I was startled to read that the leadership of Saint Louise Regional Hospital is considering asking South County residents to support it with some sort of tax. I think this effort will fail for several reasons.

As the state cuts spending, local agencies are asking voters to replace state funding with various kinds of local taxes. Up and down California, voters will be asked to fund schools, libraries, roads, and more. What’s more, the cash-strapped state will ask voters to approve extensions of state tax increases.

How many of these taxes will voters approve? These are voters who, since 2008, have watched their home values plummet, their 401k values drop (many with the added insult of having a modest employer match of 401k contributions disappear), all while either being laid off or living with the chronic worry that a pink slip is just around the corner.

And those are just the general hurdles that any tax measure must overcome. A tax to benefit Saint Louise Regional Hospital faces additional significant challenges. Chief among them is this country’s critical separation of church and state.

I strongly support this protection that our forefathers wisely included in the Constitution, as should any conservative, constitutionalist, or patriot. (Save an email message: I know that the words “separation of church and state” don’t appear in the Constitution or Bill of Rights. The concept is clearly described in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Similarly, the words “eminent domain” don’t appear in these documents, but the concept is clearly described in the Fifth Amendment.)

Because I understand how important the separation of church and state is to, as President James Madison noted, keeping “from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries,” I, and many others, have grave concerns about a tax to support a religious organization.

I was recently told that I should put those concerns aside because a hospital is important to South County. That strikes me as the kind of “the end justifies the means” thinking that was vehemently condemned by my fundamentalist Christian K-12 teachers and pastors and that worried St. Thomas Aquinas.

A tax to support Saint Louise Regional Hospital also faces the hurdle of long memories, especially in Morgan Hill, about what many still view as the theft of their hospital.

When it became clear in the late 1990s that South County could not support two hospitals, Catholic Healthcare West, which operated Saint Louise Hospital in Morgan Hill, bought South Valley Regional Hospital in Gilroy, closed the Morgan Hill hospital, and renamed the Gilroy facility Saint Louise Regional Hospital.

Many people in Morgan Hill work in San Jose and other North County locations, so they simply obtained health care services from providers near their workplaces, rather than going out of their way to Gilroy to patronize a hospital that many viewed as a reminder of the insulting theft of their medical facility.

In a 2001 UC Berkeley School of Public Health report titled “California’s Closed Hospitals, 1995-2000,” the authors note that Catholic Healthcare West’s closure of Saint Louise Hospital in Morgan Hill and another hospital in Long Beach “were so hotly debated that the Attorney General launched an investigation of the CHW system.” It notes that the closure of the Morgan Hill hospital was one of the most vociferously opposed hospital closures in the period the report covers. I have a hard time believing that the people who worked so hard to prevent the closure of Saint Louise Hospital in Morgan Hill would support a tax to benefit a successor hospital in another community.

Many people in South County (I’ve heard estimates in the neighborhood of 33 percent) have medical insurance through Kaiser, meaning that they cannot use Saint Louise Regional Hospital for anything but legitimate emergencies. How likely are they to tax themselves for a hospital that they cannot use?

When you remember that Saint Louise Regional Hospital, as a Catholic facility, does not offer a full range of legal reproductive services, you’ve identified another reason that many people will vote no on such a tax.

Does South County need a hospital? Absolutely. Is a tax supporting a religious facility offering limited services, located in a less-than-ideal spot, with a history that causes understandable resentment among a large portion of the population the right way to ensure it? I have serious doubts about that.

“Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

getting ready for new years from the Flickr photostream of summerbl4ck

The much-used Morgan Hill Community and Cultural Center, Centennial Recreation Center, Aquatic Center, and Morgan Hill Library, and many improvements in the lovely Morgan Hill downtown: These are just a few examples of the assets the RDA helped to bring to Morgan Hill. A comparison of the downtowns of Morgan Hill, which launched its RDA in 1981, and Gilroy, which never created one, shows the power of RDAs to help alleviate blight and improve quality of life for residents.

On the positive side, state Senate, state Assembly and US House of Representatives districts were drawn for the first time by people other than state legislators. At the behest of California voters, the California Citizens Redistricting Commission took over the job from legislators, who had huge and insurmountable conflicts of interest in creating districts that protected their seats rather than promoted the interests of the people they represented.

