Letters: KC readers discuss Circle of Hope, infrastructure and Andrew Jackson statues
Blend them
Students in the Blue Springs School District hadn’t attended classes for six months before resuming in September. Of course, students feel questionable about the upcoming school year with all the alterations that had to be made. Many of them have family members who are highly susceptible to infection, and there is likely trouble with technology and the fear of going from zero schoolwork to loads of it.
The option of being completely online or in-person seems a little frightening for people who have many factors to worry about. So combining a bit of both approaches would allow students to override those factors.
I believe Blue Springs schools should have switched to blended learning for the 2020-21 school year to help students ease back into learning. It keeps students from feeling overwhelmed, allows more flexibility and gives them personalized learning.
- Sophia Findley, Lee’s Summit
Learn, then vote
The League of Women Voters of Johnson County encourages all Kansas voters to vote early — either in person or by mail — because it relieves polling places from extra-long lines on Election Day, and it’s way easier for the voter.
The League of Women Voters’ election website, VOTE411.org, is a one-stop shop for everything you need to develop your election plan. There, you can find your polling place, check voter ID laws and see early voting periods and locations. In Johnson and Wyandotte counties, you can vote early in person at several locations in each county.
At VOTE411.org, you can also look up your ballot by entering your address. This will show you all the candidates and issues for this election, along with candidate responses to our nonpartisan questions and the ability to compare them side by side on where they stand on the issues.
Whichever way you choose to vote, know that by doing so you are fulfilling the single most important aspect of our democracy. Our democracy is strongest when every voice can be heard.
- Amber Stenger, Co-President, League of Women Voters of Johnson County, Shawnee
Girls harmed
I can’t get the suffering of the girls at Circle of Hope Girls’ Ranch near Humansville, Missouri — supposedly a place for troubled teens — out of my mind. (Oct. 2, 1A, “Highway Patrol investigated allegations at Circle of Hope”)
I feel sadness for the abused girls and anger at the government officials who let them suffer for so long. Missouri said it did nothing because the place didn’t have a license, so there was no license to take away. What nonsense. An abusing relative doesn’t have a license, but society still stops him.
Supposedly, the fact that the place claimed to be faith-based prevented prosecutors and the state from acting. Also nonsense. Freedom of religion is freedom to believe, not to act. No claim to religion makes it all right to hurt, starve and humiliate children.
As for the federal prosecutor who refused to act on the many pages of data from law enforcement, I think The Star should publicize that person’s name. These are public actions, and the public has the right to know about them. Then I bet the next time something like this is uncovered, prosecutors will think twice about letting the kids down.
- Eileen J. Chase, Kansas City
Get to basics
This past summer, as the two presidential campaigns slogged through a veritable swamp of dangerous and important issues — including the poisonous coronavirus, our fast-sinking, boot-sucking economy and the deep and tangled roots of race relations in America — a word was lost.
That word was “infrastructure.”
Fixing and modernizing America’s long-neglected and fast-decaying roads, bridges, dams, airports, rail lines and drinking and wastewater plants, and providing more funding for educational facilities and broadband systems, were among the few things the two parties agreed on. Promises were made by both sides to spend billions, if not trillions, on construction projects that would last 10 years or more and create millions of decent-paying jobs.
Doing something about our nation’s crumbling and often life-threatening infrastructure (including an unprecedented number of cracking dams, rickety bridges and miles of bone-bumping local and interstate highways in Missouri and Kansas) cannot remain on the back burner for long without causing more losses to lives and businesses.
No matter which candidate emerges from the campaign swamp in November, it is our collective responsibility to push the president, governors and legislators to give more than lip service to rebuilding America’s aging infrastructure.
- Bridgette Williams, Executive Director, Heavy Constructors Association of Greater Kansas City, Kansas City
Remain, remind
Question 2 on the November ballot for Jackson County voters asks if the statues of Andrew Jackson outside the Jackson County Courthouse in Kansas City and the Historic Truman Courthouse in Independence should be removed. I say no, but this is what I would like to see done: Add plaques that describe the bad things Jackson did and encourage us to do the opposite. Plain and simple.
We can learn from bad examples as well as from good examples. Let us remember history so we don’t repeat it, or continue it.
- Gina Dellapiana, Kansas City
This story was originally published October 18, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Letters: KC readers discuss Circle of Hope, infrastructure and Andrew Jackson statues."