OUR VIEWS

Brown's pay raise

There is a case to be made for raising Brown's total compensation by nearly $39,000 a year. He has brought overdue improvements to the school system, he has largely met the performance goals established when he was hired and he is a superintendent who could easily find a job elsewhere in the country at the same or even a higher salary.

However, there is not much positive to be said about how the board handled the matter.

So little notice of the special board meeting was given that the board had to vote to waive its own notification rules. The meeting was held when one board member who is known as a critic of Brown was out of the country and some teacher union officials were out of town attending a meeting of their organization. Those are the kinds of conflicts school board President Larry Coleman could have easily checked before calling the meeting and should have avoided as a matter of courtesy.

Yes, that probably would have meant the board would have to sit through even more objections than it did. But one of the prices for holding public office is listening to — and sometimes heeding — those who don't agree with you.

As it was, the notice was posted on the eve of a holiday, raising the suspicion that the majority hoped nobody would notice and it could quietly approve the pay raise before opponents could mobilize.

That's the type of action that sows more seeds of distrust in relationships that already have a bumper crop of distrust.

Harry Potter good for kids

The extraordinary popularity of the Potter series — 30 million of the children's books sold in 115 countries — is a welcome phenomenon, for there are few better habits to cultivate than reading. Scholars of education note that reading does more to develop a child's mind than just about any activity, that it teaches sustained linear thought, vocabulary and grammar, and that it is nonpassive, requiring imaginative enterprise in visualizing what's going on and useful mental work in decoding the meaning of sentences.

Once children learn the thrill of reading, they often become addicted. Given some nudging from parents and teachers, the children absorbed by Harry Potter's adventures may soon discover that there is a whole world of fascinating books out there, and they may be on their way to a life of reading and all the benefits it brings, such as an increased chance of academic success and even of professional success later in life.

J.K. Rowling, author of the series, has not achieved her incredible sales through dumbing down. Her books, it has been noted, are written on a level of difficulty about the same as many popular adult books — and there are many words to traverse between cover and cover. The reported testimony of children is that she knows how to tell a good story. She obviously has a sense of the magical that many children — and some adults — find irresistible.

Some concern has been expressed that a Harry Potter movie is on its way in 2001, possibly converting Potter readers to Potter viewers and supplanting a child's own conceptions with those of the film producer. While we understand the worries expressed on the matter to a reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, our guess is that Potter fans will have the same experience as many book lovers when they have seen films of what they have read. The movie will fall far short of the books. It will be a letdown. And loyalty to the blessed experience of reading will only have been reinforced.

WHO report not reliable

Wrong. The truth is that the ranking is not a fact at all, for the report is not an objective, scientific study. It is essentially a political argument that asserts the prime importance of equality of care, relies on a number of subjective judgments and is biased in favor of socialized systems.

There are certainly some things amiss in American health care, and they are debated very nearly daily. It is also a system that has made huge strides toward controlling costs and that is currently keeping Americans healthier than ever before, statistics show.

YOUR VIEWS

Witt whitewashed government idiocy

THE MAIL

Web information from the Department of Health and Human Services reveals that $4.66 billion was appropriated for Head Start for the year 1999 alone. In 1998 American taxpayers paid more than $5,000 per year for each of 822,316 children enrolled in Head Start. Now UAB Ramey Abecedarian team wants to replace Head Start with a program to "enrich" children (from birth through age 5) for $11,000 per year per child. And the Rameys want to make this a universal system, covering all children, not just the poverty group targeted by Head Start. This child-grabbing Castro-type program would not only remove children from parental influence at birth, it would bankrupt the country in just a few short years.

Obviously Elaine Witt has a socialist agenda, else she would have told the whole truth about this academic insanity.

Jimmy C. Jones
549 Polly Reed Road

Shows why

If Dalton would only pause for a moment and view the issue from the perspective of someone other than herself for a change, she might understand why imposing one's personal religious beliefs on others in a public high school course is wrong.

