Letters to the editor

RE: Editorial 'Cracking down on child abuse,' The Chronicle, July 30.

I get frustrated and deeply saddened in the common reaction to increase consequences and sanctions to offenders. Help me see the light of punishing the already most tormented in life. Where is the humanity in penalizing them more? Have they not lived a life of torment that which got them there in the first place? Would more pain help? Would any of us want to walk in their shoes, for even a day? We as a society need to look closer at mental illness, aggression, disorders, etc. and find it's roots, so that we as 'civilizing agents' (like we like to think of ourselves) can affect true change. I want my children to walk the streets and feel free to do so, it is a part of childhood and some of the hallmarks to maturation. Don't lock your children up, ask what we can do to help some of the weakest members of society and do it. @ST:Debbie Oestreich

Pointe Claire

Bravo to the wonderful little Urban Agenda coffee shop in Dorval. This café opened last summer on Lakeshore Drive and established itself quickly into the hearts of the community. Underlying the business of a café was the mission set up by the owners to give back to the community. Their initial gift was the planting on July 27 of six mature red crabapple trees on Lakeshore Drive on properties of fellow businesses to help beautify “downtown” Dorval.

The recent posting on the Pearson board’s website of 11 dates of an “official timeline” that ranges from Sept. 12 to Oct. 31, which was first announced at the board meeting of June 30, concerning a byelection for school commissioner, reminded me of another date.

Last Monday, July 28, many English homeowners in the English Montreal and Lester B. Pearson school boards territory were required to pay the first installment of their school tax bill that increased this year by an average of 1.7 per cent. Last year’s increase was 2.6 per cent.

Since part of the bill goes toward the “management costs for school boards,” permit me to confer an evaluation of sorts on the Quebec English School Boards Association.

They have failed in these “competencies” and have earned everlasting disgrace: to recognize their primary role of maximizing student-learning; to respect the “Students Rights” chapter of the Quebec Education Act; to work in concert with the Minister of Education; and to represent faithfully the interests of the English schools of Quebec.

Due to their preoccupation with assuring their own continued existence, the association overlooked the elementary fact that updated textbooks are needed for a first class education.

Is it justifiable that school taxes should go up when the Quebec English School Boards Association has not made the grade in providing adequate service? Of course not.

Entre nous, most taxpayers don’t really care what happens in the school-board voting booth; parents and teachers do worry, though, what takes place in the classroom.

Nonetheless, this is school board democracy -- English style. To this negligence and arrogance, I say: textbooks before ballots.