School closure means lost opportunity
Another of the SUN schools (Schools in Urban Neighborhoods) is closing in North Denver. These schools disproportionately serve new immigrants, people of color and people of lower economic means.
As a practicing Catholic, I believe in “the preferential option for the poor,” as reflected in canon law and Catholic social teaching. Unfortunately, the Denver Archdiocese continues to demonstrate the opposite.
I’m sorry for these families whose children will no longer have the opportunity for a Catholic education in the school of their choice.
Catherine Hanisits, Denver
Political leaders should value all Americans, even the childless
Vice presidential candidate JD Vance, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and their followers seem to think that people who do not have biological children do not have as great a stake in this country as biological parents, nor do they have humility. Maybe they should look at their own leaders and talk to them about humility – but that’s another issue.
According to them, only biological parents have worth in this country.
What about adoptive parents, who have given loving homes to orphaned children or to those children who are “unwanted” due to laws restricting birth control and abortion? Or those people who openly welcome and love their spouse’s children as if they were their own? Or foster parents who take children out of abusive, dangerous homes and give them love and, safety and security?
According to Vance and Sanders, they don’t seem to have value, but biological parents who abuse, neglect, exploit or endanger their children do? Or what about a surrogate? She has worth and humility because she gave birth, but the person she carried that child for doesn’t?
Maybe they should get off their high horse and out of their ivory tower, and get down into the real world. There are loving families of all types – regardless of biology.
People who do not have children still support families – as teachers, coaches, counselors, or by paying property taxes that support schools, even though they do not have children. Who are Vance and Sanders to judge anyone’s value in this country?
R G Wilson, Greenwood Village
Oasis is doing good for the city
Re: “Neighbors transform yards into native-plant havens,” Sept. 16 news story
I enjoyed the fun story about the Oasis project to rewild as much of the city as possible. What they are doing makes so much sense. The typical Denver lawn uses Kentucky bluegrass, which requires lots of water, chemicals and regular mowing. Using gas-powered lawn equipment to manage these non-native grass lawns spews pollution into the air, which smells horrible and makes our already bad ozone problem worse.
Switching to native plants lowers our water use and eliminates the need to mow. Native plant landscapes are easy to maintain, look beautiful and benefit our native pollinators.
We converted our lawn to a native garden three years ago and love the change. Unfortunately, we had not heard of Oasis.
Hats off to Oasis for making lawn conversions affordable and doing good for the community at the same time.
Bob Walker, Denver
Time has come for change in presidential eleciton
Today, there is a growing cancer in the American body politic. And, in its wake lies the death of our democratic experiment.
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Religious freedom, LGBTQ rights collide in lawsuit over Colorado’s universal preschool program
The idea of a confederation of states enjoining a federal union by electing a president consisting of their federal contribution to Congress was a novel (and quaint) 18th-century concept. Remember, too, at the time, state legislatures elected their own U.S. senators, and the presidential inauguration was held in March.
The fact is that the only electoral decision that all Americans make together is that of the president and vice president. In the current world of realpolitik, the election of the president is simply too important to be left to the states to decide individually.
If we are one nation, under God, we must finally have the votes of all Americans be decided together.
Paul Crumby, Loveland
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