County needs more devoted teachers
Wednesday morning (Sept. 26) at 10:04 am, I received a very odd notification text on my phone that the Terrace Middle School principal was on leave and that it was a confidential personnel matter, but, not to worry, Lakeport Unified School District (LUSD) has this covered.
Frankly, I do not think so. The Terrace Middle School principal, Mrs. Rachel Paarsch has been nothing short of amazing in her time at the school. I have had a very conflicted relationship with this school district (including my wife and I settling a lawsuit against the school district). Recently, Mrs. Paarsch was hired to be the principal of Terrace Middle School and since her hire date, my relationship with the school and its employees has improved immensely.
I credit this mainly to Mrs. Paarsch’ s willingness to reach out and invite our family to be part of the school community and ensure that we felt safe in our interactions with school employees. Our schools need people who give their professional experience as well as giving of themselves. I find Mrs. Paarsch to be a perfect example of that – and I have observed improvements since she arrived in the behavior of the students at the school, the morale of the teachers and staff, and have felt a general positive feeling while on school grounds. Again, her willingness to reach out to my family and invite us back into the school community has been incredibly healing for myself and my children.
Lake County needs more devoted, caring, and passionate people like Mrs. Paarsch. While I applaud LUSD’s forethought and fantastic choice in hiring Mrs. Paarsch as the principal for Terrace Middle School; I strongly question the sudden and unforeseen leave of this experienced, capable, and caring principal from our school district. Though I will not be able to attend the school board meeting October 4 at 6 p.m., I encourage all caring parents and community members to attend and make it clear to the board that this community supports Mrs. Paarsch. If this is how we treat our treasured and hardworking school administrators, who would ever decide to come to this district and teach our students?
—Sarah C. Billig, North Lakeport
American victims of Trump’s tactics
In “Trump Revealed,” The Washington Posts’ biography of Donald Trump, Louis Calomaris, a classmate, notes that Trump never
“studied for an exam” and did just enough “to get through the program” at the University of Pennsylvania. Trump’s major was economics. That Trump should have studied is no where more apparent than his faulty understanding of tariffs.
In several statements, Trump has indicated that he feels tariffs will raise money for the U.S. government. The reality is that China has put
tariffs on American goods in a retaliation. The first American victims are soybean farmers, who cannot sell their crops to China because the
Chinese tariffs make it impossible for them to compete with the cheaper Brazilian soybean farmers. The result: the U.S. government is going to bail out farmers with subsides!
Trump also doesn’t realize that American consumers will be paying much more for products because the tariffs will be passed on to consumers. Coke, for example, has announced that their drinks will now cost more because of the rise in the price of aluminum, caused by the tariffs. Some business will go out of business because they will have an unaffordable supply line that will evaporate their slim profit margins. Trump’s tariffs are-and will be-a disaster for the American economy. Unfortunately, like a truant child, Trump refuses to read or educate himself about anything. (He won’t even read his daily security briefings!)
If Trump does not reverse his tariffs, the U.S. will be in a recession with concomitant inflation by the end of next year. Oddly, the
Republicans have always promoted free trade. Unfortunately, they are now strangely silent. Our legislators are apparently more afraid of Trump than promoting their constituents’ financial welfare. In a line from one of Trump’s Tweets: “How sad!”
—Charles Moton, Lucerne
Valley Fire relief
The two stories on housing – 2017 housing package on p. 1 and Congressional response on p. 5 (Record-Bee, Sept. 27) point to the roles of the State and Congress. What is happening to the housing package for the disaster survivors that State Sen. McGuire went to great lengths to procure for Lake County? How many applied and of these how many have been issued a right to occupy, much less moved in? Is he aware of these figures? And with the large disasters each year following the Valley Fire, what has been the effect on the folks’ eligibility since that pot was designated for the Valley Fire “and other” fires?
—Magdalena Valderrama, Middletown
