to the editor

November 11th, 2011

To the Editor;

My daughter attends Madison High School in Northeast Portland. She has to go to school everyday with layers on because the school has broken boilers and there is no heat in several classrooms. This has been a problem since last year. On top of this we had to request a special curriculum for our daughter because the English class is to easy and she has already read the assigned text, in last years English class. Portland closed Marshall High School, at the end of last year, and moved a little more than 700 students to Madison in order to save money. This has raised the classroom totals to as many as 30 to 40 students to one teacher in some classes. Meanwhile in Salem our elected representatives continue to talk about cutting the budget with no additional talk about raising taxes or finding new sources of revenue. sn’t it about time we begin talking about what we need to fund instead of continually talking about what we need to cut. As a society we need to meet some basic societal needs and one of those is the education of our children. It’s time we as a community step up and fund the programs that teach our youngest, take care of our oldest and weakest, and protect the rest of us. We as a community need to remember what is most important and find the will and the way to take care of these things.

Jason Murray