To the Editor:
Reading articles like this make me so proud to be an SFUSD parent … and even more proud to have parents like Dana Woldow that have proven to be advocates for our children – all children! She sets an example that we should all follow!
Crystal Brown
San Francisco
To the Editor:
This is a heartening account of what can occur when we apply good minds and real resources to solving problems. I am happy to see that SFUSD are being given the opportunity to feed their minds and support their academic and athletic endeavors as well as their overall health. Thanks for letting us know the good things that are goin on, when we often only hear the dire ones.
Laura Brainin-Rodriguez
San Francisco
To the Editor:
A SEPARATE FOOD LINE FOR FREE KIDS … What in the world? I have been in school food service for 25 years. In three different districts and many schools. No one overtly identifies disadvantaged students. Their federal dollars depend on the fact that that doesn’t happen. All young people go through any line they choose and get a reimbursable meal and anything additional they wish to pay for.
Connie Fatseas
Reynoldsburg, OH
To the Editor:
I went first to a City public school and later to a Bay Area suburban school in the 60s and 70s. I brought a nutritious bag lunch every day, ate quickly before going to play (or in high school stand around looking awkward), and never felt I missed anything by not eating in a school cafeteria. When did a hot meal at lunchtime become an integral part of a child’s education?
If you really want to change poor people’s lives, have poor parents pick up free groceries and recipes, then cook their children food or pack them lunches at home. Of course, school lunch has become a sacred cow of the Federal Farm Bill, but it’s another example of misdirected government spending.
The school lunch program is a huge waste of educational resources. It’s spent on preparing food, building and maintaining commercial kitchens and indoor eating areas, and employing cooks and other staff.Better spend those dollars on teacher training, library materials and librarians, curricula, enrichment for the hard-working, and tutoring for the students falling behind.
When innovative service groups support school children in Africa, do they set up school kitchens? No. They buy every child a laptop. When Finnish and South Korean students post the best scores in the world on achievement tests, is the cause an adequate school lunch program? No. It’s highly trained and accomplished teachers. That organic sweet potato salad prepared and consumed outside the home isn’t going to do jack for SFUSD students. The sooner we concentrate on funding real solutions, the sooner we create change I can believe in.
Dana B.
San Francisco
To the Editor:
I have to respond to this. I was not an employee member of the union bargaining committee, but I did sit in on many occasions and saying SEIU‑UHW basically cut a deal with CPMC is just wrong, plain wrong. CPMC wanted something (support for the new construction) and we wanted something (job security)and we got it. People now in our union have a guaranteed job at the new hospitals. I have been reading the other replies as well and the one guy that said that you should interview the bargaining team to get both sides of the story straight is something that you would do if you were a credible journalist.
Aireen P.
San Francisco
To the Editor:
It seems to me that under current earthquake code, these hospitals need replaced. However having said that I work for CPMC and can tell you that if we don’t get the ground broken soon, we all lose our jobs. I know that our member led bargaining team DID NOT sell out to CPMC, what they got was great job security in exchange. Have you even met with the bargaining team? If not I suggest you do, you can call the local and arrange a meeting with them. I think that your telling of one side of the story does not make for good journalism. Be fair, be truthful, get the facts first then print. Like I said, call the local on Mission St. the team will meet with you. Oh, the contract was ratified by a 12-1 margin last Wednesday and Thursday.
Max Webber
San Francisco
To the Editor:
SEIU’s 2008 national convention was “organized” under the banner “Justice for All, not Just Us.” (Almost funny, I know.) Because SEIU’s campaign to take over UHW was by that time a public spectacle, this snazzy slogan was coined specifically to paint SEIU’s Stern Gang as big-tent progressives, while pre-trusteeship UHW was led by a bunch of backward, members-only types.
That’s only one reason this Sutter agreement seems so surreal. It’s not just that this deal forces union members to shill for the (dirty) Sutter Corp. and pits health care workers against their community. Nor is it just the myopia that has SEIU swimming against the tide of a resurgence of progressive organizing in SF.
But if SEIU’s best minds from DC had spent 14 months (since the trusteeship) contriving a way to tangle themselves into playing the “just us” role of that now (and then) demonstrably hollow slogan, they couldn’t have done a “better” job. That they would choose to do so in front of the very union members they attacked for same from afar, shows just how dangerous desperate can get. oh, and thanks for the scoop.
Jonathan Asmerom
Fremont, CA
To the Editor:
Paul Hogarth wrote: “Conservative hack Bill Whalen, a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institute, who somehow always gets quoted in the Chronicle’s political coverage…” Would I be far out in thinking that the Hoover Institute pretty much reflects / projects the thinking of the Hearsts, the Chron’s owners — or at least those in the family who are active in managing its affairs?
Steven Hiatt
San Francisco
To the Editor:
Chris Matthews was right, though. The Senate health care bill was passed with 60 votes, and then the House passed the Senate bill. Reconciliation could only be used for budgetary fixes. All of the policy stuff in the bill would not have been able to get through with reconciliation. As you can see today, the Senate Parliamentarian stripped 16 lines out of the bill today because they were policy and not budgetary issues. Be informed people before you post articles.
Raine Ioane
New York
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