Demand cognitive tests for our elected leaders Open forum

Schools are more than buildings, they are ideas

Last week, students, teachers and community members gathered to watch workers place the highest beam of a new school building in Boulder. This beautiful new building — supported by our recent Community Bond — will provide a desperately needed new home for New Vista High School, an innovative small public high school in BVSD.

New Vista was founded thirty years ago by educators who wanted to rethink the traditional high school experience. New Vista offers rigorous learning opportunities in a school culture that supports personal relationships, students’ interests and choices, and meaningful civic engagement. The school uses a quarter-based, block schedule with inventive, interdisciplinary, teacher-created classes (e.g., “The Science of Science Fiction,” and “U.S. History: Chicago”) and guards weekly

“community experience” time for students to volunteer in local organizations and explore future career pathways. Students have an advisor/teacher who supports them through all four years, from registration to an independent culminating project organized around their interests.

Our district schools are all wonderful. But it is also wonderful to be in a district that recognizes there are multiple ways to teach and learn, and that provides students and families with meaningful and accessible choices. It’s wonderful to be in a community that supports our schools through investing in beautiful, updated spaces for student learning. Our 2022 bond is helping us update buildings throughout the district, creating new career and technical learning opportunities, improving accessibility, and addressing critical needs.

Investing in these buildings is important. But schools are more than buildings; they are ideas. These ideas were visible and resonant on Tuesday morning. Our commitment to shared public values and projects. Recognizing the multiple pathways to pursue an excellent education. Supporting a vision for what education could be (and might become). Cheers to that.

— Terri S. Wilson, Community Bond Oversight Committee

member, Boulder

When is it appropriate to intervene and take a life?

I believe that human life begins at the moment a male sperm enters a female ovum; and, that it continues to develop through birth and lives until death. The course of that person’s life will be determined by the choices made for and by them. But the question is, “When is it appropriate to intervene and take that life?”

Some say that all life is sacred … whatever that means; and, that we should never intervene and take a life. Yet, we choose to continue to practice the stoneage behavior of warfare, killing each other by the thousands while being cheered on by the military-industrial complex because of the jobs created and the great sums of money made from killing. Indeed, the U.S. is the largest arms exporter in the world.

Apparently, life is not “sacred” in twenty-seven U.S. states where the death penalty is still in effect; making us one of the top five executing countries in the world. And, with our embrace of gun violence as a way of life, we choose to kill some forty-thousand of each other a year with guns we fail to regulate, such as military assault weapons in the hands of civilians.

People choose to have sex without birth control; then neglect their unwanted children, driving them to a hard life on the streets, or if “lucky,” to join the more than two million orphans being cared for in the

U.S. Add each fetus from rape and incest and those that are a threat to the life of an expectant mother, all of which can be aborted only partly formed in utero before they are awakened into a world of torment. Should we intervene and abort those unwanted children? It’s a pregnant woman’s personal decision to make. But, I say yes.

— Don Bryan, Boulder

Given Biden’s age, and the fact that federal investigators described him as an elderly man with memory problems, we should demand an independent and comprehensive cognitive test. Given Trump’s age, and the fact that his statements and speeches are often incomprehensible gibberish, we should demand an independent and comprehensive cognitive test. Regardless of party or program, we are entitled to know if the most powerful person in the world is competent.

— Michael Shea, Boulder