Letters to the editor — May 15

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• Published May 15, 2008

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Long-term solution needed on school funding

Two wrongs don’t make a right in North Thurston Public Schools.

The way we fund our schools is shoddy. Schools need money to operate functionally. School districts shouldn’t have to guess how much money they are going to have to run their schools in any given year. They shouldn’t have to ask their communities for more money to properly and fully run their schools. Full funding should be done at the state level.

This doesn’t mean only covering the basic three — reading, writing and arithmetic. Children need a well-rounded education. Unfortunately, Washington state and the federal government do not fund a well-rounded education.

This means communities have to pick up the slack. But voting “no” on North Thurston school district’s levy will not fix the problems we have with funding our schools. Until we create a better way to fund our schools, we need to support children through levies.

Voting “yes” on the levy is essential until we can fix our funding problems.

Beth McLaughlin, Olympia

Is it really time to celebrate Olympia’s birth?

One of the headlines in a recent Olympian was “City marks its 150th birthday next year.”

I was a freshman at OHS in 1950. That year we celebrated Olympia’s 100th birthday. In the high school annual they stated that Smith’s claim was formally dedicated as a town in the spring of 1850. It also quoted The Columbian Weekly paper, of Sept. 25, 1852. “The present flourishing town of Olympia, which but two years ago was adorned by but one solitary frame building, can now be counted by twenties — embracing hotels, well-fitted stores, and various mechanic shops, with two splendid saw mills and a grist mill in its immediate vicinity.”

My calculation is that Olympia will be 159 years old next year. So much for a 150th celebration since you missed it by nine years.

The only conclusion that I can come to is that I have just seen the results of what they are calling “new math.”

Darrell Holt, Olympia