There have been meetings of parents, relatives and other supporters of the victims of the Newtown, Conn. shooting. These have been beneficial in many ways and psychologically essential. But there needs to also be a meeting of those who were not killed, their parents and the first responders (police) whose arrival ended the massacre.

The shooter came equipped with weapons and ammunition to kill every one of the students and faculty in that school! While many or all of these parents have thanked those police, there has been verey little public acknowledgement of the debt of gratitude so many owe to these public servants. If there had been any delay in their response, the toll would have been higher – perhaps MUCH higher!

Shouldn’t we be doing those things which tend to ensure a rapid response if such an event strikes elsewhere? I believe that in some jurisdictions there are efforts in that direction, but I’d feel better if there were a more concerted effort.

Robert Meixell
Westport Island

It is interesting to have the LePage administration provide new letter grades for schools at this time. It’s an effective way to criticize public schools and for our Republican Governor to promote the use of charter schools with public funds.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party with its Tea Party agenda is actively working to provide public money to private and religious schools which selectively choose their students. Criticizing public schools, which must accept all students, is a beginning step. 

Currently,  a number of GOP leaders are touting vouchers aggressively in Congress and in Republican-controlled states. In the Senate recently, a voucher plan that would have directed millions of taxpayer dollars to religious schools, was defeated. Our Maine Senators both voted against it. An Alexander-Paul bill would have allowed $14.5 billion in existing Title I funds to follow low-income children to any accredited school, public or private. Yet, the voucher program in the District of Columbia passed in 2003, has shown no impact whatsoever on student achievement.

Several Republican governors are strong advocates for providing vouchers with public funds – Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Chris Christie of New Jersey, Bill Haslam of Tennessee, Mike Pence of Indiana, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Rick Scott of Florida.  

We spent an afternoon in Augusta recently, at a very interesting public hearing. The Energy, Utility and Technology Committee was taking public testimony on four bills related to the encouragement and development of solar and renewable technology in the State of Maine. 

We arrived promptly at 1 p.m. to find the room already packed – standing room only. Both young and old, men and women spoke in favor of LD 1252, which would  restore rebates for energy improvements (accidentally removed by an earlier bill), and LD 1085, which would establish a feed-in tariff (FIT) that would allow homeowners and small businesses to capitalize the cost of private solar and wind energy generation installations by selling any surplus energy that they produce back into the electrical grid, where it can be used by the rest of us. The point was made repeatedly that creating more energy generation capacity of the State of Maine benefits everybody in the state.

Many of those who spoke had already installed photovoltaic systems and spoke from positive personal experience. Others who spoke would like to install solar systems if it could be made financially feasible for them to do so. We are in this group! The ability to capitalize loans for energy improvements would make these improvements possible for many businesses and homeowners who would otherwise not have access to these opportunities. The net result that can be expected is more and cheaper electrical energy for the State of Maine.