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Ry A oT Te Cr A ER ad - A SCN 23am RT PR A EIN Ee "A Family Tradition for 132 Years" PORT PERRY STAR - Tuesday, September 29, 1998 - 7 LETTERS Government's requirements mean less time for students To the Editor: This is in response to Frank Harris' letter to the editor, which was a reply to my own. There are some issues, sir, that you are not fully aware of. For you, and others who perhaps have not been in a publicly run school for a few years, 1 will offer some insight. To begin, the stats that you referred to as "proof" that Ontario teachers teach less time than others were not conclusive. This is mainly due to the fact that the definition of "teaching time" varies from province to province and country to country. To compare these, the variables affecting it (yard supervision, hall duty, lunch room duty, on-calls, etc.) would have to be stated and clearly controlled in order for the data to be reliable. Second, the money spent by the gov- ernment for commercials and ads is your money - paid for through taxes. The money spent by the teachers' fed- erations comes from the teachers them- selves, and not the taxpayers. Third, the books purchased for Ontario schools had to be on the. approved list of texts issued by the Ontario education ministry. These books also had to be bought through the ministry and not directly from the publisher. Some of the texts would have been cheaper if they could have been bought directly. Schools were given a few days in June to make decisions for purchasing these materials. In remote areas, it was difficult to preview texts before ordering. These books, once in the schools, could not be returned if they were not suitable, since they had the trillium stamp on them (another direc- tive from the government). Don't cast blame on the teachers for mishandling text book money. Ask your MPP why it was handled in this way. Why couldn't we buy dictionaries from Coles for half the price? Last, teachers may be in front of students for 1,250 to 1,500 minutes every six-day cycle, but they work much more. Writing report cards, marking, interviewing students and parents, returning phone calls, plan- ning, researching units and discipline, etc., does not occur in front of the class. It 1s before and after regular hours, during prep time, on weekends and holidays that these extra activities occur. Before informed decisions can be made, we all need to get the facts - all of the facts - and not just the trickle of information others want us to receive. If the government wants to "put chil- dren first," explain how their "improve- ments" do not help to increase the learning time for them. It just allows for more courses to be delivered by fewer teachers. This will result in less time per stu- dent and more "must dos" to be com- pleted during what could be "extra curricular time." H. Parsons, Blackstock System failed this child Greetings from the 'Sludge Capital with learning disability I have four children in the school system, three in ele- mentary and one in high school. Cow My son is the youngest. For three years now, he has been pushed around from school to school because he has a learn- ing disability. The Durham School Board says they are out for the best interest for my son. That is such a joke. A week before school I was told my son wasn't registered at a school. | i When my son was in Grade 1, my husband and I told the teacher he had a problem. She told us that he was a boy, and they develop more slowly. The school just kept pushing him through until Grade 2, when his teacher agreed with me that there was a problem. He was tested, and the next year he was sent to Uxbridge Ptimary Diagnostic. He did fairly well there, but at the end of that year I found out that he was too old to continue. I had been told he would be able to stay there for at least two years. So then he was sent to Prince Albert P.S., Primary Diagnostic. Again he did fairly well, but being sent off again took its toll on him. His behav- ior changed from that of a sweet boy to a very upset young man. It is very hard for a child to make friends and then leave, go to another school and start all over again. Next they wanted him to go to Greenbank P.S., yet when he left his home school I told the board that I didn't want him having to travel so far. The first week of school I was told he wasn't registered at any school, and that he would have to be retested because he was supposed to go to R.H. Cornish, but he is too young for that class. He eventually was placed in R.H. Cornish. So as far as I'm concerned when the board says they are looking out for your child's best interest, be extremely careful or your child will be crying and saying he isn't wanted by anyone. Dawna Armstrong, Nestleton To the Editor: . I am writing to you concerning the Soil Enrichment Program. I am appalled that this program has been allowed to