Letters to the Editor: Feb. 4, 2022
Praise for Martin County schools’ math books and material adoption team
It was a pleasure to serve on the Instructional Materials Review Team headed by Steve Layson, coordinator of math, with members Denise Harrison and Mangai Neelavannan, district math coaches, along with input from teachers and administrators. The public was also invited to review the instructional materials. I witnessed the dedication of the team to assure that the best mathematics and materials were comprehensively reviewed prior to being presented to the school board for consideration of adoption.
The IMRT deserves kudos for the detailed process of reviewing K-12 mathematics and materials from various publishers by using a comprehensive rubric that included the following headings: Content, Teacher Support, Materials, Instruction, Addressing Needs of All Learners, Assessment, Format/Organization, and Digital Component. By utilizing the rubric, the IMRT was able to narrow down publishers that met all of the required criteria for mathematics and materials. The finalists presented their mathematics and materials to the math teachers and administrators, which offered an opportunity for further questions and clarification. After each presentation, the IMRT, teachers, and administrators were allowed to evaluate and score each publisher. The scores were tallied and the top two finalists were chosen.
Martin County students are fortunate to have teachers K-12 who collaborated to ensure that mathematics and materials would benefit all learners.
Pam Ouellette, Jensen Beach
Legislature is in session: Look out for your pocketbook — and environment
The Florida Legislature is in session. This means threats to your pocketbook and our environment are coming thick and heavy. With shameless disregard for the interests of their constituents, our elected representatives have proposed a raft of bills which would benefit only the privileged few at the expense of the rest of us.
Among these are Renewable Energy Generation (SB 1024) which would end net metering for rooftop solar homeowners and businesses, thereby reducing the credits homeowners get for generating excess energy. This would make investing in solar much less attractive at a time when the need for creating incentives for clean energy production is critical.
Another misguided bill, sponsored, I'm sorry to say, by our own Rep. Toby Overdorf, is HB 349 (SB 198) which would create seagrass mitigation banks. This would allow developers to destroy seagrass in one area and then write a check to plant seagrass elsewhere, perhaps hundreds of miles away. This bill would promote even further overdevelopment of our coastal areas, and it would be a death sentence for the manatees who rely on seagrass as the primary component of their diet. Seagrass destruction is largely responsible for the deaths of 1100 manatees last year.
Two more bills, SB 620 and SB 280, would allow private business to sue over local government efforts to control growth. The inevitable result of such legislation would be capitulation of local government to the greed of developers and the conversion of wetlands and green spaces to the urban jungle that already blights so much of South Florida.
I urge everyone to contact our elected representatives to oppose these scandalous attacks on the public interest. Their sworn responsibility is to protect the interests of Florida citizens, not to promote the narrow profit motives of the few.
Sam Hay, Stuart
We will get through the pandemic, but political divisiveness is a problem
In response to George Phipps' Jan. 25 letter: I respectfully disagree with his assessment of the United States’ present state of affairs. The economy is expanding at the fastest rate in 40 years (2.3% in 2017, 5.7% currently). Unemployment is steadily falling.
Inflation has adversely affected us all, but I question how much President Biden is to blame. Inflation is a global occurrence in the European Union, Canada, Turkey, South Korea, and many other countries. The cause is the disruption of the the supply chain, as well as increased consumer demand. Due to the U.S. stimulus package, people had more purchasing power, thus emptier shelves and higher prices. Subjectively, I have noticed some items missing from stores, but not nearly as many as at the beginning of the pandemic. There is plenty of toilet paper now. Progress! In terms of stimulus checks, this benefit expired before 2022. So I don't believe people are sitting home collecting free money.
I wonder what further actions on COVID-19 President Biden could take. Our best weapon, vaccines, are available everywhere. Biden recently made home test kits available though the USPS. It took me 30 seconds to order them online. He advocates for proven techniques to lessen the viral spread. The problem is that the virus is seen as political, and not as a potentially lethal public health issue. The Guardian reported that as of December 2021, 91% of Democrats have been vaccinated, 60% of Republicans. COVID-19 is mutating. Anxious, misguided people are believing conspiracy theories. The ultra-right Supreme Court ignorantly shot down a vaccine mandate.
I regularly observe people in public ignoring their civic duty in keeping others safe. But I do believe we will eventually get through this pandemic. It's more likely that divisiveness will take this country down.
Lisa Hansen, Vero Beach
This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Letters to the Editor: Feb. 4, 2022
