding vocation? Consider, after, all, the two greatest exponents of the art, Jesus and Socrates. One was crucified, the other poisoned; both in the line of duty.

Not that it takes the ultimate sacrifice, though, to qualify teaching as a challenging line of work. Ask any parent, who play the ultimate teaching role, and they’ll tell you. Kids don’t readily absorb wisdom through their pores. That is why lecturing is mostly an exercise of in one ear, out the other.

After all, we’ve learned that no one size fits all. The best teaching employs multiple approaches with the understanding that no two kids are facsimiles. Then factor into the equation the proven theorem that kids love to do the opposite of what you tell them and you can see the wisdom of the Socratic method. Showing is better than saying but the penultimate success comes from the art of suggesting. A practiced teacher pokes and prods self-discovery. Good teaching is, in the end, doing. Paradoxically, it is learning inside out.

Given, then, that even under the best of circumstances effective teaching is a tricky and nuanced proposition, imagine the dicey mission  we have now put at the doorsteps.  In this global economy and age of of lightning-fast information teachers are asked to deal with kids who wire down when they enter the school portals. They are asked to keep this wired generation engaged while producing minds that seamlessly communicate, collaborate and thrive on critical  thinking. They face this already daunting task while asked to be equal parts disciplinarian, entertainer, coach, social worker, counselor, motivator, sociologist and statistician.

Strikingly, one elementary teacher was telling me that years back it was expected that  you might have one or two ‘problem’ kids in any given class, a child suffering a.d.a. or impulse management or maybe from a troubled home. Control issue, yes, but the juggling came with the territory.

Nowadays, the teacher reported, that classroom management factor typically runs 6 or 8 or 10 kids, with gripping issues such as homelessness, parental unemployment, child abuse, family addictions, latch-key environments, or stressed out commuter parents. That’s a lot of fires to put out.

Broken families? That phrase from another age that once stirred concern now sounds hopelessly old-fashioned in its’ lament. Facts are, more than half of marriages dissolve and some communities have born out of wedlock rates at 70%. As backdrop, Antioch has seen a 250% increase in group homes and a 200% increase in foster homes.

Then throw into this mix the jolt of assimilating  an explosive pace of urbanized migration and transiency; an increasingly permissive, materialistic, violent and instant-gratification addicted society; and a culture where the authority of teachers is casually questioned by students, parents and the ACLU alike. It spells an uphill battle.

Not to mention yearly pink slips and the No Child Left Behind pressures of  test mania; nor the difficulty of doing all of this in a state where classroom size and the staffing ratio of counselors, nurses, psychologists and librarians scrapes the very national bottom.

Tough gig? I say! Hopefully on Tuesday, May 8th, which is the National Day of the Teacher, we thank these unsung heroes and heroines for what they do. Let’s remember that  a teacher in teaching our son teaches our son’s son, that his or her influence has no end but ripples to the shores of eternity.

Walter Ruehlig

Antioch

Ruehlig is a Trustee on the Antioch School Board

Restore the Delta would like to thank  our supporters, the members of the Delta Coalition, members of LAND, the fishing community, and our friends in Discovery Bay for turning out for Tuesday’s (March 13, 2012) legislative hearing.

About 100 people who care about the Delta came out to make sure their objections to the BDCP and the Delta Plan were heard. Contrary to the  repeated comments of Jerry Meral, the Delta is united.

And contrary to the comments of Phil Isenberg, the people in the Delta are just beginning to make themselves heard.

Special thanks to our friends who drove from Berkeley, San Francisco, and San Jose to make public statements on behalf of the Delta.  We appreciate you very much.

We also know that many of you wanted to make statements, or longer statements, and a number of you ended up watching the hearing in the hall or in the cafeteria.  We thank you for being there.  Being there (in bodily form) is a statement in itself.

It’s going to be a long, hard fight.  But step by step, we know that our message of reduced water exports, improved levees, and local water projects to increase water supplies throughout the state, will be the winning message of the day — not just for the Delta, but for all Californians.

Yours in service,

Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Jane Wagner-Tyack, Jessica Iniguez, Brett Baker

Based in Stockton, Restore the Delta is a grassroots campaign committed to making the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta fishable, swimmable, drinkable, and farmable to benefit all of California. For more information visit www.RestoretheDelta.org.

Dear Editor:

More than $2,000 raised

By Walter Ruehlig

A community’s educational positioning is like a three legged stool; it balances by taking the support of students, teachers and parents/community. More so than ever, we can’t do it alone.

Before even contemplating the academic No Child Left Behind challenge let’s start with the financial dilemma facing the Antioch Unified School District and its AUSD has suffered a staggering $74 million in state cuts over the last four years, with no end in sight to the crippling attack.

It’s a heady challenge; needing to train a globally competitive workforce while in the societal throes of an endemic breakdown of the family and simultaneously adapting to the radical transition of youth’s attention to a wired world; all the while addressing tumultuous change with far scanter resources.

