Letters to the Editor

    February 19, 2010
    Opinion

    Thank you Rotary

    To the Editor:

    On behalf of the Santa Paula Hospital and Health Care Agency of Ventura County, I want to express our heartfelt appreciation for the Santa Paula Rotary’s generous donation of $13,000 presented at their November 30th club meeting.  

    This donation is crucial to our shared community goal of ensuring the highest quality of care at Santa Paula Hospital. The funds will allow us to purchase new equipment for our radiology department, thereby providing Santa Paula residents with state-of-the art equipment that will enable our first class staff to identify potential health risks and ensure that needed treatment is provided as quickly as possible.

    The donation will also support Santa Paula Hospital’s efforts to provide outreach and health education and needed health screenings at health fairs and other sites throughout the community.   

    The Santa Paula Rotary’s distinguished service to the community is well known. Santa Paula Hospital is fortunate to have the Rotary as a dedicated partner.  

    Michael Powers

    Health Care Agency of Ventura County

     

    Support school unification

    To the Editor: 

    Will graduates of local schools develop adequate skills to compete for tomorrow’s well paying technical jobs?

    Today the U.S. is focused on creating new jobs, but what kind of jobs - high paying jobs biased upon technical skills and computer literacy or low-paying jobs biased upon physical labor? As machines replace people and America designs, builds, installs and maintains new laborsaving devices, the number of jobs biased physical labor is declining. Every new invention will require someone to operate it,  repair it and maintain it. Likewise, the number of jobs requiring technical skill and computer literacy is increasing every hour. Some computer technicians make more per hour than many doctors.

    Locally, we have seen changes in the job market at Santa Paula’s oldest agriculture enterprise, the Limoneira Company. Over the years this industry has wisely utilized many new laborsaving devices to reduce their cost of packing lemons. Electronic grading, sizing, and counting are some of the many tasks now performed by wonderfully sophisticated equipment. Like Limoneira, other companies move forward with new technology that replaces labor or they become obsolete and go out of business. Consequently, there are not only fewer jobs now in Santa Paula, but there are fewer jobs based solely on physical labor that do not require language and math skills as well as some technical or job-related education.

    Education for today’s job market is the only smart path to follow for our children’s financial future. Our schools must rise up if more of our kids are to develop the skills they need to compete for the jobs that are available now and will be available in the future. A child with computer access in the home has a huge advantage over those that do not. Computers are the world’s greatest teaching invention ever created! And the information from the internet is updated daily! 

    School unification is one big step we can take to improve our educational system to help more of our kids move farther and faster within the system so that they graduate with the skills they need to compete for jobs following high school or following college graduation. 

    David Kaiser 

    Santa Paula





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