After reading one of the suggestions made by the budget advisory committee from the Santa Fe Public Schools, I was startled and sad. This is our children's education we are talking about.

Increasing class size to 27 in the high schools and/or laying off teachers is short-sighted and embarrassing to Santa Fe. Many of the persons on this committee have been teachers themselves and must realize the impossibility of actually teaching or learning in a classroom so large.

What are we thinking; or are we thinking? These children are our future, and they will need the very best education to be able to lead our city and this country. It is little wonder that we have high dropout rates and teachers resigning for less stressful positions. I hope this committee will be able to come up with less severe suggestions at future meetings.


Social disconnect

"Lily-livered" is the best adjective I can think of to describe New Mexico legislators. To refuse to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy in the state and to reinstate the food tax are acts of cowardice of the first order. What has happened to our frontier spirit, in which we shared in the welfare of each other for survival (when we weren't holocausting Natives).

Nothing has really changed; we still need each other, but greed and its legacy of corruption have erased our social connections. The Legislature should be deeply ashamed of itself. None of them should count on my vote.


Don't punish workers

A March 2 letter, "Put state on diet," by Bill Lyne proposes a $100,000 cap on salaries for public servants. I wonder if he would agree to a cap on CEO salary/stock options in cases where private companies get contracts with the government and are paid with taxpayer money?

In a related issue, a new libertarian talking point has been to complain that federal employees are still receiving their full salaries and benefits during this economic crisis. Can you believe these people? They work to kill regulation on big business, to kill unions, and then, when corporate greed runs the country into the ground, they complain that some people still have enough to live on!

Don't they realize that people have to have money to spend in order for the economy to grow?


Not my Toyota

The ad in your paper placed by a law firm is malevolent as it lists spuriously Toyotas not likely at all to be recalled. For example, the Prius is mentioned generically. No year. Only the 2010 Prius has had trouble with the mats. I checked immediately because I have been the very happy driver of a 2005 Prius. This is false advertising.


Media's mistake

Regarding your Feb. 28 article "Climate-change fervor cools amid disputed science," some of the blame has to be put on the media's shoulders for not being able to express the concepts clearly to the public. In the urge to simplify ideas, the media seized on the term "global warming" as the centerpiece of the discussion.

Indeed, there are dramatic examples of ice shelves breaking off the polar masses. But what is really going on? The answer is that increased greenhouse gasses (mostly CO2) are accumulating in our atmosphere. Sunlight entering our atmosphere cannot as easily bounce back out. This means there is more overall energy in our planetary system, resulting in stormier storms, colder colds, drier droughts and all the other extremes we are already experiencing. In the long term, planetary temperature increase is coming, but for now climate extremes are already upon us. I wish the media could explain this better.


Put LANL on it

For years I have observed teams of men with clipboards, eyes turned skyward, observing the endless leaks that plague the Genoveva Chávez Community Center. This facility is a Santa Fe treasure. Visitors are impressed, and members are enthusiastic.

But as each clipboard-wielding team studies the problem of a leaky roof and offers the "final solution," the building floors remain a repository for water buckets.Isn't it about time that the problem be turned over to the brilliant minds at Los Alamos National Laboratory instead of continuing the cash drain of fruitless efforts? More delays in solving the drip, drip, dripping can only create more damage and higher repair costs.

I'll put my money on the lab guys and urge the city to stop shelling out scarce dollars to the clipboarders.