Letters to the editor - June 26

Good reporting?

Dear Editor,

Your reporter, Justyna Tomtas, must have been napping or doing her nails for the first 30 minutes of the June 17th Plains school board meeting. She gave details of reports and quoted a coach and three school employees numerous times. There was no reporting of the Common Core presentation given by Eliza Thomas, Director of the Northwest Educational Cooperative. No mention of the discussion and questions addressed to Ms. Thomas and Jim Holland by concerned citizens over this questionable education program. If your paper is going to write about public meetings then report and print the entire truthful agenda.

Paula Snyder

Plains

Under the table

Dear Editor,

Like many Americans I’m concerned about the 11 million undocumented workers in this country. They are paid less than minimum wage, provided with no benefits and have no rights on the job. While corporations continue to benefit from their labor, it drives down wages for the rest of us. That’s why I am so proud that our Senator, Max Baucus, is working across the aisle to fix the problem. The bill currently being debated in Washington strengthens border security, deals with the backlog of aspiring Americans trying to come to this country legally, and provides a way for undocumented workers to become legal citizens after clearing a background check, learning English and paying back taxes. This pathway to citizenship is not amnesty. It will take time and effort, and will only become available once the border is secure. But it does provide a way for undocumented workers to come out of the shadows and stops bad employers from gaming the broken system by paying workers “under the table”.If that’s not enough, it would also be a huge boon to the economy as it will reduce the deficit by at least $200 billion dollars according to the Congressional Budget Office. Burying our heads in the sand will not solve the problem. The only way we fix the system is by working together to find common sense solutions to these tough issues.

David Coy

DeBorgia, MT

A silent press...

An omission, perhaps unintentional, by a reporter assigned to give an accurate account of a June 17th School Board of Trustees meeting lacks or defies explanation, especially when the news article was titled “School Board Wraps Up the School Year, Looks Into Future.”

Ms. Eliza Sorte Thomas, Director of Northwest Montana Educational Cooperative, visited the Plains School District to align Common Core curriculum pacing guides with administration and faculty. NW MT Educational CoOp encompasses 22 school districts, including Trout Creek. While visiting Plains, Ms. Thomas was slated on the scheduled agenda to give a Common Core Standards presentation at the evening School Board of Trustees meeting. Five citizen taxpayers attended the School Board meeting to learn about Common Core implementation and participate in a discussion session afterward. Yet this significant and noteworthy half-hour occurrence did not even get mentioned in the newspaper report.

Common Core is anything but irrelevant and most definitely a “look into the future.” As documented in Heartland Institute’s May 2013 Policy Brief entitled The Common Core: A Poor Choice for States by Joy Pullmann, one can glean that Common Core State Standards have no proven track record; offer mediocre quality; leaves students unprepared; warrants high costs during tight economic times; releases an anti-knowledge bias - - - evaluates students’ behavior rather than content knowledge - - - creates a loss of local autonomy; and relegates to special interest groups who had a seat at the table in developing Common Core while parents and elected officials were largely shut out.

A copy of the Heartland Institute Policy Brief along with another Pioneer Institute Public Policy Research White Paper was left to share among Ms. Thomas, the entire School Board of Trustees, and school administrators for their review. (Reference documents:

www.heartland.org/commoncore and www.pioneerinstitute.org/commoncore )

Ms. Thomas assured us that Common Core is an efficient and welcomed tool to Montana’s public education system, being adopted and accepted by the Montana Board of Education in November of 2011.

Much gratitude is bestowed to the Plains School District administrators and their Board of Trustees for the teaching moment provided at this June 17th meeting. Additionally, the Plains School District administrators have offered an opportunity to review the Common Core English Language Arts and Math curriculum in late August. I look forward to the prospect of increased knowledge.

Kathleen Hassan

Trout Creek

 Bass fishers and tourneys

It has been brought to my attention that some people don’t understand Bass fisherman and Bass tournaments. I am not much of a writer but I would like to explain some of what we do.

First, all the tourney anglers I know practice catch and release and strive to put all their bass back where they were caught. After their fish are weighed, the fisherman return them to the area they were caught. Sometimes a fish will swallow the hook too deep or rip a gill and die but they are never wasted.

Bass fishermen and women use artificial baits like rubber worms and this don’t swallow them like live worms, usually they will pick the bait up and swim with it. This gives the angler a better chance to hook the fish in the mouth and not the throat.

While fishing in tournaments, all boats must have working live wells so the fish are kept in aerated water and most add special chemicals to help the fish rebuild their slime and stamina. During a contest the anglers are allowed to cull their limit, which is trading a bigger fish for a smaller one with one exception - you can’t cull a dead fish. It has to remain in your bag of fish and you will receive a four ounce penalty for each dead fish in your bag.

A limit or bag or stringer is five fish with a minimum length of 12 inches and there is a penalty for bringing a short fish to the scales. Bags are weighed on certified scales to a hundredth of a pound so a four ounce dead fish or a short fish penalty can move you out of the money in a hurry.

I personally weighed three tournaments this year and had only one dead fish out of all three tournaments. In those three contests there were 160 to 180 fish weighed in and many more culled on the water. I think that’s pretty darn good.

Angler’s help and support our local economy and enjoy all of the services like motels, gas stations, restaurants and bars.

Many anglers bring their families back to our area for their vacations to enjoy camping, boating and relaxing in our beautiful valley. I would like to invite anyone who is interested to come to our next weight in, it will be the 27th and 28th of July in the backyard of the Lakeside Motel in Trout Creek. You may be surprised at the quality of fish that will be brought in. We have had a 6.51 pound largemouth earlier this season and several years ago the state record largemouth was caught in the Tri State tourney (both were released alive and well.) Enjoy our fishery and please practice catch and release.

Ron Wood,

Trout Creek