Under the new system, Morgan Hill, Gilroy, and San Martin are in the same state Senate district, 17, and state Assembly district, 30. Gilroy is split between two congressional districts, one of which includes Morgan Hill and San Martin (District 19) and one that instead includes Hollister and points south (District 20).

The Los Angeles Times has a useful interactive tool that shows the districts that were drawn by legislators the last time they had the job (2001) compared with the new districts created by the Citizens Commission in 2011. The maps are a visual justification of the wisdom of redistricting reform. I predict that we’ll just begin to see the effects and wisdom of California voters’ decision to relieve legislators of their redistricting duties in the 2012 elections.

Morgan Hill Congressional district after 2001 redistricting (left) and 2011 redistricting (right)

But I’m not just looking back; I’m also looking ahead to 2012 and asking: What would I like to see happen in South County this year? Setting aside pie-in-the-sky dreams (like attracting a full-fledged, not-hamstrung-by-religious-dogma university to the region) in favor of a more practical, achievable goal, I’m still hoping that South County can find someone to create better marketing of the region as a local tourism destination. I’ve written about this in the past, but it bears repeating: People in the Bay Area need to know how close Morgan Hill, San Martin, and Gilroy are to the rest of the Bay Area, and they need to know more about the treasures that await them if they visit South County.

I’m frequently reminded of the misperceptions that many people who live north of Blossom Hill Road have about how far away South County is. Meanwhile, they don’t hesitate to drive much greater distances to visit other regions. I’d love to see a campaign that corrects that misperception while also reminding folks of the great wineries, restaurants, recreation opportunities and more that abound in South County. Getting more people to visit will help not only those businesses, but related businesses as well, including gas stations, restaurants and local governments (by increasing sales tax revenue). If more people are aware of South County’s many charms, it will eventually have a positive affect on property values. It will also help great local non-profits that host events like Silicon Valley Puzzle Fest and the Poppy Jasper Film Festival.

I’m quite aware that government funds are limited, and thus would like to see a public-private partnership come together to fund a marketing campaign to let our Bay Area neighbors in on the much-too-well-kept secret that is South County.

A new year presents us with the illusion of a new beginning, a fresh start. In reality, we’re burdened with the consequences of our past mistakes and blessed by the fruits of our past successes. Let’s work together in 2012 to minimize the former and maximize the latter.

A friend, an Air Force veteran, wondered why she’s not seeing more celebrations marking the end last week of the United States’ war in Iraq. She’s right; the end of the war is a very muted event. We don’t see any of the iconic celebrations that marked the end of the World War II, for example. I saw more jubilation over the end of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy than I saw over the end of the Iraq War.

Edith Shain VJ Day Kiss NYC from the Flickr photostream of Ghost*Rider (Patrick)

The war ended officially on Thursday, Dec. 15, with the encasing of the colors ceremony. In 2008, the Bush Administration negotiated an agreement, called SOFA, that called for the United States to leave Iraq by Dec. 31, 2011. The last US troops left the country on Dec. 18, marking the end of a stunningly costly war no matter how you measure it. NPR reports that the nearly nine-year Iraq War is estimated to have cost $800 billion, the lives of almost 4,500 American troops, and an estimated 100,000 Iraqi lives. The cost to the United States will continue for decades as we care for the 32,000 soldiers injured in the war, many with injuries so severe they will require treatment for life-long effects.

Of course, the war had a last American casualty: David Emanuel Hickman, 23, of Greensboro, NC. He was killed by an improvised explosive device on Nov. 14. He joins a long list that includes a South County resident, Jeramy Ailes of Gilroy, who was only 22 years old when he was killed in Fallujah almost exactly seven years earlier than Hickman.

And then there are the loved ones of the troops who were injured and died: They’ll feel the effects and pay the price for the rest of their lives, too. CBS news reports that “since U.S. troops first entered Iraq, 8,794 Americans lost a son or daughter; 3,141 lost a parent; and 2,468 lost a husband or wife.” As journalist Michael Ware put it in Newsweek, “Perhaps we should grieve for the living. Those left behind, without a father or a mother. Those who must now face the rest of their days living a war without end.”

The effects of the war will be felt in Iraq for generations as well – not only by the families who had dead or injured loved ones, but also by the country’s landscape, politics, economy, and psyche. The country is politically fragile, as Reuters put it, and “divided across sectarian and ethnic lines.”

