Politics

Dear Governor Kasich and Ohio Legislators, Test Stress When I heard the news last week, my first instinct was to raise my fist in the air and yell "YESSSS!" You listened to the very public outcry from teachers and parents, and you got rid of the PARCC. Then I began to think about the weeks of my life I spent training to prepare my students for the test. The summer days I missed being with my own daughter because I was in a workshop learning how the PARCC was structured. The days I missed teaching my students because I was taking the practice test myself with my colleagues, so we would know what we were preparing our kids to do. The time on my own that I spent revising my lesson plans and my assessments to mimic the PARCC style so that my students would be familiar with the format...

Dear Mr Abbott, I am writing to you after just finishing a gruelling 12 hour night shift. I am tired, my eyes are sore, my head aches, and my body feels sweaty and dirty. I am an Intensive Care Nurse, and last night I spent many hours resuscitating someone's baby. My amazing team and I just saved a life. And in some way - perhaps from providing that glimmer of hope during one of their darkest hours, we have saved the lives of the child's parents now as well. You, and the Australian public need me. In fact you need my whole team. We are a group of highly trained and highly skilled individuals, who stayed awake all night - while the rest of the country slept in their nice warm beds. We left our husbands, wives, and our own children to go and care for the lives of strangers. We do...

Mr Trump, with all due respect, I fail to understand your motive in attacking Senator McCain by suggesting that he has not earned a place of honor as a war hero for serving his country, getting shot down, surviving severe injuries from that shootdown, and then enduring 5½ years of brutal torture at the hands of the enemy. It seems perhaps that your intention might have been to draw attention to the unmet needs of our veteran community. But I fail to see how you could possibly think that attacking and insulting a Vietnam veteran prisoner of war, and in turn an entire group of POW's from the Vietnam War, will serve to generate support for veterans in general. Certainly we can always work to improve the lives of our veterans and both public and private sectors can always do more. But...

Dear Parents, Stoni Ann Blair and Stephen Gage Berry were precious children with limitless potential, and their senseless deaths at the hands of their mother have shocked and saddened the entire state of Michigan. Mitchelle Blair, the Detroit woman accused of killing Stoni and Stephen and then hiding their bodies, is a murderer who deserves, at best, to spend the rest of her life in prison. This tragic situation is not, and never was, however, a homeschooling problem. That’s why I am so dismayed by the introduction of a new bill in the state House of Representatives to exploit Stoni and Stephen’s tragic deaths as an excuse to impose new regulations on loving, committed, and law-abiding Michigan families. Let’s be clear, this legislation would not have stopped Ms. Blair from...