Moore too quick to hand over money to schools

Our new fast-talking, quick-spending governor has it backward. In usual Democratic fashion, he is going to throw more money at a public school system that has hardly proven itself in several ways (“With his first budget plan in, Moore’s proposals begin to take shape against a backdrop of uncertain financial forecasts,” Jan. 22). It has not proven that it can produce positive results in teaching the very bare bones basics: English language skills, including reading at very low levels, and math.

It has not proven that it can deal with negative and even threatening behaviors other than to ignore them and allow them to happen while spouting liberal slogans that it is the poverty, the drugs of their parents and the gangs that cause the bad behaviors, while doing little to help the children change those behaviors.

And it has not proven that it is even willing to account for the tons of money it already gets, let alone stop criminal activity in how that money is spent. It can’t get nurses that it is legally obliged to have for certain students. Baltimore City

Public Schools had to be shamed into acknowledging ghost students.

I suggest that the smooth-talking Gov. Wes Moore promise the money for education — but only when the systems correct the issues they face now. Then I suggest that half of that money go into stipends for parents to spend on their children’s education in any school they desire or for any homeschooling they choose best. Pay parents to educate their children as they see fit. Only competition will get the educators to change behaviors, just as consequences for crime alone will get youth to stop violence.

— Rev. Michael T. Buttner, Bel Air