My friend is aware of all of that context. Still, she wondered: Certainly the end of a war is something to celebrate; why aren’t we?

I think it has to do with the misguided nature of the war effort. As Rep. Nancy Pelosi said, “[President George W. Bush] led us into the Iraq war on the basis of unproven assertions without evidence; he embraced a radical doctrine of pre-emptive war unprecedented in our history.” Yes, that war toppled Saddam Hussein, but it’s fair to wonder: Was it worth such a cost?

What’s more, the end of the Iraq War is coming on the heels of an organic, grassroots revolution in Libya that was faster and dramatically less expensive by every measure. The way that the Gaddafi regime in Libya ended makes the Bush Administration’s strategy of trying to impose regime change and democracy in Iraq look even more foolish than before.

Schieffer identified another reason we’re not celebrating the end of the Iraq War: It didn’t dramatically affect most Americans’ daily lives. Unlike World War II or the Vietnam War, we had no draft. We weren’t encouraged to buy bonds or ration staples or plant victory gardens. We put the cost of the war on a credit card, forcing our children and grandchildren to pay for it rather than taxing ourselves.

Am I glad the war in Iraq is over? Yes. Our service members, including my niece, are home, having served honorably in difficult circumstances. I’m thrilled that the courageous one-half of one percent of us who served in Iraq have finished their work there. But a celebration? No; it just feels terribly inappropriate.

I’ve been associated with the local newspaper chain since 2000; first as an employee, as a reporter at the Morgan Hill Times and then as city editor at the Gilroy Dispatch, then as a freelancer serving as a columnist and editorial board member at both papers (although the demands of a new job dictated that I regretfully leave my editorial board role at the Dispatch several months ago). Before I joined the high-tech world, I also did extensive freelance work for the papers that included a stint editing at the Hollister Free Lance.

Newspapers B&W from the Flickr photostream of NS Newsflash

That long association means that I often hear people’s complaints about the local papers. If a story doesn’t get the play someone wants, I often hear about it. If someone doesn’t like an editorial, I often hear about it. If someone is irked by a column (not just mine, but also other people’s columns), I often hear about it. If someone finds an error in an article, I often hear about it.

What I hear much less often is appreciation for the important role our local papers play in our communities. That’s too bad.

I’ll grant that the local papers aren’t perfect. But I also expect any complainers to grant that no human endeavor is perfect. Churches, small businesses, universities, multinational corporations, hospitals, charities, unions, corporate lobbying firms, and governmental agencies: They’re all organizations made up of error-prone human beings and, thus, they all make mistakes.

But there’s more reason to cut your local newspapers some slack: The newspaper industry has been ravaged by disruptive technology, dramatically reducing revenue, especially classified advertising revenue.

In 2009, the Columbia Journalism Review’s Ryan Chittum reported that the newspaper industry’s advertising revenue, in inflation-adjusted dollars, was at 1965 levels. Chittum blamed disruptive Internet technology like eBay and Craigslist for devastating classified ad revenue and pointed out that the collapse of the housing market reducing real estate ad revenue was the “final indignity.”

Newspapers are working with dramatically reduced resources even from the time I started in the already-in-decline industry in 2000. In 2008, The Inquistr reported that newspaper revenue peaked in 1997 and dropped 65 percent by 2008. 1997 was the same year that classified advertising was the largest share of newspaper revenue at 41.67 percent.

Despite those extremely difficult conditions, our communities are fortunate to have local newspapers that are working with dramatically reduced resources to provide important services.

If you didn’t have your local newspaper, where would you learn about what your local school district is doing? Where would you hear about your city council’s latest initiatives? Where would you hear about the raise granted to the head of a local agency? Where would you learn about efforts by local residents to help various charities, from libraries to food kitchens to battered women’s shelters and more?

You certainly wouldn’t hear about these kinds of important items from the newspapers, television stations, or radio stations based in the large cities that surround us. San Francisco, San Jose, and Monterey based media outlets don’t seem to know our communities exist unless there’s a flag controversy, a cheerleading controversy, or a murder.

Our local papers serve an important watch-dog function: People in positions of power must mind their Ps and Qs because of the local newspapers. They know that what they’re doing is being watched and reported and that provides an important check on their power. The mere possibility of public scrutiny of elected and appointed officials’ actions provided by the existence of the local newspapers is an important incentive for those officials to act in the public’s best interest.

