Letters for March 21, 2023

Early learning crucial

I’m a married mother of three with experience working in Early Head Start, ECEAP and K-12 schools. I have witnessed firsthand the hardship teachers go through.

As a parent with trauma, working in an ECEAP setting helped me learn, make connections and get comfortable placing my child in someone else’s care. Since placing my daughter in ECEAP, I have had access to resources and opportunities and learned how to build a community from scratch. That community support is one of my favorite things about ECEAP. Before I found them, I felt like I was missing a person to model how to be a parent and the person I want to be.

Early learning is the best prevention we could have. If we want to solve homelessness, drop crime rates and end poverty, we need to start where it is most important: from before birth to age 5.

Right now, I am one of the millions of teachers struggling to support their own families and having to make a choice between my passion and my family. We need mental health supports in classrooms for our children and teachers, so that we can provide safe spaces, prevent bias and have healthy conversations around growth and education. This is the only way to prevent negative outcomes for millions of families.

I am asking our lawmakers to support these changes and be intentional in their decision making around state- and federally funded education programs.

Sabryna Williams

Airway Heights

Where is your faith?

According to the “Faith and Climate Change” a front page story on March 10, “Cardinal Czerny is the Pope’s choice to lead the Catholic church on climate change.”

Czerny says, “it can be tempting to ask, ‘where is God in all of this?’ ” Well, since he and scads of other Christians claim to believe in God and the Holy Bible, why, pray tell, does Czerny and those many others like him question God himself? He has long since promised, “while the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”

For those many people, including Cardinal Czerny who claim to have faith in God and Scripture, just open your Bibles to Genesis 8:22. If you do not have faith in God and the Bible, that’s another matter. You may be less “hypocritical” than are those who claim to believe it but in actual practice, they simply ignore it.

Ken Campbell

Deer Park

Bring back Vets Chronicle

As a veteran and a longtime subscriber to the paper, I was very pleased when The Spokesman-Review began including a nice insert for veterans once a month with many helpful articles. Now I see that the Veterans Chronicle has been reduced to a single page with very little information. What a shame.

You seem to have plenty of room for numerous stories from the West Side of the state, sports and the Serendipity section.

Spokane has many veterans. I’m sure I’m not alone in hoping for a return of a substantial insert for veterans.

Paul Dorning

Spokane

Leadership needed

Those who can’t dance blame it on the music. One has to be a strongly entrenched ideologue to believe that the prior administration is responsible for the past two years of the Biden administration’s failures, with an obvious blame strategy to deflect criticism. The Afghan withdrawal debacle, open border invasion, foreign energy dependence, crumbling economy, declining retirement savings, rail and air oversights, supply chain incompetence, war on parents and global adversaries on the march are only a few of the headline of this administration’s failures.

The Biden leadership team immediately did a total 180-degree reversal on policies that were in place when they took office two years ago. It’s simple physics; for every action there is a real-time reaction. It’s time the administration owns up to its decisions and starts solving, rather than creating, the problems that face this country. That’s what leadership does.

Roy Fullerton

Liberty Lake

Are you serious?

Regarding the letter from Carleen Reilly on March 15 (“SNAP and Medicaid”), I wondered in what world she lives. She’s happy about the cuts to SNAP and Medicaid. I’m so angry that if I were to meet her, I would ask her a few questions.

First, has she ever been down on her luck? Has she ever known what it’s like to be hungry? Second, has she ever been hurt so badly that she can’t work? I’ve been in both situations.

I, like many others, have experienced major health issues through the last 10-plus years, with the last one being a bad fall. I broke my pelvis and fractured my left hip and upper left arm. I spent five months in a rehab facility with over two months in a wheelchair.

She says, “just get a job.” What would I do? I can’t do the work I used to: housekeeping in hotels and retirement communities, as well as various office jobs through the years. I have worked since I was 17 years old. I’m 63 and, oh, how I wish I could do what I used to.

Her letter was mean and the letter right above it is something she should read over and over: Danny Ebbinghassen x’s letter about being kind. Ms. Reilly should also look up the word “empathy.” She sorely lacks it. Shame on her.

Natalie Gibb

Spokane