Letters

Superintendent pay excessive

The salary levels that Washington school districts are willing to pay their superintendents are out of touch with reality. We are told that new Spokane School District Superintendent Shelley Redinger’s $241,000 is somewhere in the midrange for comparable Washington school districts.

School board members should note that this salary level is in excess of many other jobs in the public sector: Army four-star general (OS 10), Navy admiral, vice president, U.S. senator, cabinet officers, Washington governor, attorney general, Spokane mayor, Spokane chief of police, and fire chief. School board members seem to have adopted the same mentality as pro sports owners bidding for free agents. Unlike pro sports, one would like to see the board exercise a little restraint with public funds.

Sam Watt

Spokane

Man is meaner than wolves

My letter is in defense of Meg McCoy’s April 24 letter from the vigorous attacks by Idahoans Beverly Klein (May 10) and Patrick Larson (May 6).

My gut reaction to the photo of the trapper posing in front of the dying wolf is he has no soul; oblivious to the suffering. Gluttony and arrogance not only eradicates species, it can now kill the planet. I’ve heard questioning wolves’ existence because they have no economic value. What a sad world when the purpose for existence is profit! Wolves have a nobility that is blind to some – qualities like strong family bond, resilience, teamwork and intelligence. Beautiful animals!

My letter is also for those like me who enjoy wilderness camping, even in Idaho, who would be thrilled to hear a wolf howl, but not the sound of gunfire.

The forests are not feedlots for game animals. Wolves belong here as much as elk. If Klein is not Native American she is no more indigenous than wolves are. It’s easy to see people such as these thinking Indians didn’t need the buffalo. A balanced ecosystem existed long before humans mucked things up.

Man is the ugliest animal roaming the forests.

Donald W. Daw

Chattaroy

Retain equal rights

Washington has become the seventh state in America to grant equal rights and liberty to all of its citizens. However, a group of conservative zealots is circulating Referendum 74 asking us to reverse the law and impose their selective reading of religious text on the rest of us.

It is a scientifically verifiable fact that for Homo sapiens (us), our brains and therefore our sexual orientation is fixed as male or female at birth, regardless of the sexuality of our physical form. Whether straight or gay, our brains literally create our sexual preferences.

“De-gaying” a person is as impossible as changing a person’s skin color or the color of their eyes. We must not continue to marginalize American citizens based on the 3,500-year-old myths of ignorant nomadic goat and sheep herders, or to ignore scientifically verifiable facts.

To paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “I have a dream that my children will one day live in a nation where Americans will not be judged by their sexual orientation, but by the content of their character.”

I urge you to ignore Referendum 74 and welcome lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual Americans into our community with the full rights of every American.

James C. Lanham

Cheney