Beyond that, our local papers serve as a place, as playwright Arthur Miller noted, for the community to “talk to itself.” The newspapers report about events in the community and the community debates on the opinion page, and increasingly, on online comments sections. Without the existence of the local newspapers, there’s very little fodder for those community conversations.

Yes, our local newspapers are imperfect – like everything. And when you see room for improvement, by all means, tell your local paper’s editor about it. But make sure that you also frequently take time to appreciate the critical and too-often overlooked role that the local newspapers play in our communities.

“Radical simply means ‘grasping things at the root.’” ~ Activist and author Angela Davis

A few weeks ago, I joined the queue to use self-checkout stations at a local Safeway when a woman wheeled her cart by the line. She loudly told her companion that the people using the self-checkout stations were “union busters” who would be responsible when cashiers were fired. With great effort, I bit my tongue.

I wanted to ask if she refuses to use email because it threatens postal service jobs. Does she shun ATMs because they threaten bank teller jobs? Does she eschew self-service gasoline pumps because they threaten gas station attendant jobs? Does she refuse antibiotics because they threaten leech-harvesting jobs? Does she avoid telephones because they threaten telegraph operator jobs? Does she decline automobile transportation because it threatens buggy-manufacturing jobs?

Man in barn with horse, buggy out front from the Flickr photostream of Boston Public Library

Of course, it’s too late for many of those jobs: Disruptive technology has already improved our lives, increased our efficiency, and, in the process, created and destroyed jobs. The woman at Safeway was directing her anger at the wrong target. Unemployment is often a symptom of a poorly educated workforce. Instead of trying to shame people using life-improving technology, she ought to be advocating for an education system that enables workers who lose jobs due to disruptive technology to get jobs in the industries that disruptive technologies create.

I’m reminded of that Safeway incident by our country’s current economic and political troubles, in particular the US Congress’s deficit super committee, which, as I’m writing, seems doomed to miss its deadline. Whether you’re sympathetic to Tea Partiers or Occupy Wall Street protesters or somewhere in between, we must focus on the root causes of our problems. Like the woman at Safeway, too often we’re distracted by symptoms.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), recently identified many root causes of our deficit:

“This country does, in fact, have a serious deficit problem, but the reality is the deficit was caused by two wars, unpaid for; it was caused by huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country; it was caused by a recession that was the result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street. And if those are the causes of the deficit and the national debt, I will be damned if we’re going to balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, the sick, the children and the poor.”

I’d add one cause to Sanders’ list: The undue influence of money on our political system. We should not equate citizen speech with corporate speech and dollars. Our elected officials should not be more responsive to deep-pocketed donors than to constituents, whether those deep-pocketed donors are labor unions or multinational corporations. The problems that Sanders rightly identified were allowed to happen by politicians who were more loyal to donors’ agendas than constituents’ needs.

We know what we must do to fix our economic and political mess. The immediate solution requires raising taxes and cutting spending, including spending on “untouchable” programs protected by both parties. It requires reforming public employee pensions and re-regulating the financial sector.

Long-term, we must create a campaign finance system that doesn’t turn politicians into donors’ indentured servants and pass a constitutional amendment that overturns the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling that equates corporate speech and citizen speech.

Some of these actions will seem radical to ideologues on each end of the political spectrum, but that’s because these actions ignore political platforms and instead “grasp things at the root.”

To the degree that our representatives are willing shift their priorities from adhering to political ideology and pleasing deep-pocketed donors to doing what’s right for this country and its people, we’ll fix our economy.

“The distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters. The financial resources, legal structure, and instrumental orientation of corporations raise legitimate concerns about their role in the electoral process. Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate spending in local and national races.” ~ Justice John Paul Stevens’s dissenting opinion on the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling

That means that I’ve sometimes pleased those on the right — by supporting redistricting reform and private property rights and opposing eminent domain on behalf of developers, for example. That means that I’ve often pleased those on the left — by supporting reproductive rights, marriage equality, and separation of church and state, and opposing union busting, for example.

All of that is context for my stance on an issue that I know will anger many on the left: I support public employee pension reform, and applaud Gov. Jerry Brown for his politically courageous efforts on this important issue. I don’t agree with every detail of his plan, but it is a brave and much-needed step from a Democrat on an issue that we cannot continue to ignore.

