More suspensions the wrong answer
The adage that experience is the best teacher is an appropriate response to those who believe school suspensions are the way to push children who misbehave out of our school systems ("Discipline's Cost," May 11).
History demonstrates that the zero-tolerance policy has failed to act as a deterrent to students.
Nine percent of the students in Maryland's public schools were suspended in the 2006-2007 school year, and that figure was up from just 6 percent 15 years earlier.
Experience has also shown that suspension does not reduce nonviolent offenses. Last year almost 5,000 students were suspended for cutting class (3,294), truancy (774) and tardiness (874).
As The Sun's article "Schools address black students' suspensions" (May 11) highlights, African-American students are suspended 2.4 times more than white students statewide. Montgomery County has the highest racial disparity in the state - African-American students there are suspended 4.4 times more often than white students.
Why is the suspension rate disproportionate for students from a certain demographic group?
And why has this trend continued for 15 years?
Experience confirms that the right kind of interventions are successful in reducing school suspensions. Experience shows that a program of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports can reduce the time schools spend on discipline and increase instructional time.
Experience also shows that truancy and suspension are gateways to juvenile delinquency and that these problems will disproportionately impact the African-American and Latino communities.
And if we do what we always do, then we will get what we always get.
Terrylynn M. Tyrell, Baltimore
The writer is education director for Advocates for Children and Youth.
Rules must be clear, consistent
After reading "Discipline's Cost" (May 11), I realized that some educators are just not the right people to correct the chaos that some students cause in schools.
Anyone who thinks school administrators should discipline a student based on his or her cultural background is creating a double standard that will simply confuse the same kids they are trying to help.
Kids understand the rules when they are clear, concise and fairly applied to everyone.
If kids who commit disruptive, violent acts are told that their behavior is understandable because they come from the "hood," they will be less apt to improve and less prepared for the real world, where the consequences are more swift and severe.
This mentality will come back to haunt us all if we don't all stand up and say, "enough of this nonsense."
Mike Snyder, Havre De Grace
Punish offenders, not snarky judge
Once again it seems the worm has turned as those who are there to protect us are being sanctioned while those who break the rules are vindicated by District Judge Bruce S. Lamdin's suspension because he may have hurt the feelings of some offenders ("Judge punished for profanity," May 14).
Has anyone thought that those standing in front of a judge are there for a reason? Like that they broke the law?
And if they get the verbal equivalent of having their noses smacked with a rolled-up newspaper, maybe that will encourage them to watch their ways in the future.
I think those responsible for Judge Lamdin's suspension are barking up the wrong tree.
Joseph Vavra, Brooklyn Park
Israel embraced Jewish refugees
The column "The other side of Israel's birth" (Commentary, May 14) by Alice Rothchild describes the tragic fate of the 700,000 Arabs displaced from their homes in Israel in its War of Independence in 1948, even though many of them left voluntarily at the urging of the invading Arab armies who expected to be victorious.
But it made no mention of the really forgotten refugees from that conflict, the 900,000 Jews who were forcibly ejected from their ancestral homes in the Arab countries with nothing more than the clothes on their backs.
Most resettled in Israel, then a newly created and impoverished country that found the resources to take in these refugees and find them homes and jobs as it granted them full citizenship.
It's too bad the same thing cannot be said about the treatment of the Arab refugees by the various Arab nations, some of which are flush with oil revenues.These refugees have been denied citizenship by any Arab country and forced to live in squalid refugee camps so that they can serve as an obstacle to the peace process and be used as a tool of anti-Israel propaganda and as a breeding ground for terrorists.
Jack Kinstlinger, Baltimore
Palestinians still have right to return
It was good to see Alice Rothchild's column "The other side of Israel's birth" (May 14), with its focus on the Nakba created by Israel - the dispossession and expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians living in what was to become Israel, and Israel's subsequent refusal to respect the Palestinian refugees' right of return.
As she notes, yes, it is "time to acknowledge that other anniversary and to move forward with eyes and hearts open to the suffering of all the children of Abraham."
However I am deeply concerned that - rather than simply respecting basic human rights (which include but are not limited to the Palestinian refugees' inalienable legal, moral and natural right of return to their homeland) - there is a bit of a sleight of hand here with regard to what Ms. Rothchild calls "creative solutions - from resettlement to financial compensation."
Sixty years ago, return or compensation for lost property was a formula that made immediate sense - but 60 years later, with even more Palestinians impoverished and pushed out into forced exile by a Jews-preferred Israel, return and compensation is the only way to right this terrible wrong.
Anne Selden Annab, Mechanicsburg, Pa.
A creative way to clean harbor
I enjoyed reading the article on the Inner Harbor's new water wheel trash interceptor ("Path to a cleaner harbor," May 13).
As someone who worked for several years on the water in Baltimore, I have always been troubled by the visible pollution at the point at which the Jones Falls flows into the harbor.
This water wheel is a massive improvement.
I look forward to teaching my children about the necessity of a clean environment and the importance of creative problem-solving.
This water wheel is an innovative and sustainable example of both.
Kristin McCreery, Baltimore
New health rules help young adults
Although Jay Hancock's column "New health mandate less than mandatory" (May 11) correctly points out some of the limits of Maryland's new law expanding health coverage for young adults, he greatly understates the law's potential.
As of Jan. 1, Maryland became one of only a handful of states to allow young people up to age 25, whether they are in college or not, to stay on their parents' health care insurance if they remain dependents.
There is no doubt that tens of thousands of the more than 100,000 previously uninsured Marylanders between the ages of 18 and 25 will benefit from the new Maryland law.
It is true, as Mr. Hancock points out, that Maryland does not have the authority to apply this new law to federal employees or to large companies regulated by federal insurance rules, and that the Maryland Health Care Commission will determine whether the law will apply to small businesses in our state.
I urge Mr. Hancock to join us in working to convince the federal government and the Health Care Commission to also move the age limit for dependent coverage to 25.
Vincent DeMarco, Baltimore
The writer is president of the Maryland Citizens' Health Initiative.