Hits and Misses
MISS: The author Robert Fulghum once famously said, “It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need, and our air force has to have a bake sale to buy a bomber.” That observation has undoubtedly come to mind for parents, teachers and students in the Sto-Rox School District in Allegheny County, because the district recently ran out of paper. Yes, paper, that most basic of school supplies. The paper supply for the district went dry for the remainder of the academic year due to what was described as conservative budgeting, but there’s something wrong with how much we provide for education if officials have to go begging on social media for paper. It’s a good bet that most of our global competitors do not have teachers spending their time cutting the extra three inches off sheets of legal paper so they can be used in the classroom.
MISS: It’s easy to complain about traffic in the region, but at least we’re not Atlanta. Georgia’s capital earned three spots in the top 10 in the American Transportation Research Institute’s annual list of the most congested bottlenecks for trucks in the United States. But we’re hardly off the hook – Pennsylvania placed with six bottlenecks in the top 100, including Washington County’s own eastern interchange of I-70 at I-79. That’s at No. 78 on the list. According to Chris Spear, president and CEO of the American Trucking Association, “This report should sound the alarm for policymakers that the cost of doing nothing is too high, and provide a roadmap of where to target investments to really solve our nation’s mounting infrastructure crisis.”
HIT: The Boy Scouts of America filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this past week, and that is undoubtedly not good news for an organization that has been rocked by allegations of sexual abuse and has seen declining membership over the last decade. But the silver lining for area residents involved in Boy Scouts is the regional councils are unaffected by the national bankruptcy. The Laurel Highlands Council, which oversees Scouting activities in Washington and Greene counties, said in a statement this week that “there should be no change to the Scouting experience.” With any luck, the bankruptcy declaration will allow the Boy Scouts to start over and gain a sense of renewal.
HIT: The United States’ political life is plenty contentious right now, and that has spilled over into how Americans interpret our history. The legacies of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson have come under reconsideration in some quarters given their status as slaveholders, but instructors at both Washington & Jefferson College and Washington Junior/Senior High School have tried to approach their accomplishments and shortcomings with a balanced perspective. Erin Moore, an eighth-grade history teacher, put it well in a story that appeared in our Monday edition: “I teach that human beings are not all good or all bad, and can do great things for the development of the country while participating in practices that are unthinkable to a modern American. I constantly remind students that people’s beliefs are a product of their personal experiences and perceptions, and that you have to learn about people’s experiences and norms of the time to understand them.”