The recent arson and vandalism incidents that shut down the Diablo Vista Elementary School kitchen and decimated the playground at Lone Tree Elementary were low blows, then, to an already tottering budget and besieged morale. As if money was free and easy, the tab for some thug’s mindlessness is now running upwards of two hundred thousand dollars.

Monday evening January 8th Take Back Antioch, led by Brittney Gougeon and the Lone Tree Elementary PTA, led by Patty Ward, said no to victimhood mentality. They demonstrated a fighting, proactive community spirit by holding a spaghetti dinner and raffle at the Red Caboose Restaurant to raise funds for the damaged schools,
particularly for enhanced security measures.

Lone Tree Principal Melanie Jones, Diablo Vista Principal Wanda Appell and School Board Trustee Walter Ruehlig addressed a packed crowd that included Mayor Jim Davis, Mayor Pro Tem Wade Harper, Councilman Gary Agopian and School Board President Diane Gibson Gray.

Good company, good food, good cause.

To the editor:

On December 6, 2011, the Board of Supervisors adopted election procedures for Prop 218, a new property-related fee which will be imposed throughout Contra Costa County. This is apparently a parcel tax disguised as a “Clean Water Fee.”

A public hearing to discuss the proposed fee has been scheduled for February 7, 2012. Written notices were allegedly mailed in mid-December 2011 to record owners of each identified parcel (or everyone who owns property in Contra Costa County). I own my home in Antioch, but, to date, have not received my notice. Have you?

At the public hearing, the Board will consider all protests against this fee. If written protests are presented by a majority of property owners, then the fee will not be imposed. Otherwise, ballots will be mailed 45 days prior to election close date of April 6, 2012. A majority vote by mail-in voters is sufficient to impose this new fee.

The election process to approve Prop 218 is a farce. It was designed to avoid detection rather than truly give the people a voice. The county has more than 1 million people. How many are property owners? Could the chambers of the Board of Supervisors accommodate all property owners? Why require written protest at a public hearing? Why the urgency and not wait for a regular election? How much more will election by mail cost? Do we really need to burden people struggling to pay their mortgage with a new tax?

Noticeably, District 3 Supervisor Mary Piepho has immediately started her campaign for approval of Prop 218 through her December 7, 2011 article appearing in Contra Costa Times titled “Delta At Risk And Needs Our Help Now.” She has also hit the campaign trail speaking before the Antioch City Council on the urgent needs of the delta without actually mentioning the Board of Supervisors’ plan to tax property owners with a “Clean Water Fee.”

Once imposed, this tax will be with you for ten years. On February 7, 2012, you have a choice; speak up (and write down your protest); or get out your checkbook.

Cynthia Ruehlig

To the editor:

As a neighborly follow-up to your posting wisely alerting people to be wary of opening a door to strangers, we have had kids going through our neighborhood asking to rake leaves. Having mowed lawns and shoveled snow as a youngster, I am never one to impede youthful enterprise.

Leave it to Beaver, though, is no longer the norm in these less than innocent times. Alarmingly, older kids are sometimes not far behind the avowed rakers. Somehow that makes you wonder.

Just like there is no such thing as a stupid question, there is no such thing as a stupid call to the police. Ask our men and women in blue to be vigilant and maybe drive by. This, after all, is a repeat of the common practice of kids ringing your bell collecting for a basketball league or some such extra-curricular activity. Truth be told, I not only habitually get puzzled at the private club they represent as it seems I have never heard of it.

Worse yet, given the burglary climate, I have bigger fears than contributing to a possible sham. It could be legit; it could be a set-up. It’s easy to feel guilty because we don’t want to doubt people asking for help, but preying on guilt can be a practiced art. Consider the studies that show that as much as 70% and upwards of beggars use their panhandled money for drugs.

You owe it to your family. Better safe than sorry.

I must confess that as a former New Yorker I have had to adjust to casual California where the doors rarely have peepholes and police locks (now called door jammers or braces) are uncommon. Those devices are poles, like long car clubs, that stick in the floor propped into the door. It would take a battering ram to force the door open.

New Yorkers take this stuff seriously and, obviously, jammers are far better than the useless door chain. Those decorative bracelets might stop a seven year old but they, and sorry to say, that $30 lock you are so proud of, are laughable to even a mere 130-pound crack addict with two good legs looking for their next fix.

Advice: If you are a woman and answer the door you might wish to yell upstairs, “honey, it’s some kids” -even if no male is home it sends a message you’re not to be messed with.

Incidentally, I met a fellow at the Golden Gate Bell Ringer and Boys Chorus concert last night who said that nine homes on his block had recently been burglarized. Five of them had previously shrugged off joining the local Neighborhood Watch group. Any wonder why they now sing a different tune?

Walter Ruehlig