Letters to the Editor: Feb. 24, 2021

Be our hero

How do you heal a community of families who have felt  abandoned and rejected by  Mount  Shasta area schools and  their failure to provide in person learning since last March of 2020?   

Transparency. Nothing begs for more transparency or justification than the limited  information about the decisions made by Mount Shasta area schools to  stay closed.   

Why have our elected board  reps, who have been tasked  with serving our students, only listened to their staff and teacher  wants/needs? Why have the teachers who have wanted to be  in school full-time been  silenced? Why will no one talk  about what is going on behind  the scenes?  Why are we always  “thanked” for our input and  given  limited answers?  

We the constituents, and the students you have been tasked  to serve, have a right to know  –  and the more detail we are  given  the better. 

As  cries for accountability reverberate across the country, continued scrutiny  is needed in  our own town. The crescendo of angry family’s voices with school-aged children is now  deafening. How do you not hear it? 

The time has come to invest in the future of our community,  together. It is high time our  school boards and teachers  show  the  public why the decision to stay closed has been  made so we can weigh in thoughtfully, honestly and move forward.  

And before anyone says, but  hybrid  started  2/22/2021 ... A year later and we will tell  you, hybrid is not enough!   

The time of Mount Shasta  families being held hostage is  over. We want choices  based  on  the democratic system we have all been raised on and believe in.  We respect the choices and needs  of  our teachers and staff, but in turn we expect the same. Who  is  willing to take a step forward  and become our hero?    

– Shalonda Gerdes, Open School California MSUSD & SUHSD, Mount Shasta Chapter

The real reason for Texas’s power issues

Interesting to note that today 2/17/2021 on NPR a spokesman for the Texas utilities cited “power plants” that had freezing issues, were the cause for statewide power outages.

Let’s be clear those power plants he is talking about are Wind and Solar power plants. He never mentions that. Freezing rarely effects conventional power plants.

The other major factor is that 24 percent of Texas power is wind and solar. Wind and Solar can NOT fluctuate to compensate for more power to keep you warm. Especially when wind generators are frozen in place. And solar panels have snow and ice on them.

Think about this: if PG&E could have put the millions of dollars into replacing our stressed grid, and maintained those areas around those stressed lines. Would the town of Paradise still be here? Instead they were forced to build thousands of giga watts worth of solar on the California / Mexico border, so California could have 20 percent solar and wind. 

There should be no reason for rolling black outs in this country in any season.

– Ken Roseberry, Mount Shasta

To our neighbors

In April, 2020, a few Mount Shasta residents started meeting on Tuesdays as an Interfaith Prayer Circle. Our small group represents Christianity, the Bahai faith, and Buddhism. Originally we met outside to offer prayers to local teachers and students; over time, our focus has broadened to include a wide variety of beings, in various situations and crises, here at home and across the world. We share readings from a wide spectrum of religious, environmental, and social awareness sources.

Along about October when the weather started to get colder, we started meeting online, and have continued in that vein ever since.

We recently decided to more publicly offer our prayers and merit good wishes to all the essential workers in Siskiyou County:  those working in the medical and healthcare arenas, to first responders,  to those in education, in food services/grocery stores, in gas stations, in the transport and delivery fields, postal workers, and more.

Although we are a small group, our gratitude towards all the essential workers is great, and we continue to hold all essential workers in our hearts as we meet each week, in hopes of generating healing and peace in our world. Many thanks to each and every one of you.

For those wishing to know more about our group, please call Laurel at (530) 360-5007 for more information.  We plan to return to meeting outdoors as weather allows.

– Laurie Ottens, The Mount Shasta Interfaith Prayer Circle, Mount Shasta