Others should follow Unatego BOE's lead
Congratulations are in order for the Unatego Central School District Board of Education and its president Lew Keyser. According to an item in the "Area News Roundup" in the Sept. 18 edition of The Daily Star, the residents of that school district are being "... invited to assist the board of education in tackling the budget issues it is facing in the upcoming years ..."
In fact, according to the president of the Board of Education, "The budget committee is being expanded to include greater participation by district staff and residents ..." Seven meetings have been scheduled between now and December to facilitate this expanded involvement. It is indeed a pleasure to discover that there is at least one Board of Education that understands that the residents of the district are important stakeholders in the school district.
Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case in all districts.
It will be interesting, as the process moves forward in Unatego, to learn how the success of this involvement on the part of district residents will work to strengthen the school district. It will also be interesting if other school districts see the light and follow Unatego's example. I, for one, would encourage my district, Cooperstown Central School District, to follow suit and bring more people into the budget process. Surely there could be no harm in doing so. And the potential benefit to the district could be greater than even I imagine.
Catherine Lake Ellsworth
Cooperstown
Health care reform needs public option
It seems to me that most people go bankrupt and then foreclose on their mortgages because of unpaid medical bills. If you get sick, you can't work; if your employer paid for medical insurance, it gets canceled.
If you've had a hangnail, you're rejected by the scourge of corrupt insurance companies for a pre-existing condition.
Have you noticed how many more warm-and-fuzzy insurance company ads are on television lately? Some of the horror stories are vile and immoral.
Ten years ago, half of the country's personal bankruptcies were caused by medical bills. Bankruptcies caused by medical debt have increased 50 percent.
That is a lot of families, homes, loss, pain, frustration and stress.
So I'd like all of you who are reading this letter to look at the legal classifieds in the back of this newspaper to see if you know anyone who is losing a home _ a big part of the American Dream, a home of one's own.
If you can gently be supportive and find out, perhaps you'll find the empathy that seems to be missing in the health care debate, and e-mail or call your representatives and tell them that we need a public option.
The party of "NO" _ that is, no plan, no compassion, no socialized medicine _ seems to forget that the Veterans Administration and Medicaid and Medicare are "socialized medicine," and the idea of Medicare for all American citizens sounds good to me. It's ironic that many members of Congress who oppose a public option are benefiting from it themselves.
The fact that America is the only industrialized country that doesn't consider health care to be a top priority is a shame, and until you walk in a victim's shoes, please don't believe all the "fair and balanced" media, because it isn't.
Alan Kaplan
Delhi
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