Published: August 14, 2007 11:10 am         

Letter: Make ‘Operation 66’ a priority

To the editor:

The sights and sounds of the “pros and cons” people in our community who vociferously talked and wrote about the proposal for a new high school campus have just about disappeared from the public eye.

It seems as if there is a general rule that if tax-rate increases are not involved and if the major athletic teams are having winning seasons, the public gives the board of education and school officials the freedom to manage the day-to-day operations as they wish.

But unless the citizens of the Mt. Vernon Township High School District 201 get enthusiastically involved and help the school with the improvement of the academic deficiencies, truancy and dropouts, more students will be left to fend for themselves in an ever-increasing competitive world of work.

Considering one problem — the 66 dropouts for the 2005-2006 school year — the taxpayers should get actively involved in helping the school succeed with any program that helps students stay in school.

Question: Why should the people who pay the taxes to operate the high school get involved?

Answer: The taxpayers are paying a high price for ignoring this issue, and the high school is losing thousands of dollars per year as a direct result of dropouts.

The Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation funded a study of Indiana’s dropouts and reported that “Indiana’s 2006 dropouts will cost taxpayers $62 million every year.”

Other key findings include:

■ The unemployment rate for Indiana high school dropouts is 12.7 percent compared to only 4.4 percent for high school graduates.

■ Indiana dropouts earn $4.4 billion less per year than high school graduates.

■ An Indiana dropout is twice as likely to be incarcerated or to be on Medicaid as are high school graduates. Dropouts cost Indiana taxpayers additional Medicaid costs of $190 million and additional incarceration costs of $27 million per year.

■ Lower earnings of dropouts cost the state $150 million in lost income tax revenue in 2005.

The loss of income revenue, increased incarceration costs and increased Medicaid costs over the lifetimes of the yearly dropouts are some of the factors in arriving at this figure of $62 million. And estimates indicate that approximately 30 percent of federal inmates, 40 percent of state prison inmates and 50 percent of persons on death row are high school dropouts (U.S. Department of Justice, 2000, 2002).

I believe it is reasonable to use the Indiana study results as a comparison to the problem in Illinois.

The Mt. Vernon Township High School had 66 dropouts for the 2005-2006 school year. If these 66 students had perfect attendance, and if the figure of $6,000 per student for general state aid were to be used for our calculation, the high school lost about $400,000 for the 2005-2006 school year.

Therefore, the taxpayers and the high school should work together to help students graduate and become productive citizens in our society. By keeping students in school, the state aid will increase for the high school and more money will stay in the pockets of the taxpayer.

“Operation 66” should be a priority for the citizens, the high school staff and the board of education.

George Kuhn

Mt. Vernon



To allow smoking or not should be will of the people

To the editor:

Many years ago, Thomas Jefferson spoke to the Congress and he stated that he feared that the government would become self-serving and ignore the will of the people.

He was a very wise man, because this has happened in Illinois.

The recent “no smoking in public” law that our state leaders passed and the governor signed into law is total discrimination with strong hints of dictatorship and is absolutely against the will of many people. This law is a slap in the face of smokers and also business owners who wish to allow smoking in their places of business where a majority of their customers are smokers.

There is a far better way to protect nonsmokers from being exposed to secondhand smoke, but our leaders ignored any options and/or considerations that would be fair to all Illinois citizens. This is not leadership and not acceptable.

I have spoken to many smokers, and they want to know what to do, and I have suggested that they call or write their state representative who voted “yes” for this law and voice their opinion. Explain to this leader that they did not vote your will and/or for your benefit, and request that the guidelines of this law be modified and determined by a vote of all citizens in the next general election.

This law has such a financial effect on our Illinois economy and citizens’ rights. The concept needs to be approved by all people rather than just a few leaders in Springfield.

The ballot should offer three considerations:

(1) Stop smoking within all places open to the general public, including government buildings, bars, hotels, restaurants, casinos, school property — with no exceptions.

(2) Allow businesses to provide separate and/or sealed rooms within the building where smokers can smoke without exposing nonsmokers.

(3) Apply the concept of “majority rules” and allow smoking within any private business where a majority of the customers and the managers approve thereof.

This would be the proper way to resolve this issue and honor the will of the people.

I have spoken to many citizens who do not smoke, and they express that this law is a good thing, but they have not grasped the fact that this law as it stands will destroy many places of business who will lose their customer base and will have to shut their doors.

We must use some common sense, or we may apply a law that will hurt us rather than help. I am very sure that a few years down the road, when the effects of this law kick in, there will be many who will have second thoughts that they supported this law “as it now stands.”

When many places of business close their doors, when the revenue from these places stop, when the state receives far less money, they will without a doubt charge everybody more state income tax, sales tax, property tax and/or many additional fees to make up the difference.

I strongly suggest that everybody should ask their state representative to provide you with the facts and figures concerning the amount of revenue that cigarettes normally bring into the state. You then can decide if you are willing to make up the difference when this cigarette revenue and the revenue from closed businesses is lost.

Ron Ellis

Mt. Vernon

     

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