Let’s remember the importance of intellectual honesty: Just like most Democrats properly argue that Republicans should ignore, for example, their significant monetary support from Wall Street firms when considering financial industry regulation and instead consider the greater good, I hope that Democrats will ignore their significant monetary support from labor unions when considering public employee pension reforms and instead consider the greater good.

The fact is that the current public employee pension system is unsustainable. As Microsoft founder Bill Gates noted recently, the situation is exacerbated by the current recession, but even lacking that recession, the current system is a prescription for bankruptcy: “There are long-term problems with state budgets that a return to economic growth won’t solve. Healthcare costs and pension obligations are projected to grow at rates that look to be completely unsustainable.”

Because we’ve ignored this problem, we’re now making choices between libraries and pensions, public schools and pensions, state universities and pensions, services for the physically and mentally disabled and pensions, infrastructure and pensions, prisons and pensions, parks and pensions.

David Crane, who served as special advisor to former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, wrote in a guest column for the Los Angeles Times that California diverted “$5.5 billion … from higher education, transit, parks and other programs in order to pay just a tiny bit toward current unfunded pension and healthcare promises” in 2010. Similar funding diversions are occurring at all levels of government.

But there’s another important reason to reform the public employee pension system: It’s simply unfair to ask one group of citizens — private-sector workers — to pay for a benefit for another group — public-sector workers — that the first group largely cannot get.

Most public-sector workers have defined-benefit pension plans in which benefits are guaranteed no matter what happens to the investments the pension plan makes. If the plan investments can’t cover benefits, taxpayers must cover the difference. Of the private-sector employees who have any pension plan at all, most have defined-contribution plans, like 401k plans, in which benefits are not guaranteed and depend on the results of pension plan investments.

According to the Center for Retirement Research (CRR) at Boston College, in 2004, 80 percent of public-sector workers participated in defined-benefit pension plans, compared to 10 percent of private-sector workers. What’s more, as the CRR notes, “Public defined benefit plans tend to provide larger benefits than their private sector counterparts, and most offer post-retirement cost-of-living adjustments, which are virtually unheard of in the private sector.”

We’re currently seeing nationwide protests rightly decrying the unfair differences between the 99 percent and 1 percent based on income growth disparities. I’m waiting for the protests decrying the unfair differences between the haves and have-nots based on pension plans.

In a perfect world, everyone would have defined-benefit pensions. But we don’t live in a perfect world. We live in a flat world where Americans compete for jobs with people all over the globe willing to work for less money and fewer benefits.

Like it or not, reforming the public employee pension system is long overdue. It’s not enough to reform it at the state level; reform is needed at the federal and local levels, too. Congratulations to Gov. Brown for making a good start.

Although Santa Clara County as a whole has not fared as badly as other parts of the state, within Santa Clara County, South County’s cities are among the hardest hit. RealtyTrac reports that last month, 66 new foreclosures were filed in Morgan Hill, for a rate of one of every 224 housing units. Gilroy saw 90 new foreclosure filings, or one of every 176 housing units. Only the sparsely populated Mount Hamilton area (population 35) had a higher rate: Its one new foreclosure filing gave it a foreclosure rate of one of every 12 housing units.

RealtyTrac Foreclosure Maps for Morgan Hill (left) and Gilroy (right) for September 2011

The flood of foreclosed properties depresses property values, reducing property tax revenue to schools, libraries, municipalities and the state. As property values fall, even homeowners not at risk for foreclosure lose some or all of the equity in their homes, reducing their net worth and their confidence in the economy, and forcing many to abandon plans to move or retire.

Con artists see opportunity in this crisis. Realtor Rebecca van Dahlen of Coldwell Banker Northern California’s Morgan Hill office has seen many fraud victims and is outraged.

“Homeowners are driven to these scams because it’s so difficult to get through the loan-modification process. It’s more difficult than dealing with the DMV, it’s more difficult than dealing with an insurance company,” van Dahlen said. “I can’t tell you how many homeowners I run into who have been scammed and it’s just too late for them.”

