Letters to the editor for Nov. 30

Invest in Providence employees

The Nov. 17 Sunday Olympian opinion page featured side by side essays from Jacob M. Kostecka, an RN, and Medrice Coluccio, the Chief Executive of Providence Southwest Washington. The essays addressed the ongoing negotiations between the hospital care-giving employees and the Providence corporation.

Providence is registered as a nonprofit corporation. The citizens of the communities served grant nonprofit corporations tax relief believing the benefits will return to the communities. For dozens of years the Providence corporation has taken millions of dollars from our community and distributed those dollars in millionaire wages to Renton-based administrators.

Although the citizens of our community have no official governance power, we are the shareholders of the corporation. It is our duty to hold the corporation accountable. If Ms. Coluccio and the Providence Corporation prevail, they will extract thousands of dollars from the employees and issue bonuses to the Renton millionaires — including a bonus to Ms. Coluccio’s $1.5 million dollar wage. This will occur even as she routinely expects the care-giving nurses to work overtime to earn their living wage.

Call or write Ms. Coluccio at the hospital and tell her to respect the skill, dedication and care the nurses bring to their work for us. Tell Providence to retreat from corporate greed and invest in their caring employees.

Bernie Sanders’ Thurgood Marshall Plan for Public Education

At a time when schools in America are approaching levels of segregation not seen since the 1950s, and schools in poor districts are systematically deprived of necessary funds, Bernie Sanders’ Thurgood Marshall Plan is the ambitious, progressive agenda we need.

Bernie’s plan will re-energize school integration efforts through federal desegregation orders and by fully funding the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, while tripling Title I funding. Similarly, this plan will equalize per-student funding across the country and between districts by guaranteeing a minimum per-student budget and ensure that schools in rural and indigenous communities are treated equally.

Because no child should go through the day hungry and no child should be singled out for being unable to afford a meal, a President Sanders also will end the stigma of lunch shaming and combat child hunger by ensuring every child can receive free school breakfast and lunch.

Bernie will ban for-profit charter schools, and establish a national minimum salary for teachers, while expanding collective bargaining rights and reimbursing teachers who pay for school supplies out-of-pocket.

Finally, Bernie’s plan doesn’t just fix existing deficiencies, it imagines how our schools can be better. It would encourage the development of community schools that are hubs of health and social services, while engaging students in holistic, community-based learning that takes them beyond the classroom and into their neighborhoods.

High quality public education is a right of every child, and Bernie Sanders’ has the plan and the commitment to make that right a reality.