Letters to the editor: Plan to use Ottawa as a model should frighten all of us

DeShone pushing DeVos agenda

Ms. DeShone’s guest column is both deceptive and disingenuous. She is the executive director of the Great Lakes Education Project, a front organization funded by Betsy DeVos, for those advocating the use of state tax dollars to fund private schools, religious schools, and schools for the children of wealthy families.

More: My Take: New education dept puts bigger bureaucracy between students, success

Ms. DeShone is using other means to implement DeVos’s Michigan Constitutional initiative to use public funds to support private schools, an initiative that was roundly defeated by Michigan voters. The tutoring programs, reading scholarships, and opportunity scholarships she touts would strip money from public schools and further exacerbate the “catastrophic learning loss” that she claims concerns her.

Of course, Michigan reading and math scores fell after COVID-19, as did those of other states, and yes it was in part due to school closures and remote learning. But students live with high-risk parents and siblings, and vulnerable grandparents whose lives were saved, and properly funded and managed public schools can help students make up those losses.

What can’t be remediated is a student’s loss of a beloved parent, sibling, or grandparent, which most definitely effects student academic performance resulting in “catastrophic learning loss.” To not understand this is either deliberate ignorance, callous indifference, or both Ms. DeShone makes much of “empowering parents,” of parental control of their children’s education. Phrases such as “nobody knows better what our kids need to succeed than their parents” sound appealing until you realize that they are false flags allowing parents to block learning about such things as minority history and culture, LGBT+ issues, science-driven research, other religions, and sex education that helps children avoid sexual predators.

Daily in Ottawa County, we see the educational destruction threatened by “empowered parents” who want to institute Florida-type education policies — policies that put children at an educational competitive disadvantage.

Is this what we want for our children? I think not.

Joseph Abramajtys

Jenison

Playtime is hazardous to my health

Anytime I play my personal bodily health is at risk. I was reminded of the fact this week as I was playing with one of my young granddaughters and ended up with a slice cut to my lower lip. It was either her fingernail or my own was the culprit. When things become bloody, it doesn’t matter who’s at fault. Stopping the red flow is the immediate need. I found the lip is one of the most difficult locations to place a Band-Aid.

I was 9 when we played tag outside our Ludington, Michigan, house one evening. The free spot was located at an outside corner basement green door. I came around one side trying to reach the free spot before being tagged. The one who was "it" came around the other side. The front of my head smacked into the top of his head and the place above one of my eyes let go with a torrent of red.

My dad quickly put a towel over my injured eye and took me to Doc Boone’s home office. I overheard Doc tell my dad, “It's a good thing you put this towel over your eye. If he had lost any of the fluid from his eye he might have been blinded.” I guess the embarrassment of baby blue stitches was better than losing the sight of this one eye.

When I tried to play basketball with my son, I received a painful welt as his knee came into contact with my leg. I now personally understand Clint Eastwood’s famous "Dirty Harry" words: “A man’s gotta know his limitations.”

It did not matter my age, whether I was a young, middle aged or old, playtime many times ended with a hazardous incident. And the incident was usually my fault.

In the future when one of my granddaughters or one of my kids asks me to play, I will need to respond: “I will play in just a minute, after I get my full-body protective gear on.” I’ll probably cut myself just putting the protective gear on!

Keith J. Welch

Holland

Plan to use Ottawa as a model should frighten all of us

The Sentinel headline “Gibbs refuses to name executive aide in public” should get the attention of taxpayers of Ottawa County. I attended a county commission meeting where Malinda Pego, MIGOP co-chair from Muskegon, praised Mr. Moss and Gibbs, declaring Ottawa a “model” for the rest of the state. Take a look at the model.

More: Gibbs refuses to name executive aide in public. Here's who he is

The MIGOP is effectively broke, the Detroit News reported “the Michigan Republican Party has about $93,000 in its bank account 16 months before the 2024 election.” Moss placed Karamo’s name into nomination for chair of the MIGOP, and Mr. Studebaker, current chief of staff to Karamo was the chair of Ottawa Republicans. Gibbs asked for and received an increase of over $30,000 for the “expanded” senior executive role, bringing the compensation package to $132,000. Commissioners transferred $110,000 from the contingency fund to allow Kallman Legal Group to bill at $4,000 over what they had been billing monthly. Since taking office, the OI-controlled board has reduced the contingency fund from $750,000 to $36,000, and spent $400,000 in severance.

Gibbs hired Jordan Epperson, of St. Claire County, to fill the aide position. Epperson is 23 years old, no experience in county government, but is politically connected to MIGOP operatives such as Meshawn Maddock, Neil Friske and Steve Carra. Mr. Gibbs was hired with no experience in administering county government, but was politically connected. Kallman Legal is connected to Moss and the Great Lakes Justice Center, a right-wing group. The MIGOP appears to be using Ottawa County as a jobs program for cronies. Will we follow the MIGOP model and spend ourselves into the ground? There must be a smoke-filled room somewhere at Fillmore.

Kim Nagy

Jenison

Ottawa Impact is making us a laughing stock

Three words sum up what's wrong in Ottawa County today: transparency, hypocrisy and incompetence. We have none of the first, and we are inundated with the second and third. Under the leadership of Joe Moss and his Ottawa Impact cohorts, along with John Gibbs, our county has gone from being one of the best-run government entities in the state to being almost a laughing stock. The next election can't come soon enough.

Albert Bell

Holland

From body man to chief of staff

County Administrator Gibbs embarrassed himself again at a county commission meeting by revealing he had actually hired someone for the senior executive aide position, but refused to reveal the name of the person, saying he didn’t want it “to become a public spectacle.”

As if, first of all, he would be able to keep the name secret. But second of all, why would any hire, properly conducted, become a “public spectacle?” Now that The Sentinel has quickly uncovered the name, we can see why he was worried.

When Gibbs first made his pitch for the upgraded position, he claimed he needed it, not because he was unable to do the job for which he was hired (though he described it as “drinking from a fire hose”), but because he was more “hands on” than the previous administrator(s). Such a person would take notes, keep his calendar, attend to his every busy need, “like a body man.” He took such ridicule for that description that he’s now changed the comparison to a “chief of staff.” Well, chiefs of staff are usually very accomplished people, with lots of experience, savvy, people skills, etc., because, after all, a chief of staff is second in command — the person who would keep the whole 1,400-person county operation running.

Who does he hire? Jordan Epperson, a 23-year-old graduate of MSU, who, regardless of education, is too young to have acquired the experience needed for a chief of staff job. Epperson seems most notable for embracing every far-right conspiracy theory that surfaces and his unrestrained use of provocative words like “retard.” It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out as he exercises his role as “chief of staff.”

“Public spectacle,” indeed!

James Dana

Grand Haven

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Letters to the editor: Plan to use Ottawa as a model should frighten all of us