When homeowners apply for a loan modification, they start a frustrating, Byzantine process, van Dahlen told me: Lenders require homeowners to complete and return many complicated forms; lenders often lose submitted paperwork, then require homeowners to resend it. Information reported by one lender telephone representative frequently contradicts information given by the next representative with whom a homeowner speaks. Loan-modification applications are frequently rejected for vague reasons, homeowners are often told to apply for different programs and they start the cycle all over again. Meanwhile, their financial difficulties worsen.

van Dahlen recounted one couple who had not missed a payment on their mortgage, but who was at risk due to reduced income. They applied for a loan modification but their lender declined stating that the couple had missed a deadline for returning paperwork. It was paperwork that they had submitted. When this frustrated, worried couple received a slick, official-looking brochure — it even sported the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) logo — in the mail from a company promising to help them through the loan-modification process, they were prime targets.

The company burnished its credibility by “waiving” any fees for their services and sending them lots of legitimate-looking forms to sign. The loan-modification service agreed to shepherd van Dahlen’s clients through the loan-modification process. It filed paperwork with the couple’s lender, and a few weeks later, notified the couple of their new mortgage payment, provided payment coupons, and directed them to send the new payment not to their lender, but to the loan-modification service.

The couple was overjoyed, but their relief was short-lived. The loan-modification service had not obtained approval for a loan modification, and kept every dime (several thousand dollars) of the “modified loan payments” that the couple paid it in lieu of their regular mortgage payments. The couple didn’t learn of the fraud until they received a foreclosure notice from their lender.

van Dahlen reported this case to the district attorney’s office and is hoping that a prosecution will result. Unfortunately, it’s not an isolated case, and it’s not the only scam targeting financially distressed homeowners.

If you’re having difficulty making your mortgage payments, be a skeptic. Van Dahlen suggests that if you use a loan-modification service, verify every claim with your lender. If your loan-modification service tells you that they filed a loan-modification application or tells you that your application was approved, call your lender to check. The Federal Trade Commission advises homeowners never to work with any business that “tells you to make your mortgage payments directly to it, rather than your lender.”

The FTC provides more detailed advice on its web site.

The bottom line from van Dahlen: “There is help out there. You just need to be a really informed consumer about it.”

I’m shaking my head over the way the Morgan Hill Unified School District handled a furlough day, which it is calling a “non-instructional” day.

Empty Classroom from the Flickr photostream of Max Klingensmith's Photostream

The state of California, due to education funding cuts, allowed school districts to reduce the number of school days in a school year from 180 to 175. MHUSD’s board of trustees voted to impose a furlough or “non-instructional” day on Tuesday, Oct. 4, and might impose another one in March.

I understand that GUSD is considering imposing furlough days, and if it does go ahead, will likely simply end the school year a few days early.

I understand the school districts’ budget woes and am not taking issue with decisions to reduce the number of school days. Instead, I’m concerned about two things: the short notice for MHUSD parents and the placement of a furlough day in the middle of the week.

MHUSD trustees approved Tuesday, Oct. 4, as furlough day at their Sept. 13 board meeting. I received an automated call about the furlough day on Sept. 26, the first I heard about it. Fortunately, my only school-age child is old enough that she doesn’t need day care if school is closed. But that’s not the case for every parent.

Working parents of young children could very well need more than eight days notice to either arrange for time off work or for alternate day care plans.

Moreover, I’m concerned that the school district’s decision to put the furlough day in the middle of the week maximized the negative effect of the furlough day on student learning. The start-stop-start of the week of Oct. 3 had to impede learning and retention.

This suspicious choice of days was the subject of a recent Morgan Hill Times Red Phone question. Superintendent Wes Smith explained that MHUSD placed the furlough day on a Tuesday “because we did not want our community to misconstrue our purpose. We are not trying to create a three-day weekend for students and employees. We are taking painful, necessary actions to operate within our means as a result of state under-funding.”

Pardon my eye roll.

What purpose? To make the furlough day as painful to parents as possible? If so, mission accomplished, and I hope it doesn’t backfire when the district goes to the community to ask for a parcel tax or other financial support, as many expect it to do.

However, if the MHUSD’s purpose is to protect the educational experience of students, as it ought to be, it missed with this furlough day decision. I suggest that trustees and administrators look to their counterparts in Gilroy for a much better example of how to handle these unfortunately necessary furlough days.

