Reader feedback

A Viking in Bucs clothing

NK Stadium is for all NK students and that includes KHS. When the bond was proposed NKHS was over crowded and many able and willing athletes didn’t make the teams they tried out for, at one time more boys were cut from the soccer program than were kept and now through KHS many are participating that wouldn’t have a chance, including NKHS students who would have been bumped by better players living in Kingston, so all benefit. But NKHS kids get the better athletic facilty just by living where they do?

I graduated from NK as did my father and three of my children and I coached a lot of games at the stadium we both love. What is the problem with sharing? I coach in many other district stadiums where multiple school logos show proudly. Kingston is not a second class community but equal and it’s evolution has enhanced NKHS opportunities.

Now lights at Kingston are important not just for games but mostly for practice. There is only one-and-a-half practice fields outside the turf, NK has four full sized practice fields plus two lit turf fields (lit turf has three times the use of unlit) so in total NK has up to 11 practice fields to KHS two-and-a-half. And both schools have the same number of programs to train. Where do they do it? It’s more than a “bummer” or unfair, it’s unrealistic and doesn’t provide for essential programs public high schools should provide.

As to budgeting, yes the district is strapped for money, but left over funds from the bond must be spent on capital facilities, not maintenence or books. By putting lights at Buccaneer Field we triple the use and it fully utilizies money already spent for turf, getting best use of money already spent.

Though it doesn’t meet all the needs, it goes a long way to helping deserving kids and a community to provide practice space. It also can help alleviate some scheduling conflicts that will happen when KHS gets equal time at NK Stadium, something that will happen due to fairness and required Title IX requirements.

You see, all our kids benefit, North Kitsap players too. Change is hard but inevitable. Most of the young people involved have been very understanding, hopefully with a sense of fair play and respect we will work this out.

We really are all on the same team. I will always be a Viking under my Buc skin.

Craig C. Smith

Kingston

Whoopsie

Facts in dispute

There are several factual errors in “OC’s part-time instructors seek bargaining power” Nov. 29:

(1) The propose Equal Bargaining Rights Bill is NOT designed to allow “part-time faculty to participate in collective bargaining” as the article states. Rather, the proposed bill is intended to expand the scope of bargaining for community college faculty so that additional institutional revenues can be bargained, as they are in the four-year institutions.

(2) Dr. Nathaniel Hong, who was cited in the article, is NOT a part-time faculty member as the article states. He is, in fact, a full-time tenured faculty, president of the Olympic College faculty union, and the elected chair of Washington Education Association’s Higher Education union.

(3) Senator Rockefeller’s comments, quoted in the article, were addressing the projected state budget shortfall and what may be a resulting 20 percent cut in the state’s higher education budget. Senator Rockefeller’s comments were NOT specific to the proposed equal bargaining rights bill as the article implies.

(4) Representative Rolfes comments — that the “only reason” the legislators were there was to be put “on TV and pledge support to this bill”— were delivered as a light-hearted joke, and were not intended to “put the event in perspective” as the article states.

Apart from the factual errors, the article failed to mention the other theme of the evening: the emphatically substandard workplace treatment received by Olympic College’s 375 part-time faculty, who teach nearly half of all OC courses.

Jack Longmate

Bremerton

Surveys

Why they matter

I completed the Kitsap Community Agriculture Survey as soon as I received it. I completed two other surveys, including the big national agricultural survey sent out every few years.

Why would I do this? It exposes my farm to scrutiny (“you shouldn’t let them know you exist”), it takes time (“I’m busy farming, I don’t have time for this), and it makes me think about what we are doing (“I don’t even want to think about this”). I do this because I want the people who allocate money, designate zoning, and set public policy to recognize our farm and our customers. If they don’t know we are here, we will most certainly be run over by progress.

The Kitsap Conservation District and members of the Kitsap 20/20 Agriculture Task Force sponsored the Kitsap Community Agriculture Survey. If you are a farmer, and I don’t care if you grow vegetables on top of your garage in town and sell or give them to your neighbors, or if you have 20,000 acres of forest land, or something in between, fill it out. Federal, State, and County budgets depend on it.

Marilyn Holt

Poulsbo