Intern partnerships help students and employers

In the June 11 Forum commentary “Still Flunking After All These Years,” Rachel Amankulor related the alarming findings of PennCAN’s recent report “Opportunities Lost: The Urgent Need to Improve Pittsburgh’s Schools.” The report describes a city whose future prosperity depends on a highly skilled workforce but whose young people are largely excluded from that future by a dearth of educational opportunities.

The problems besetting Pittsburgh’s educational system are not particular to the region, but one important solution might be: Pittsburgh’s history of unusually robust partnership across public and private sectors. This asset equips Pittsburgh to take advantage of a partnership model that has been implemented fruitfully in hundreds of U.S. high schools: a program in which students spend one day a week interning at a company or nonprofit, learning real-world workplace skills and cultivating relationships with community decision-makers.

In the Pittsburgh region, this model can be seen in action at private high school Holy Family Academy, where internship partners also contribute to financial aid for students from low-income families.

Implemented broadly in the region, this internship approach could empower more schools to financially support their students and provide them with valuable training, and empower more employers to cultivate and recruit the skilled workforce that will allow them to contribute to a vibrant local economy for decades to come. LISA M. ABEL-PALMIERI

Head of School Holy Family Academy

Emsworth ours, have full care programs — and the Republicans resort to this? They want to rush it through without analysis, hearing or even simple debate? This violates the basic premises of the American governmental system.

Before pushing this bill through, perhaps his party needs to take a field trip to other countries and see how they do it. Canada, for example, is a relatively short drive from Washington, D.C. Causing tens of millions to go without care is unconscionable. Shame on the Republican Party for following this track. F. CHARLES SPENCE

Clairton

Sen. Pat Toomey’s position on the health care bill he helped write doesn’t pass the smell test. On “Face the Nation” he spoke about allowing the insurance market competition to bring down insurance costs.

What he doesn’t tell you is that insurance costs were going up by double digits long before Obamacare was passed. These companies are interested in only one thing: maximizing profits. Look for merger after merger in the insurance industry, which will lessen competition and increase costs.

He spoke of the tax cuts being a good thing. Good for whom? Almost all the tax cuts will go to the wealthiest people in the country. These people, better referred to as the top 1 percent, don’t need a tax cut.

Corporations have been suppressing working-class wages for three decades and passing on these profits, which should have been shared with their workers, to the investor class and the rich. The working class and the poor got the shaft.

Just as a side note, after George W. Bush’s tax cut, the economy started to decline.

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People lost jobs and were unable to pay their mortgages. Soon after came the recession. Simply put, you can’t take a trillion dollars out of the hands of the middle class without serious negativeconsequences.

The very worst of the bill is that 22 million people will lose health insurance — 15 million in 2018 alone. Why do the Republicans hate the poor and the middle class so much? ANDREW ZIMMER

McDonald

A few weeks ago I was watching visitors from Australia being interviewed on local TV. When asked what they thought about Pittsburgh, they replied that they expected it to be smoky and filthy. Why is that?

Despite the fact that steel hasn’t been made here in more than 30 years, the media persists in calling Pittsburgh the “Steel City.” This sends the wrong message, a message that needs to end.

The media needs to stop this antiquated reference if worldwide perceptions of Pittsburgh are ever to change. DAVE HROMANIK

West Mifflin