•••

I’m rolling my eyes over the furor in Gilroy over the Gilroy Visitor’s Bureau’s decision sell retail items at its welcome center in the Gilroy Premium Outlets.

The complaints I’ve seen center on the idea that the government should not “compete” with private business and that because the Gilroy Visitor Bureau receives some funding from the city of Gilroy, it ought not to sell retail items in its location.

First, let’s congratulate the Gilroy Visitor’s Bureau on a location that has already dramatically increased the number of people it reaches.

Second, I dispute the notion that it should not “compete” with business. We have public schools and private schools, public hospitals and private hospitals, public recreation facilities and private recreation facilities. The argument that the Gilroy Visitor’s Bureau should be barred from any fundraising activity that competes with Gilroy businesses is poppycock. The more that the Gilroy Visitor’s Bureau can be self-supporting, and need less public funding, the better.

Third, I can’t think of better way to tempt outlet shoppers into the welcome center than with items to browse and purchase. How attractive are desks and literature stands to shoppers? While shoppers are browsing, they’re learning more about Gilroy’s many tourist attractions. And isn’t the ultimate goal of the Gilroy Visitor’s Bureau to get the word out about hidden treasures scattered throughout Gilroy and South Valley?

Local businesses should applaud the Gilroy Visitor’s Bureau for its smart new location and creative approach to informing more people about Gilroy’s many charms. Complaining to City Hall about a creative agency that’s working to improve the service it offers and potentially reduce its cost to the city? Puh-lease.

The events of 9/11 spurred widespread distrust, facilitated the spreading of misinformation, and strained relationships between Muslims and westerners. We’ve seen sad examples here in South County, with ignorant, bigoted opposition to plans by the local Muslim community to build a mosque in San Martin.

What’s that important step? It doesn’t involve diplomats and it’s not sponsored by any governmental agency. Instead, this effort relies on what Sister Cities International calls “citizen diplomacy.”

The Morgan Hill Sister Cities Committee is working with Morgan Hill resident and Lebanon native Osman Ghandour to secure a sister city relationship with his hometown, Al-Rawda, Lebanon. The committee voted last week to send a letter to Al-Rawda community leaders expressing interest in formalizing a sister city relationship.

Image of Al-Rawda, Lebanon, from the Facebook page created for this city

In making this overture, the Morgan Hill Sister Cities Committee is following the advice of its parent organization, Sister Cities International: “… To secure a more peaceful future, we must encourage better understanding and cooperation between the West and the Muslim world. Sister Cities International is in a unique position to play a vital role in bridging the gap between the Muslim world and the West through the ‘citizen diplomacy’ movement.”

Ghandour is hopeful that a sister city relationship will help people, especially children, in his hometown dream big about the opportunities that are available in the rest of the world. Ghandour said that as a boy, he never dreamed of leaving Lebanon, but because he earned a scholarship to college in the United States, his life changed dramatically. Ghandour holds a BS, Masters, and PhD in electrical engineering from Columbia University in New York.

A sister city relationship with Morgan Hill would provide residents of Al-Rawda specific, tangible examples of the opportunities available in the rest of the world. Ghandour is living proof that those opportunities are available even to children from Al-Rawda, Lebanon.

Al-Rawda is Arabic for the garden, Ghandour told me. He described his hometown as a small farming community located in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. Although much smaller than Morgan Hill — Al-Rawda has a population of approximately 4,000 people — it has much in common with Morgan Hill, Ghandour said.

Like Morgan Hill, Al-Rawda is located in a fertile valley a short distance from a much larger city. Al-Rawda is approximately 40 miles from Beirut.

Like Morgan Hill, Al-Rawda’s history is steeped in farming, although agriculture plays a much bigger role in Al-Rawda’s present-day economy than it does in Morgan Hill.

Morgan Hill Sister City Committee Member Karen Anderson is well aware of the history of Sister Cities International and how relevant it is to the local committee’s efforts to forge a relationship with Al-Rawda.

“[President Dwight] Eisenhower created Sister City in the hope that people would become friends despite whatever their governments are doing and citizens would then press for peace,” Anderson told me. “Japan, more than any other country, espoused Sister City. Practically every city or town [in Japan] has [a sister city] in the U.S. One can ponder whether that effort did indeed make our transition from war to peace easier. If so, we belong in the Middle East.”

