Community Member Roy Farber's Letter To The Editor

I write concerning the desire of school board members Jeff Leany and Ann Tisue to bash and smash the Mesa Valley Education Association — as well as those overpaid, under-performing, non-right-thinking teachers — with the aid of our Mesa County Republican Party’s triad of school-board designees.

Together they hope to substitute only those teachers whom this reconstituted, politicized board may approve.

Just a few years ago, teaching was lauded as a noble profession, requiring greater remuneration and respect, one to which our children should aspire. Most recently, our Supreme Court ruled in the Lobato school finance case that Colorado had no obligation to alter its funding system.

Despite the current hype that “not one more cent” need go to education because “they” already receive too much, Google “Colorado school funding rank” to obtain actual data and the national consensus: Colorado has been in the bottom of the barrel for years. That is what Amendment 66 is about.

Now, regarding Leany & Company’s promise to unleash the same divisiveness recently demonstrated nationwide by ideological excesses, if unfettered in our community, they may cause the shuttering of our schools and sufficient acrimony to last us all for years.

And where are our children in all of this?  When you attack the teachers’ union, you are de facto attacking those very children. The teachers just want representation at the table, in a collaborative effort with the board, to better our schools.

Please support Tom Parrish, John Williams and Greg Mikolai for our school board and vote “Yes” on Amendment 66. This may require you to do your own research. When you do, thank your teachers for having this ability. They are anything but your enemy.

ROY K. FARBER

Grand Junction