Saturday, November 14, 1998

Waltzing Matilda

I would like to publicly thank the good folks of Abilene Regional Medical Center (education director Pam Dorn, R.N.) and the good folks of the Abilene March of Dimes (division director Lisa Marquette) who recently (Nov. 5-6) gave all the fifth-graders of five Abilene elementary schools the gift, "Aunt Matilda Comes to Visit."

"Aunt Matilda Comes to Visit" is a character dramatization about alcohol-related birth defects. These birth defects are the most tragic of the possible 6,000 birth defects because they belong in the group that are 100 percent preventable. Also, tragically, our young people, nationwide, are taking their first drink before age 13 and having sex at earlier and earlier ages.

It is because of the efforts of folks like Pam and Lisa and David Baum (director of guidance and counseling, Abilene Independent School District) that the future of Abilene will be brighter and healthier. These people should be commended for their prevention efforts.

LINDA CULBRETH

(a k a "Aunt Matilda")

Houston

TAAS shenanigans

"Somebody" made the policy decision to lower the passing standards of the TAAS. That decision was not made by the company that designed the test; it was made by the people who told the test graders how to grade the test.

That "somebody" had to be the Texas Education Agency.

Are we Texans going to trust the Texas Education Agency -- who gave students, their parents and us educators false information -- to develop the new TAAS for the year 2000?

How foolish it would be for us to let the same agency (that apparently corrupted the TAAS data) to spend our hard-earned taxpayers' money to create a new generation of TAAS tests.

This would be like letting the convicted thief design the security system for his own prison cell.

DONNA GARNER

Hewitt

Via e-mail

Set that VCR, folks

I would like to warn people who know in advance that the local television media will be covering a story about a family member and want to have a copy of their loved one's time on TV.

Be prepared to record it yourself, and if it is on more than one station, have friends or family designated to record their assigned channel.

If you do not, the local stations no longer offer that service and will direct you to a company that offers that service for $15 each. So if your story is on all three stations, it could end up costing you $45 for a total of 90 seconds of video tape.

So make your plans in advance if you possibly can.

JUDY CHAMBERS

Coleman

Via e-mail