Herald letters on Kennewick school’s pride flag debate, wind turbines and free speech | Opinion

Pride flag fuss an aura of Florida

In the Tri-City Herald story, “Will gay pride and other flags be limited in Kennewick schools? Here’s what happened,” let’s be clear: what happened is that Micah Valentine and Gabe Galbraith proposed and wrote this policy as a way to control classroom practices. Diane Sundvik opposed it from the start and Michael Connors and Ron Mabry first voted for the policy and then, upon consideration, voted against it. I for one am glad they did.

Public schools operate under a considerable set of laws, regulations, rules, programs and policies set at the national, state, district and school level. Supervisors in schools monitor what takes place and what shows up on the walls. This was certainly a “policy in search of a problem.” While our classroom walls are now safe from interference, I fear our classroom libraries are not.

Valentine and Galbraith have shown themselves adept at borrowing others’’playbooks. I predict that they will next borrow a page from Ron DeSantis and propose a policy that all classroom books be vetted, books mostly paid for out-of-pocket by teachers that are carefully and expertly curated by teachers. In Florida this has been extremely disruptive and unnecessary. Next time let’s just say “No!”.

Daniel Bell, Kennewick

A note on actual wind turbine jobs

In response to two recent letters supporting the Horse Heaven Hills Wind Project, I would like to enlighten the writers and others who may be swayed by their opinions.

According to Scout’s application, the job numbers are as follows: FTEs for Phase 1, 2a, and 2b are 171, 152 and 136, respectively. The peak employment average would be 290, 267 and 240 for the same three phases — a far cry from the thousands of jobs promised in Scout’s propaganda.

Wind energy is the most unreliable and inefficient of all the clean energy sources. Per the Western Resource Adequacy Program, Washington-based wind power provides the lowest effective capacity of any region in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia, with effective load-carrying capability ranging between 8% to 11% in December through February and less than 22% in July when hydro is at its peak. These time frames are when we need power to heat and cool our homes.

So, if you are trying to replace 98% effective coal and natural gas capacity with 8% to 22% effective wind power, you can see there are significant gaps to make up, depending on the month. Our efforts and money would be much better spent on reliable 24/7 small modular reactors.

Karen M. Brun, Kennewick

Protect freedoms in 1st Amendment

My name is Joseph Christensen, and I am a high school student at Delta High School. I am writing to you both as a school project and to voice my concern on the importance of the freedom of speech.

I believe that freedom of speech is the most crucial part of the Constitution and is something that is highly taken for granted. When studying the Constitution, the fact itself that the founding fathers put it as the First Amendment, before everything else, really stood out to me. As I studied more about our country, I came to realize that this freedom is really the backbone of our society. It contributes heavily to the core principles stated in the preamble (to the Constitution), especially that of Liberty. Without it, democracy could not work.

With the current times, this freedom should be safeguarded more than ever. With new mediums of voicing opinions through technology, many problems related to the control of what can be said have appeared. We as a state, a city and as a people should do our best to protect our liberty and our country by exercising and protecting this founding freedom.

Joseph Christensen, Kennewick