Oklahoma Gazette provides an open forum for the discussion of all points of view in its Letters to the Editor section. The Gazette reserves the right to edit letters for length and clarity. Letters can be mailed, faxed, emailed to [email protected] or sent online at okgazette.com. Include a city of residence and contact number for verification.
‘Reverse’ integration
The July 15 Plaza School article is the most optimistic and intelligent article I’ve read in the Oklahoma Gazette (News, “Plaza Schooling”). Excellent article.
The Oklahoma governor, the Oklahoma City mayor and every school parent should read and reread this article.
What we need is to integrate our schools with parents like the ones in Ben Felder’s article about Gatewood Elementary, where parents who cared and got involved and who had children that are respectful and disciplined like them and get involved helping other children. They believed their “involvement could help the school improve its academic performance,” and proved it could work.
They weren’t discouraged by irrelevant government grade cards. They encourage the school staff by assuming they were just as good as any other school staff.
Maybe the answer to improving schools, children’s education and neighborhoods is to make it safe and profitable for young, affluent homeowners to live in disadvantaged areas. Maybe have the police give more attention to patrolling those areas, and maybe give the young, affluent family homeowners a property tax break to buy in those areas.
Kind of like reverse integration. We need more parents who will get involved with their kids’ schools rather than run away to the affluent side of town, where they think they can leave it all up to the school. No matter what color they are.
— Michael Moberly
Oklahoma City
Praising Pawley
Thank you, Jack Fowler, for solving a mystery for us (Life, Visual Arts, Cover Story, “Passing ‘Cultivation,’” July 15, Oklahoma Gazette).
Recently, a friend and I were jogging around downtown and jogged through the underpass at S. EK Gaylord Boulevard and W. Reno Avenue. We stopped dead in our tracks when we realized we were running through art. In unison we asked, “Who painted this mural?!” I would say to anyone who has not seen it to take a trip downtown to see it.
Walk — don’t drive — through it.
— Eloise Bentley
Oklahoma City
Faltering flag
Republicans rallying to retain the flag of the Confederacy would most certainly cause “Old Abe” to hang his head in disbelief. The Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson, et al. presently lead the Republican mission to reassemble an absolute corporate grip on wealth. Imagine the astonishment and shame felt by Teddy and Taft if they knew the present-day “malefactors of great wealth” have completely reversed their noble “trust-busting” of the early 20th century.
Republican Dwight Eisenhower’s heart would be broken by the absolute grip the military-industrial complex now holds on his country. He tried to warn us.
Abe, Teddy, Taft and Ike would find it impossible to win a Republican primary in 2016.
— Frank Silovsky
Oklahoma City
Correction
In the July 22 Gazette, we gave the incorrect address for the OKC-County Health Department building where Nani had its hearing. The correct address is 1000 NE 10th St., Room 1102.
