... Americans have been so busy "getting and spending" that they have ignored their own responsibilities in making the government responsive to the people it serves. We also have neglected to develop alternative sources of energy and be our own moral and ethical guard dogs instead of policing affairs that are not or should not be our business.
I will give you an example. Aiken County public schools recently furloughed at least 50 people, including several teachers. The result will be an even more significant decline in the quality of education in Aiken County, which had become a leader in innovative education.
One of the programs that factored into the furlough of so many people is the Teacher and Employee Retention program. How can rehiring a retired teacher under the auspices of the TERI program do anything else than permit the continuance of paying high salaries to individuals who are drawing retirement and then paying them in addition to retirement? Why didn't the district hire qualified graduates, although they are hard to find considering the poor quality of teacher-training programs? The key word is "qualified."
Another problem is the top-heaviness of the county office, where the administrators are territorial about their positions and salaries, and have little or no concern for effective academic leadership and sound financial planning.
This underscores another perhaps more subtle problem. With the lack of effective leadership comes a lack of ethics and morals. Some maintain that a school system is a microcosm of society. It is. Should you wonder why our students today lack moral values and ethics, look no further than the role models they have in the school and county administration, as well as in the faculty and paraprofessional staffs. Educators are just as much to blame as are the students' parents.
Americans need to take back what is theirs -- the government that was created to serve them. Americans also must become sound financial planners and assume responsibility for themselves and their children.
Victoria E. Antonacci
North Augusta, S.C.
Comments
Americans are too late,hussein has already taken it and he has the guns.
If the American public was to get back to being a moral society many of the political powers that be would be out the door. But sadly most of the voting public is uninformed and believe the rhetoric that is spewed from the likes of individuals like Justus that think everything is about race. We cannot and will not have racial equality as long as racists try to keep the fodder going. Its is time that we get back to being Americans united and working together for a common good. We need to wake up and accept that the life style of borrowing to live like we all are rich is wrong and has plunged us into a depression. A depression that we cannot spend or borrow our way out. The time is to be responsible and quit blaming and start working to repair.
Hey WOEISME4, you are an absolute joke of a human being.
I don't think the headline matches the letter very well.
The writer backhandedly brings up a good point. Since SPLOST is no longer in the news the heat has been taken off of our local politicians. Is anyone still paying attention to what they are up to now? In addition the the Communist regime we have installed at the national level, we still have the same crew of clowns at the local and state level who steal and waste as much of property owner's and other taxpayer's money as the federal government. We need to clean house at the local, state, and federal level during the next elections and we need to keep the burners fired up under all of their butts until then. Let them know we are watching what they do with our money. And YES IT IS OUR MONEY....NOT THEIR MONEY. Regardless of what our Communists president and Communist Congress think, it is OUR MONEY. It's time to stand up and fight to keep OUR MONEY and OUR FREEDOM and OUR WAY OF LIFE. Even if it means truly having to FIGHT to keep them. The American Revolution was not the first violent rebellion and, as witnessed most recently in Iran and China, it surely wasn't the last. Maybe we have reached the point where compromise is no longer possible and it's time for a contested divorce.
We have Mr. President Obama and his lovely first family in the oval office. We have taken back government. HELLO! HELLO!
AA ruined America. And I'm not talking Alcoholics Anonymous.
We took back the government from a rogue group of people already. On 11-04-2008.
Unfortunately human nature has drawbacks. We are not machines and do not always make the most logical choices. People of power do not always promote the best people under them because they fear being overtaken in their position, do not like people with their own ideas or just like brown nosers. It happens everywhere, and the degree to how much it happens affects businesses, government, etc.
School choice would solve this entire problem.
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