Texas teachers don’t need Gov. Abbott’s commission. They need fair pay and support
How to help Texas teachers
We don’t need Gov. Greg Abbott’s planned commission to study why Texas is short on teachers. The problem is that teachers can barely live on their pay and can’t live on their retirement benefits.
Why is there no retirement cost-of-living increase mechanism for Texas public school teachers? Adjustments aren’t made until our teachers are facing economic devastation. The state doesn’t increase its deficient retirement pay, only occasionally issuing a modest 13th check in some years.
With all the incredible pressures of teaching, why pursue a career that will not support you in retirement? Politicians think we need a commission. All they really need is courage.
- James Pat Crow, San Antonio
Only one side is presented
Why does the coverage of the Supreme Court and the abortion issue have to be so one-sided in this paper? How about a headline that says, “Tens of thousands of innocent lives saved if SCOTUS overturns Roe”?
- Mark Carter, Benbrook
Testing the limits of rational
Thank you for your May 8 editorial about the STAAR test. (4C, “STAAR test agony is here again: Why Texas should reassess how it measures schools”) It has been a sore subject in our home for a while. Our son has an Individualized Education Program plan. He passed the STAAR in fifth grade but has failed the tests since.
We send kids who can’t pass to summer school. What does this say to students who make A’s and B’s and study hard all year long? Where are the modified tests for those with learning disabilities?
We are sorely disappointed and will move our son to a private school that does not focus on a specific test. The pressure should be on learning, not on test taking
- Teresa Bell, Fort Worth
Others’ abortions don’t involve you
I understand how the higher cost of living affects you individually, but I don’t understand how making safe and legal abortions available to others does. Women of means will always find a way to secure safe and legal abortions. Low-income people will be burdened if they are harder to obtain.
I have always been of the mindset that decisions such as this should be left to the woman, her doctor and her creator. With all the ills of the world such as wars, COVID-19 and gun violence, why are we trying to fight what’s been the law of the land for 50 years?
- Fran Noakes, North Richland Hills
Could this be a possibility?
With the fate of abortion rights up in the air, there is one obvious workaround that would help to alleviate the burden on low-income women faced with expensive out-of-state travel to obtain an abortion: Native American tribal reservations could offer abortion services to help generate revenue. They could offer the procedures as well as affordable accommodations for patients.
- Kelly White, Watauga
Real echoes of the Civil War
The reactions to the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion on abortion rights exposes a fundamental difference between pro-life and pro-choice adherents, similar to the difference between supporters of slavery and abolitionists. The fundamental difference then was over a slave being a property or a person. Today, the difference is over a fetus being a property (belonging to the woman) or a person.
In the 1800s, we fought a war over this difference and resolved it by passing the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution. The question today is whether we will become a nation split between abortion and no-abortion states, each dominated by one party, or if we will eventually pass a constitutional amendment on the issue.
- Paul Park, Fort Worth