continue this long, and the idea of it proceeding for another five years scares me to death. I am a resident of Durham Region, the Sludge Capital of Ontario, where more than 100,000 tonnes of Paper Sludge is disposed of each year. Recently I learned that up until January of this year, a chemical called nonalphenol ethox- alate was present in the sludge. This chemical, used in the recycling process, mimics hormones and therefore has caused birth defects in local livestock. How long will it be before we, the residents of Durham Region, start to feel the impact of the tonnes of hazardous waste dumped on us each year? To make matters worse, there are numerous accounts of illegal dumping on pas- ture land, where cattle are free to eat from the toxic buffet set before them. This is not recycling, this is waste disposal, and it affects everyone. Agricultural land should be preserved for the generations to come, not poisoned so the government can save money by not taking it to a landfill. If this practice continues soon the soil, water and food we eat will be contaminated. The Ministry of the Environment can not stand by and let this happen, something has to be done. The Ministry of the Environment has to discontinue the Soil Enrichmeént Program immediately. Meghan Behr, Cannington Bigger government isn't a better one To the Editor: Bigger is not better. In government the possibility of fraud and corruption is greater, as there are fewer ways to analyze and audit management of the system. Durham Region 1s an example of irresponsible government. Durham taxes and debt are increasing and are out of control in the same manner as Ontario Hydro's. Downloading? The real downloading is tak- ing place internally by using our taxes-and our water rates to pay for new water and sewer plants for future development. The long-standing polices of self pay are being cir- cumvented in order to put your tax dollars to work for these wealthy private companies. This is why our tax bills are going up. The Ajax plant and the Brooklin extension are just two of many examples. It is the responsibility of regional councillors to explain and correct these situations. Ask your regional councillor to explain why we are paying these extra costs. Doug Wilson, Oshawa Random Jottings by J. Peter Hvidsten Did the earth move for you last week? Okay, did you feel the tremor last week? | didn't, but a number of the staff here at the Star did, and my kids experienced the shake as well. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it was an earthquake, centred in Ohio just before 4 p.m. last Friday. Apparently the quake registered about 5.4 on the Richter scale in Ohio, but around 2 in southern Ontario. In our house, the kids say they noticed a slight tremor, saw the lamp on a table shake and heard a couple of framed photographs on a desk fall over. As for me, | never felt a thing! Reading the newspaper Saturday morning, | was surprised to learn that the Lake Scugog area is locat- ed on one of two fault lines in southern Ontario. The first line runs from Georgian Bay, passing close to Pickering and then on to western New York. The second runs from the Lake Scugog area to Pickering and south around Lake Erie. So while an earthquake in this area is not com- mon -- the last one was about five years ago -- we can expect them from time to time, according to geologists. In researching the history of the area, | came across these three dates when earthquakes were reported. 1914 - February: Reports of an earthquake, although not severe. 1925 - March: Earthquake shook Port Perry about 9:22 p.m. Saturday evening. Around town floors heave, dishes fall, but no real damage as the quake's epicentre was over 300 miles away in Quebec. 1929 - August: Earthquake tremors were felt in Port Perry for about 20 minutes, although very little damage was reported. While | didn't feel last week's tremor, it did bring back memories of a couple of decades ago, when Nancy and | were vacationing in the Caribbean. We had settled in for the evening, and were just relaxing when the entire room began to shake. Pictures popped off the wall, a chair fell over and we jumped to our feet and stared at each other, not knowing what was going on or what to do. Having never experienced anything like that before, it took a few seconds for it to register what was happening. Finally we ran for the door and outside to the safety of the groomed lawn below us, joining hun- dreds of others who had also vacated their rooms for the safety of the great outdoors. The earthquake didn't last very long, but it sure gave us a scare at the time. We found out later that earthquakes in this area of the world are not unusu- al, and are just part of life in the tropics. As for our most recent quake, it could be just a warning of things to come, according to geologists who say it's a break in the Earth's crust and "chances are it will move again in the future."