MAILBAG - April 24, 2007

Many suffered from sick-out

Re: “Teachers call in sick over pay dispute,” April 21. First, Union President Jim Rogers says the union did not endorse the sick-out. Yet, the largest number of “sick” teachers came from Newport Harbor High School, where the Union’s representative Tony Zeddies, was among the 29 “sickies.” An interesting coincidence.

Zeddies was quoted as saying “the sacrifice was worth it.” The sacrifice came from the students who lost schooling, the parents who paid for schooling that was lost, the schools that lost dollars from the state, and the public that lost service they are paying for.

These teachers should be expected to submit a doctor’s letter proving their illness before receiving any pay for the lost day.

DOUGLAS M. WOOD

Newport Beach

District should keep salary promise

Another question that could be asked, besides whether it’s appropriate for teachers to protest via a sick-out, is: Is it appropriate for a district to not keep a salary promise for seven years and then ask its teachers to wait another four years to reach the salary promise?

I have taught in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District for 14 years. I have taught through embezzlement, when the teachers paid for the mistakes of administration by losing their 2% raise. I have taught through a bankruptcy and six years with no raise. The question is, does this district want to retain quality teachers or watch them leave in droves to other districts that do value their teachers by compensating them appropriately?

And since when is 50 teachers out of 1,200 considered “mass?” (“Teachers call in sick over pay dispute,” April 21). Could you have checked your dictionary for some other adjectives?

Maybe “a small minority” of teachers are so frustrated by the district’s lack of keeping its promise that they’re “sick” about it.

Please support the teachers of this district who teach and care for your children.

PAULA GIBBONS

Fountain Valley

Teachers deserve better salaries

It will always remain a mystery to me why we seem to feel that those two professions (teachers and child caretakers) to whom we trust our most precious responsibilities — our children — should live in poverty and consider it a privilege.

If our teachers can’t get through to administrators that they deserve to be paid at least what other county school districts are paying their teachers (in one of the wealthiest school districts, no less), of course they should resort to whatever means necessary to attract attention to their plight! As a community we should be ashamed of ourselves!

P.S. If asked whether my husband and I would be willing to pay more taxes to accomplish a pay raise for our teachers, we resoundingly say “yes.”

NORA LEHMAN

Newport Beach

City hall debate has

gone on too long

I join Tom Johnson in urging the Newport Beach City Council to take an objective, educated and responsive position, to take advantage of the great opportunity we have to locate a civic center adjacent to our renowned Newport Beach Library.

Having served on the City Council (albeit in the older days when my campaign for election cost less than $2,000), I strongly recommend using the wisdom that derives from objective staff briefings and background information that arrives with the meeting agenda.

Rather than pandering to certain political constituencies, looking toward the next expensive election, a city council has a singular role for leadership in a municipality based on its depth of information rarely available to the electorate.

As the headline in the Daily Pilot suggests, indeed, “residents tire of the long debate over city hall location.” (“Residents tire of long debate over city hall location,” April 11). The natives are restless!

Having lived in Newport Beach for 52 years and always being civically observant if not participatory, I cannot remember an issue that has been more protracted, studied and preliminarily financed with studies that come to no avail but that have wasted gross amounts of our tax dollars.

As a former City Council member, my brickbats are selective and few over the intervening years (since 1974-78) but, hopefully, well-researched and well-aimed.

The first step I recommend is to return the $600,000 to the much-heralded “anonymous donor.” His/her recommendations, if implemented, would cost more than $3 million. I submit that not only are the proposed plans wasteful, but they are also inadequate. For example, is a 68-seat amphitheater of any value to a city of our size? Do we need a costly footbridge to nowhere? That’s a big bargain for an “anonymous donor” at taxpayers’ expense!

What about the naming opportunity for this “anonymous donor?” Are the Parks, Beaches and Recreation Commission and the City Council aware of adopted City Council policy: “Donors may receive naming rights on capital improvement projects for which any donation matches or exceeds 75% of the total budgeted cost for the area benefiting from the donations. All such donations will be submitted to the City Council for acceptance of the donation and the name to be applied to the project in keeping with City Council policy B-9 Naming of City Parks and Facilities.”

Now is the time for objective City Council leadership. We own the 11 acres above the library. Why should we pay for acquisition of another site? Why should we pay for a costly election when we have the poignant opportunity to create a civic center worthy of the historic and unique background of the city of Newport Beach?

City Council members must also pay attention to scientific polling data that reveals that a majority of the electorate want a civic center adjacent to the library in Newport Center, which is now the center of our great city.

Now is the time to come to the aid of our city!

LUCILLE KUEHN

Corona del Mar

Who’s doing the slurring?

Daily Pilot editor Tony Dodero in his April 17 column (From the Newsroom, “Editors clean up style, not slurs”), attempts to make the point that any editing of letters submitted by readers is done only to clean up “grammatical and style errors.” Dodero is responding to a comment that Costa Mesa council member Eric Bever made online in response to Daily Pilot Publisher Tom Johnson’s Fair Game column, “The great, communicating councilman.”

Johnson quoted Bever as saying “socialist left-wingers want government to be bigger and to do everything for everybody.” Bever complained that his words had been changed from “socialistic Left” to “socialistic left wingers.”

Dodero claims he can’t understand what Bever was complaining about and quoted both Bever’s actual comments and the edited version that ran in the Daily Pilot.

I realize I’m out of my league to take on editors and the publisher of the Daily Pilot, but here goes anyway.

Tony Dodero contends that an editor told him that he had changed Eric Bever’s words in his commentary from “socialist left” to “socialistic left-wingers,” largely “to conform with style and grammar rules.”

Bever actually said “socialistic Left” (not socialist left) in his original version. Socialistic Left denotes an ideology or political point of view as opposed to persons who hold it. On the other hand, “socialistic left-wingers” in the edited version implies a reference to a group of persons.

Putting a face on “socialistic Left” by changing it to “socialistic left-wingers” causes a shift in the reader’s mind and puts the emphasis on persons rather than on an ideology or political point of view. One can disagree with, or even deplore, an ideology or political point of view without demeaning or slurring those who hold it.

What grammatical error did the editor correct? “Socialistic Left” is a phrase with an adjective and a noun, so what “rule of grammar” does it violate? And how does “socialistic left-wingers” “conform with style” more than “socialistic Left?” It begs the question: Was the editing actually done to cast a negative shadow over Eric Bever and not simply to conform with either “style” or “grammar rules”?

The odd thing about this entire foray is that Tony Dodero’s column is based on Eric Bever’s response in an online blog to Tom Johnson’s column. A column which, incidentally, also cast Eric Bever in an unfavorable light, characterizing him as stumbling, bumbling, contradicting himself, stereotyping and even racist by implying that Bever has yet to “take on an issue that doesn’t involve race issues or race implications.”

Who’s doing the slurring here anyway? Does the Pilot consider Eric Bever such a threat to its agenda that it takes an editor and the publisher to bash him?

Why not just focus on and report — and yes, even express an opinion on the issues — and let readers draw their own conclusions?

I would venture to say that those online blogs do not have a very wide readership as compared to the print version of the paper, so why base an entire front-page column on something taken from one? About that “style or grammar rules” thing, Johnson’s column ends with the one-word sentence, “Thankfully,” which, of course, is only an adverb and not a sentence at all.

ILA JOHNSON

Costa Mesa