Schools pay price for ignoring students’ mental health

Regarding “Students hit hard by social, academic isolation” (Front Page, April 4): This article is one of many documenting the stress on our young people of learning from home. This is only one reason I am angry and confounded by the decision of the San Mateo Community College trustees to hold classes remotely this coming fall. How can they justify this decision? Everyone will have the chance to be vaccinated before classes start. The trustees have had a year to prepare to reopen. My child is a freshman at SMCC, and her mental health has been deteriorating at a rapidly increasing pace this semester.

And she is one of the lucky ones who has a therapist. Coping with her mental health issues is taking a toll on the rest of the family as well. I believe that the trustees are ignoring the science and the mental health of their students.

Raise the standards

Regarding “Member’s suit adds to board’s troubles” (Front Page, April 2): What if we put the $80 millionplus toward improving elementary and middle schools and giving children the resources they need to qualify for admission to Lowell High School? That would go a long way to making sure all public school students would have the books, computers, food, excellent teachers and counselors they need. I would think that even Alison Collins, as a now former member of the school board, would have to agree that putting these funds back into the schools would be a better choice than having most of it go to lawyers to fight her lawsuit. Lowell High School is one of the top high schools in the country.

Rather than lower its standards, why not raise the standards of our elementary and middle schools especially in poorer neighborhoods to give all our children a chance at success?

Long history of racism

Regarding “Stand up against the antiAsian violence” (Letters, April 2): The letter correctly states that a majority of the violence against Asians is committed by a minority in the Black community. All racial violence is committed by a minority of people.

However, the pattern of violence against Asians did not start in March 2020. It has been occurring for some time. As such, it is not simply the result of U.S. cold war rhetoric against China. It is a much more complex issue involving socioeconomic factors.

Restore native flowers

Regarding “Wildflowers bloom despite dry winter” (April 3): I love the springtime in the Bay Area as it comes so much sooner than where I grew up in New Jersey. However, I wish Tom Stienstra would educate his readers more than he does about the flowers that people do and don’t see and why. Our hills used to be coated in fields of native flowers, so orange with poppies you couldn’t see the grass. A good example of what was is Shell Ridge in Walnut Creek, where restoration efforts show how wonderful our land used to be. However, what most people see are episodic views of lupine among mostly the yellow of invasive Scotch broom and mustard, especially here in the Berkeley hills.

With this terrible drought year, what you grow in your garden is the only planting that will get water. So please, shop at native nurseries, like Native Here, and support the local flora and fauna. It is not just the monarch butterfly that is dying out; there are literally hundreds of species of butterflies, among other insects, we can’t see anymore because the land they live off of is gone.

Believe in democracy

David Zurawik’s article on “The autocracydemocracy divide” (April 3) brings to mind words from former President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s third inaugural address, over 80 years ago. “There are men who believe that democracy, as a form of government and a frame of life, is limited or measured by a kind of mystical and artificial fate, that, for some unexplained reason, tyranny and slavery have become the surging wave of the future and that freedom is an ebbing tide. But we Americans know that this is not true.”

I hope he was right.

Time to speak up

Anyone who accepts that corporate political spending is free speech should not expect corporations to remain silent when civil rights are threatened.

Signe Wilkinson