What do you think about the Grantham School District administration and board claiming to be a poor, rural district (“New Hampshire education funding lawsuit: Three Upper Valley districts join fight,” May 11) when the district has passed every budget asked for?
The town of Grantham has always taken care of its own. There are no homeless people in Grantham. There are no subsidized housing units. Everybody’s children are fed.
Why should the state give the Grantham School District more money when the district doesn’t provide for all the students in the district?
How much more state adequacy aid would the district get if all the students in the district were counted in the “Average Daily Membership,” known as the ADM? How much would the district get if the school allowed tuition students from other districts? How much additional tax revenue from “rich” families who would move here knowing they could get equitable tuition for private school?
But this district chooses to cry wolf and get involved in a lawsuit. Does anyone think this will not devalue property? Who wants to buy into a “poor rural district” that has to depend on state aid to educate its children?
The inequity in education funding within the Grantham School District causes some to wonder whether it is running a private school on public money. Why else would it continue to take money from all the students and give it only to a few — especially when the chairman of the School Board said this was wrong at the district meeting.
District officials need to drop the lawsuit and do the job they are paid well to do.
TANYA D. McINTIRE
Grantham
It seems that our once plentiful ash trees are about to go the way of the elm and the American chestnut. There is more to this than a cleanup problem. We will all be the poorer for it. But there also is an opportunity to do something about it.
Many towns have forests. And there are many cow pastures and hayfields in New England going back to nature. Efforts to develop disease-resistant elm trees have met with success. You can now purchase such trees and plant them without fear of them dying as a result of the fungus borne by the elm bark beetle.
I am no arborist, but I know of no reason why we should not try to breed a strain of ash trees that will withstand predation by the emerald ash borer. And perhaps the borer itself has a predator.
This will take a long time to find out. The time to get to work on it is now. The towns of the Upper Valley are in a position to do something about this.
TYLER P. HARWELL
Perkinsville
Both B’Tselem, a leading Israeli human rights organization, and Human Rights Watch have recently released careful reports concluding that Israel is an “apartheid state.” That means one part of the population claims superior rights to the others.
The current confrontations between Israeli settlers, backed by their police, and the Palestinians of Jerusalem who protest the ethnic cleansing of their neighborhoods, only confirms the traditional colonialism that has been going on in the Holy Land.
Israel is the only state in the Middle East with nuclear weapons; it also has tanks, drones, planes and the blind allegiance of the United States. It operates with impunity in taking over the Golan Heights and the West Bank. On the ground, settlers from Brooklyn invade the Palestinian houses of East Jerusalem and make themselves at home. They take over Palestinian water sources. They uproot family olive orchards. They send their settlement sewage down into Palestinian villages.
Billions of our foreign aid dollars go to Israel. To object is to be called antisemitic, a label even more destructive to the reputation of our representatives in Congress than “pinko” during the McCarthy period.
And our media? When are we going to see maps showing the wall and all the highways for Jewish use only?
LETITIA UFFORD
Hanover
Republicans are squawking about deficits as the Biden administration undertakes ambitious efforts to provide COVID-19 relief and comprehensively address America’s infrastructure needs. They had no such concerns when they passed President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cut, which primarily benefited the wealthy and large corporations and made deficits soar. They weren’t concerned about being “fiscally responsible” then.
They could, belatedly, try to attend to the needs of ordinary people, but they prefer to continue to cater to corporations and the wealthy. That’s why they’re so vocal in criticizing President Joe Biden’s plans.
But remember, it would be easy to pay for the administration’s plans. Republicans just don’t want to. Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has dismissed GOP concerns about debt and deficits, especially when interest rates are so low.
If Republicans are truly worried about our nation’s debt, they could simply repeal their 2017 tax cut. As Reich wrote in Newsweek, “The total wealth of America’s 660 billionaires has grown by a staggering $1.1 trillion since the start of the pandemic, a 40% increase.” Taxing those billionaires at the pre-2017 rate would largely pay for Biden’s proposals, and they’d still be just as rich as they were before the pandemic.
So, Republican members of Congress, what will you choose: greater wealth for 660 billionaires, or relief and progress for the rest of the nation?
STEVE GEHLERT
West Newbury, Vt.