Pay students to leave schools
What helps students? Parents involved. Small class size. Variety, since each student is unique. Flexibility, since family situations change.
Home-schooling guarantees all of these. Colleges and private schools, competing for student dollars, do pretty well. David Cook's public schools (May 12) try but struggle on all four fronts.
So reinforce success: Pay students to go from public schools into home, private, college and real-world education. Rick Smith needs $10,000 per student per year? Write laws so if a student leaves Mr. Smith's public schools, he or she takes $5,000 per year with him or her and leaves Mr. Smith's other students the rest.
So if eight students leave the public schools, Mr. Smith has an extra dollar for each student who stays. If 1,000 students leave, Mr Smith has $5 million with no tax hike. If 7,000 students leave, he has his whole $34 million. Spending-cut scholarships!
Andrew Lohr
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Clinton scandals aren't relevant
The media has lost its credibility on elections. Reporters were begging Hillary Clinton to answer questions from them while on the campaign trail. They had every right to want to ask her questions. After all, there are things that Hillary should answer.
Topics like college tuition, student loans, the pending trade agreement, Iran, ISIL, economic mobility, health care and climate change. These are the issues many Americans want to hear about. They rightly want answers on her platform.
However, when national media members finally got the chance to ask these important questions during a visit in Iowa, they severely dropped the ball. Instead of asking questions that actually matter to Americans, they decided to focus on the phony scandals surrounding her email and the Clinton Foundation.
After 28 days of wanting to press Hillary, reporters decided to diminish their credibility by asking questions that, quite frankly, aren't relevant to everyday Americans.
Hillary isn't the only victim of this embarrassing "journalism." Bernie Sanders has great ideas on policies facing our country.
Yet the only question reporters seem to be asking him is if he can beat Hillary. If reporters want to be taken seriously, they better start asking the serious questions.
Chad Henderson, Flintstone, Ga.
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Approve Humane Society funding
I am a Chattanooga resident and animal lover in Hamilton County. The requested increase for the Humane Educational Society's budget should be approved. If we cannot take care of those who have no voice, who will? HES team members and volunteers are very dedicated to making Hamilton County a better place to live for everyone.
Commissioners, please help them by approving this budget increase.
Mrs. Bonnie M. Phillips
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Save birds, bats: Go nuclear power
Wind and solar power are intermittent, and no technology is on the horizon for efficient storage and usage as needed. Also, they are killers of birds and bats, our primary natural defense against insects.
Wind power is 4.5 cents per kilowatt-hour only after receiving subsidies of at least 15 cents per kilowatt-hour by U.S. taxpayers.
Germany shut its nuclear plants and added wind power. Its electrical cost tripled, and it is building new coal plants to provide base load power.
Fukushima is a triumph of fear over reason. Some 20,000 direct deaths from a tidal wave there were ignored, while fear over potential effects of radiation still rages. The plant, designed for a Richter 8 earthquake, shut down, but the Richter 9.3 tidal wave over-topped the Richter 8 sea wall protection.
This led to a loss of cooling water for the shut-down reactor's residual heat, leading to a hydrogen explosion that killed several plant workers.
Nuclear power is the greenest and safest power available to meet base load demand. Tennessee's senators are dealing logically with science and economics, not pandering to the pseudoscience of environmentalists and politically biased economics.
Susan Spurgeon