Small-Minded Officials
Editor:
It is 2023 and elected officials should not be referring to health and sex education as “smut.”
The Worcester County Commissioners really embarrassed themselves by airing their grievances with the modern world.
I, myself, attended private school and we had sex education in fifth grade. So no one knows what Jim Bunting is talking about when he says he would work three jobs in order to pull his kids out of public school. Having sex ed in seventh grade seems like nothing more than a bone thrown to these people who are now com-
plaining.
Perhaps if these commissioners had experienced a more well-rounded education on health and sex they could lead in a mature way on these issues. To be so repressed and to put on such a spectacle surely 60 years too late at least is just sad. The county has distilleries, breweries, dispensaries, untold liquor licenses and one of the state’s largest nightclubs. All of that needed these same commissioners. One cannot help but call this political in the worst way.
Teen pregnancies, teen drug use, teen suicide and the teen dropout rate are all components of our American teens’ health. It is a shame our commissioners are all so small minded. Our county and our country no longer think like this, and this is really disgraceful.
Gregory Gunther
Snow Hill
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Support For Blueprint
Editor:
Worcester County Public Schools are now in the process of writing their implementation plan for the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future and Strong Schools Worcester County stands ready to support this exciting endeavor.
The Blueprint is designed to transform public education in Maryland into a world-class education system that is both excellent and fair. The Kirwin Report says:
“Excellence is defined as globally competitive student performance. Equity means ensuring every student, no matter their family income, race, ethnicity or physical, intellectual, and emotional challenges, has the resources to be successful.”
To achieve this the blueprint will increase education funding by the state each year for 10 years, accelerate student outcomes, and improve the quality of education for all children in Maryland, including the historically underserved.
Some of the Kirwin Commission’s findings include the following:
Maryland has severe teacher shortage and retention problems.
Maryland has unacceptably large achievement gaps based on race and income.
Maryland is a regressive state in terms of school funding, depriving the very populations in greatest need the resources required for success.
As the population becomes even more diverse and there is an ever-growing need for a well-trained, highly educated workforce–Maryland needs to address the commission’s findings. To create a world class school system, we need these new state funds that are invested in proven strategies.
The commission identified five major policy areas that must be addressed: early childhood education; preparation of high quality and diverse teachers; rigorous college and career pathways; equitable funding to ensure that all students are successful; and effective governance and accountability.
These are the five pillars of the blueprint, and we know that the WCPS administration is hard at work creating the implementation plans for each of these.
Taken together, these actions will dramatically improve the quality of Maryland’s education system. We are glad that the administration and the board support the development of our local plan and we are excited to stand in support of this effort.
Gail Jankowski
Berlin
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Following County Ramp Usage
Editor:
At Tuesday’s County Commissioners meeting (Feb. 7), we finally heard the Recreation and Parks Department’s proposal for opening our public recreational boat ramps to commercial users and creating a fee-based permit system for all users of the public boat ramps throughout the county. This is becoming a divisive is-sue, but it shouldn’t be.
Parking, and opening the recreational boat ramps to commercial use, are separate issues and should remain separate.
Parking at the West Ocean City commercial harbor and other popular recreational ramps can be difficult during peak weekends, occasionally leading to confrontations and calls for police intervention. Whatever the solution is for man-
aging overflow sparking at the commercial harbor and our most heavily used recreational boat ramps, we should not ignore public safety considerations. More commercial vehicle traffic speeding to get to a ramp and more overflow parking on narrow residential roads serving more rural boat ramps are not solutions. They would be a public safety problem.
Much of this discussion is being driven by one attorney representing one commercial operator whose annual special permits to take clients out to shoot cow nose rays are expiring. We should let them expire. He can operate without opening the recreational boat ramps to commercial users, as the staff is advocating.
Commissioner Bunting knows how popular our boat ramps are among recreational users — he hears the complaints due to overcrowded parking lots and roads clogged by out-of-state boat trailers. He suggested the staff focus on nonresident parking and not bow to the legal pressure to open recreational ramps up more to commercial users, who he said should obtain special use permits limited to specific, short-term activities. We’ll see how the staff responds at the next meeting of the commissioners.
Stephen Katsanos
South Point