Committee member Claudia Rossi agrees: “What if we had a chance to break bread together and speak about our concerns, our hopes with someone who may only hear negative stories about us? What if we connected directly with someone across the world without interference from those that may benefit from keeping us enemies?”

Anderson recounted a story about traveling in the Middle East in 1980 with her husband, Einar: “We were saved on the road from Casablanca to Marrakesh by a Muslim man who, after seeing that our car had died, drove us to our hotel in Marrakesh. He spoke perfect English and we had a discussion with him about some of his beliefs. He would not take a thing from us and encouraged us to help another as he helped us. It was the way of Islam. That is the Islam we need to learn about. Sister City is a good beginning.”

Ghandour celebrates the opportunity that his situation as a Lebanese Muslim living in America affords him: “I am not torn between two worlds. I have the pleasure and challenge to bring two worlds together.”

Crackeleur Capital Letter F On Glass (Silver Spring, MD) from the Flickr photostream of takomabibelot

I applaud the Morgan Hill Unified School District’s trustees for indicating that they will remove a policy that bars students from participating in extra-curricular activities if they receive a failing grade in any class. I wish the Gilroy Unified School District’s trustees had done the same when this issue came before them in March. GUSD trustees voted to implement a “no F” policy effective this school year.

The MHUSD will retain its requirement that students maintain a 2.0 grade point average to participate in extra-curricular activities.

Proponents of “no F” policies often paint those on other side as softies who want to coddle students. It’s an easy and sadly predictable reaction, but it’s also wrong.

Those who support “no F” policies often seem to confuse messy reality with idyllic Lake Wobegon, Garrison Keillor’s fictional Midwest paradise where “all the children are above average.” (A hint for the mathematically challenged “no F” policy proponents among us: That’s impossible.)

A “no F” policy tells students that if they merely struggle with a subject, if they try and fail, that they deserve harsh punishment. Worse, the punishment is not rehabilitative in any way, as something meaningful like required tutoring might be. I suspect that one reason that “no F” policies are popular is that they are cheap. It costs nothing to bar a student from extracurricular activities (at least in the short term), while providing tutoring is expensive (again, in the short term).

Those who support “no F” policies also forget that the failing grade is itself a punishment. Failing grades lower students’ GPAs and force students to retake failed courses to earn credit. Why heap on more punishment by barring participation in extracurricular activities? It smacks of sadism.

Those who support “no F” policies encourage students not to stretch, not to take risks. They ignore the fact that failure is often a very good teacher.

Those who support “no F” policies ignore, as Sam Smith wrote in Progressive Review in 1986, the fact that “no F” policies teach students that “society discriminates against those who do not fit its mold — either because of ethnic background, economics, physical or mental idiosyncrasies, or inclination.” Smith noted that because “extra-curricular activities are too often used as early imprimaturs of success, the very student who is failing in the classroom will be forced to fail a second time outside the classroom.”

Worst of all, those who support “no F” policies pretend that the policies encourage students to make academics their top priority, when evidence shows that “no F” policies instead encourage students to drop out of school. The University of California Santa Barbara’s California Dropout Research Project reported [PDF] that participation in sports and other extracurricular activities increases the likelihood that a student will finish high school, labeling it “one of the most important” predictive factors.

Dropping out of high school is bad for everyone: for students, who will earn less and face high unemployment risk; for businesses, which need skilled labor; for families, which rely on strong breadwinners; and for our country, which needs productive citizens.

I wish we had a perfect world like the one Keillor created in Lake Wobegon. I wish that no student struggled with any subject; that every parent had the time and expertise to tutor their kids themselves in every subject, or at the very least the resources to hire private tutors; that no student needed to work to supplement family income; that no student dealt with physical or mental illness, or physical, sexual or substance abuse.

Sadly, that’s not reality. What’s more, even absent those kinds of difficulties, students can struggle in one subject without deserving banishment from every school dance, every team sport, and every club.

A policy requiring a 2.0 GPA — a C average — ensures that students are paying attention to their studies while allowing some room for students to challenge themselves academically and to risk struggling in one class.

We don’t live in Lake Wobegone, and implementing policies that are predicated on that fantasy won’t make it so. I’m glad that MHUSD trustees understand that, and hope that GUSD trustees will remove their rose-colored glasses and face reality before their implementation of a “no F” policy has real and lasting negative effects on the lives of students and the community.