Disruptive kids need to be in separate schools
The recent report of the Governor's Commission on Disruptive Youth noted that 23,000 students in Baltimore City were suspended in the 1992-1993 school year for attacking fellow students or teachers, while 2,300 were kicked out of school for weapons and explosive violations.
Teachers and students are being killed and students are dropping out of school for fear of getting hurt. It is obvious that the issue of making the public schools safer and more orderly needs to be recognized and addressed by citizens and followed through with legislation.
If separate schools for disruptive students existed, perhaps many of the problems involving violent students would be diminished.
Once a student is suspended a given number of times or caught carrying weapons, the student should be expelled and automatically transferred to a separate school for disruptive students.
No student should have to be faced with the alternative of getting an education or staying alive. Students should not have to constantly worry about whether or not they will make it through a day in school without being harmed.
This matter is also of great concern to parents. Many parents cannot afford private schools and are left with no other alternative to the public schools.
Since not everyone has the privilege of getting the education they want from the institution they want, getting an education from public schools should be made as uncomplicated as
possible.
No student should be deprived of an education. Having a separate school for destructive, violent students is essential.
Laronda C. Timmons
Baltimore
Late mail
If our mail continues to arrive later and later, it'll be tomorrow. And they plan to raise the price of stamps next year! What will they think of next? You don't suppose it would be privatization?
M. H. van den Berg
Baltimore
Landlord rights
I would like to set the record straight on the 1991 nuisance abatement law in Baltimore. Landlords should not be required to police their tenants, nor should they be punished for the Police Department's ineptitude and lack of commitment.
As a Baltimore landlord, I have been held captive by tenants on Section 8 who receive $1,000 a month in food stamps and a like sum in cash but refuse to pay rent.
For a landlord to contact Section 8 officials or the Police Department for remedies of a tenant problem is virtually impossible.
I personally have heard horror stories from prospective tenants who ask if Section 8 has moved drug dealers into the neighborhood from another area. Everyone knows the drug dealers, even Section 8 and the police.
Section 8 and the Police Department are totally supported by taxes and the taxpayers. Landlords are taxpayers (not takers), and as such these public agencies should support and protect landlords, not victimize them as they do now.
Richard C. Fleig Sr.
Pasadena
Smog controls
TTC
In your Oct. 18 editorial on smog control, you misstate the relative importance of hydrocarbon controls and nitrogen oxide controls in combating smog. The effectiveness of controls depends on the ratio of these two pollutants in the air. Nitrogen oxide emissions in the absence of hydrocarbons do not result in net increases of ozone.
In fact, preliminary studies show that reducing nitrogen oxides could actually be counterproductive in Baltimore.
You are also critical of electric vehicles, citing a preliminary report by the Environmental Protection Agency on associated air emissions. Unfortunately, the report is flawed, as EPA itself admits. Here's what the cover memo from EPA states:
"Upon further review of the work in the attached analysis, EPA has identified several weaknesses in the . . . draft. For example, the analysis failed to consider the acid rain control standards required by the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, so the utility emissions of [nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide] are overestimated . . . The information contained in this study will thus likely be revised in the future."
The Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management concludes that EPA overestimates nitrogen oxide emissions associated with electric vehicles by a factor of 10.
Argonne National Laboratories estimates that replacing a gasoline-powered car with an electric vehicle will reduce nitrogen oxides in cities such as Los Angeles and New York by 80 percent or more. And since power plants emit virtually no hydrocarbons, electric vehicles reduce this pollutant by more than 99 percent.
The Northeastern states, including Maryland, have asked the EPA to allow them to adopt tougher tailpipe standards for vehicles like they have in California. If they can have clean cars in California, there is no reason why we shouldn't have them here in the Northeast, too. EPA should give the states the authority they need to provide healthy air.
Thomas Morron
Washington, D.C.
The writer is vice president of customer services and marketing for the Edison Electric Institute.
Remembering holocausts
Your editorial of Oct. 27, "We must not forget," concerning a Holocaust memorial in Baltimore, ends with the statement, "Never again."
I feel this statement is an insult to other peoples who have, and are currently, suffering holocausts.
Particularly in the case of the Bosnian Muslims is this true.
The obvious effort to eradicate this group of people, either by expulsion or by extermination, is so evidently the same as that suffered under the Nazis by the Jewish people and other "undesirables" (who, by the way, are seldom mentioned); and still the world stands by and does nothing.
And in fact, in this case, we even tie the hands of the persecuted by not allowing them weapons to defend themselves, under the guise that this would only tend to expand the conflict.
What irony -- that we would put so much emphasis on a Holocaust memorial when we have the real thing going on before our eyes.
Doris Rausch
Columbia
Many years from now, people will still remember and reflect on the Holocaust. This event is not considered a proud element of our world's history; nevertheless, it is reflected upon on a daily basis.
Memorials and museums are constructed to honor the people so unfortunately killed in the devastating World War II.
For the past 14 years, a memorial dedicated to the more than 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust has been peacefully respected and honored.
Recently, however, people have felt the need to use the memorial as a "toilet, drug hangout, and secluded spot for
sexual encounters."
The intention here is not to preach to individuals to stay away from drugs, etc., but to ask that people show respect for this poignant memorial dedicated to those who died in the utterly terrible Holocaust.
I feel offended that people would treat such an important part of our history with such negligence and indifference. A memorial like this one here in Baltimore is built to honor and cherish, not to use as a public lavatory.
In the past few weeks, beer cans and condoms along with other trash have been found strewn near the memorial. This is unacceptable behavior in regards to such a respected foundation built in downtown Baltimore.
Hopefully, people will realize the inappropriateness of their actions and show a much deserved respect to those people unfairly killed in the Holocaust.
Neil J. Adler
Ellicott City