He was at his post—where were they?

To the editor:

The letter “The missing dimension” in the March 29 issue of The River Reporter asks the dumb question, “Where was Noel van Swol?”

Everyone knows that for seven years Mr. van Swol was the taxpayers’ watchdog at almost every Sullivan West board meeting, warning of the mismanagement and impending collapse of our school district and uncovering and spelling out exactly what was going wrong when no one else cared.

Since taking office in July, Mr. van Swol has been at all the Sullivan West board meetings, budget workshops, executive sessions and committee meetings, working late into the night with the new board to dig us out of this mess.

The real question is, where were Sullivan West board member Rick Lander and former Sullivan West board president Richard Sandler while Sullivan West crashed and burned financially?

Asleep at the switch, that’s where.

Bottled water: an ecological boondoggle

To the editor:

What does bottled water have to do with trying to live together peacefully on this planet we love and need so much? I’ll give you a hint. Supplying us Americans with plastic water bottles for one year consumes more than 47 million gallons of oil, according to the Container Recycling Institute.

That is like adding 100,000 cars’ exhaust (1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide) to our already globally warmed atmosphere each year. In addition, there is all the exhaust gas emitted getting the bottles distributed and recycled.

So what does this have to do with peace? Plastic and fuel are made from oil and oil and peace are intimately related, as you probably have noticed. The less oil we consume to produce its myriad products and the more we turn to alternative forms of energy, the less dependent our country is on oil and the need our government feels to make war to control oil supplies.

Sullivan West needs a summer school program

To the editor:

There has been a lot of discussion about how the Sullivan West school board should use extra money from the fund balance and from anticipated additional state aid for next year. I have a suggestion.

Instead of opening buildings that the student enrollment does not support, I would suggest that the district invest in a summer school program for elementary children. It would help students maintain and even increase their skill level during the summer months so they are stronger students for the next school year. Students participating in a summer program feel more confident as they enter the next school year because they know they have made academic progress during the summer months.

How does the school benefit? First of all, as teachers are making decisions to pass or fail students in June, they would know that the summer school program is available for students. Teachers might believe that a little boost during the summer might be just what the student needs to be able to handle the next grade level. Recommending that a student attend summer school so he or she can enter the next grade is a better option than failing a student for the year and requiring him or her to repeat the grade.

The school also benefits because the failure rate of Sullivan West elementary students would decrease with this additional academic support. We all know how closely the New York State Education Department is keeping tabs on student performance, and even penalizing school districts if they are not satisfied with the achievement of the district’s students. Also, a summer school program is likely to help a student perform better on required state tests, another area that the state education department monitors closely.

Finally, do not forget the benefit of a summer school program to the taxpayer. When a student fails a grade level, the economic cost of the failure falls on the taxpayer. The taxpayer must pay for another whole year of education for that student.

Let’s get behind a summer school program for Sullivan West elementary students. A summer school program is a win-win-win situation—for the students, the school district and the taxpayers.