What if a Muslim teacher in her school were to center a world history course around the Koran? What if a Hindu teacher were to teach that the "first 100 years" of the Earth's creation centered on a sun-god?

I'm sure Dalton would be out outraged.

Chris McDougal
100 Robert Jemison Drive, Apt. 305

Prudent decision

Armond "Si" Simmons
104 Wadsworth Lane
Pell City

OTHER VIEWS

Vendor spills price-gouging secrets

While I found it interesting at the time, I shoved it to the back of my mind for "more important things" until recently when the national shouts of anger about increasingly exorbitant gasoline prices reached a crescendo that threatens to disrupt the political scene and has finally driven a recalcitrant Federal Trade Commission into some serious action.

My son said the station, one of the majors, was advertising its gasoline at that time at $1.53 a gallon while directly across the street another name-brand station had the price at $1.84. My son asked why.

"Well, there won't be a 30 cents a gallon difference come tomorrow morning," my son said the man replied.

"Guess they will have to come down to meet your price," my son said.

"Wrong," the operator said, shaking his head. "We will be going up 30 cents. To be very frank, I received a call this morning from my supplier (he leases the station from the oil company) who said to push up the price now. I have no choice."

According to my son, the operator went on to describe how both he and the oil company were making profits unimaginable only a short time ago.

"The oil companies are determined to use whatever excuse they can to get a piece of this booming economy," the operator said. "We used to make 3 or 4 cents a gallon on gasoline and now I'm making 10 to 15 times that much and so are the oil companies."

When my son suggested that perhaps it also had to do with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries' production restrictions and pipeline leaks the station operator just laughed. He explained that even with state and federal taxes and other additions, the price could be less than $1 a gallon and still be profitable to everyone.

"Besides," he told my son, "most of the oil here comes down from Alaska, and has little to do with OPEC. What I'm afraid of is that we're going to be the catalyst for a major economic downturn if we aren't careful."

He isn't the only one feeling fearful. The adverse impact on the economy and the political damage caused by the highest gasoline prices in the nation's history are also what concerns a growing number of Democrats whose chances in the November elections are likely to be severely impacted by soaring prices. While this is particularly true in the major political battleground states of the Midwest, prices elsewhere also are climbing with numbing regularity, sometimes as much as 10 cents a gallon overnight.

Travelers up and down the East Coast, for instance, are paying almost $2 a gallon for premium with little or no variation except for some independents who are selling their gasoline at a few pennies less than the majors. If the FTC, which has announced it will subpoena oil industry officials, needs any evidence there is collusion somewhere here, all it has to do is pull off an interstate and see the uniformity in prices among all the stations represented.

The Democrats have good reason to worry. The White House has done next to nothing, not even the traditional jawboning, at home or overseas, to try to stem the debilitating increases. Democrats have opposed cutting the federal tax, and the president refused to step in to force the delay of clean air regulations that are being blamed by the oil companies for some of the problem.

In the Midwest, governors once again have shown far more leadership than President Clinton, realizing their constituents have had enough. The governors of three states have urged the Environmental Protection Agency to lift requirements for cleaner gas. In Indiana, the governor has suspended temporarily his state's tax on gasoline, which would knock off 5 percent at the pump.

Clinton and Vice President Al Gore have benefited politically from the greatest sustained economic boom in history generally by keeping their hands off. But in this case, that policy is likely to have an adverse impact on Gore's prospects. The president needs to pay full attention to this domestic crisis if he is to be a credible leader his last year in office.

Perhaps he could start by interviewing the honest operator of the gas station frequented by my son.

Dan K. Thomasson can be reached
c/o Scripps Howard News Service,
1090 Vermont Ave. N.W., Suite 1000,
Washington, DC 20005

LOOK BACK

50 years ago, July 7, 1950:

First shipment of U.S. arms aid to Philippines under arms assistance program arrives aboard American Army transport.

25 years ago, July 7, 1975:

Lightning strikes several transformers, knocking out power to 20,000 homes in Jefferson County.

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