THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 14, 1996 TAG: 9604130146
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
Do you want our schools to continue dealing with student hostilities with their business-as-usual treatment that has earned public education such a rough reputation, perhaps even exposing your child to such?
Parents can have a voice in this issue. Many reasons bring concerned parents to support trying school uniforms their child's school. Helping their child feel more important, developing a better self-esteem, improving the school environment, even ending the morning argument, a perpetual fight that serves your family stress, etc. . .
One Virginia Beach school received extremely large monetary contributions from area businesses choosing to keep their tax donations in this community.
Reduced student hostilities, improved grades, improved self-esteem and lowered costs for school clothes are the main benefits of school uniforms, according to faculty reports from many educators across America. Concerned parents have led some pioneering educators to take this brave step to deal with several major problems facing public schools today. Too many parents feel powerless about school policies, believing that only educators will effect policy.
Not so here. Fed up with student disrespect and clothes styles that represent such?
Use your power. Tell Your school how you feel about trying school uniforms in your child's school.
A. Ruble
Virginia Beach Senior deserves praise
If I were an 81-year-old senior citizen whose land was needed by the City of Virginia Beach to build a schoolhouse for a new generation of youngsters, I would take a broad view of the situation, and try above all to think of what I might do to be remembered well by those to whom I must eventually leave everything.
It is unfortunate indeed that a senior citizen should be importuned either by city officials or by ambitious personal attorneys in the twilight years, and the publication of the citizen's plight (Virginian-Pilot Metro News, March 24) only compounds an already tragic dispute.
If I were faced with this situation, I would accept the city's final offer, overlook the fact that another more influential property owner might have been treated preferentially, pay off my attorney, and ask the mayor to remember me in some sentimental way when our next generation of schoolchildren is about to inherit the safe land that was once my own, and which I have so willingly ceded to posterity.
I hope that the gentle lady in question will have a long and happy life in her new home in the company of her daughter, and that the residents of Virginia Beach will honor her generosity and her memory.
A.P. Pirrone
Virginia Beach
Shelter offers its thanks
We are writing to express a joyous and heartfelt thank you to the many angels who have come forward to take up the cause of ``Save Our Shelters.'' Our appeal just more than six weeks ago was less a plan, than it was a wish and a prayer.
About 20 volunteers gathered together, around a table, and brainstormed, and worried, and hoped, and then acted. That small drop in the ocean resulted in ripples of love.
Their example resonated, and the results have astounded all of us. To date, we have raised just over $120,000. The city has put Samaritan House in their federal budget for $200,000. We are writing grants, and scheduling fund-raisers which stretch into March 1997.
We are especially grateful to all of you, dear friends from throughout Hampton Roads. Your actions let the families we serve know they are valued in a way we can only hint at.
Ellen Cospito-Ferber
Executive Director
Samaritan House
Timothy McCarthy
President,
Samaritan House Board of Directors by CNB