Letters: Bill guides public school funding in right direction; Keep dogs home for Arts Fest
Bill guides public school funding in right direction
I recently joined my colleagues in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in passing H.B. 2370, a critical first step in the multi-year process of repairing the broken, inadequate and unconstitutional system of funding public education in our commonwealth.
Our plan would make critical and long overdue investments to begin to level the playing field without taking one dime from any district. It also would allow local schools to keep $530 million in local tax dollars and provide over $1 billion in tax relief for overburdened taxpayers. And it would do all of this without a tax increase. This plan delivers for every student in Centre County.
In the upcoming school year, districts that serve Centre County students would receive nearly $4.5 million in new funding, including almost $300,000 in tax relief for Bald Eagle Area School District.
And by reforming excessive payments to underperforming, unaccountable cyber charter schools — who today receive far more than they actually need — our districts would be able to keep $4 million of your tax dollars, while still allowing for school choice.
That would be a total of nearly $8.5 million in funding this year to improve our schools — again, without a tax increase.
Despite much misinformation and even deception, H.B. 2370 is a reasonable, responsible and sustainable path to ensure full and adequate funding for all. It benefits every district, student, community and taxpayer, especially those that need help the most, so that every child in PA — regardless of ZIP code, wealth or anything else — has what they need to succeed.
State Rep. Paul Takac, D-College Township
Keep dogs home for Arts Fest
I am writing to ask that any people who go to the upcoming arts festival refrain from bringing their dogs along with them. Everyone knows that Arts Fest falls on one of the hottest weeks of the year and every year I continually see people bringing out their dogs and torturing them in the heat. Why? There is absolutely no reason to make your pet suffer in the heat like you are. As a matter of fact, if you want to bring your dog with you, please wear a coat — your dog has a fur coat on, so you should wear a coat, too.
Susan Doris, Howard
Israel and Palestine through a domestic violence lens
It is useful to view the ongoing genocide in Gaza — punctuated by last week’s massacre by Israel of 274 Palestinians while rescuing four hostages — through the lens of domestic violence. An unbiased historical account of Israel and Palestine since 1948 clearly reveals a “one up/one down” relationship as observed in domestic violence cases, with Israel immediately initiating a reign of terror on the native population, destroying 500 villages and ethnically cleansing 750,000 Palestinians who were forced to flee their homeland. Israel’s bloody oppression of Arabs within its newly established state boundaries has continued to this day, with occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and other areas in 1967; a siege of Gaza since 2007; and now the genocide, still in progress with over 35,000 Palestinian deaths, mostly women and children. The prevailing U.S./Israeli narrative falsely suggests that the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 was unprovoked, simply the work of mindless terrorists forcing Israel to defend itself. In a domestic violence context, perpetrators frequently use such narratives to demonize and blame their victims. Likewise, Israel is the aggressor in a position of dominant power and control, and has no leg to stand on until it stops murdering thousands of innocent Palestinian families, clears its military out of Gaza, stops the siege and frees Gazans from their open air prison, returns land to Palestinians in the West Bank that has been stolen by settlers, and ends the apartheid against Palestinians by allowing them the same rights as Israeli citizens.
Andrew McKinnon, Pennsylvania Furnace
