Letters to the editor should be 250 words or less. Include your name and city or community of residence. Guest opinions should be 600 words or less and include a brief summary of the author’s credentials relevant to the topic. Guest opinions may include a head shot of the author. For the Fort Myers News-Press, email submissions to [email protected] and for the Naples Daily News to [email protected]
Safety for bikes, pedestrians
Florida leads the nation in lightning strikes, shark attacks, and killing people on bicycles. Lightning strikes and shark attacks are acts of God. Killing people on bicycles is a function of a negligent subordination to the culture of cars. Growing up in Miami I was twice hit by a car on my bicycle − no injuries thank God. Naples seems hell bent on following Miami’s trajectory of mercenary overdevelopment with the consequent congested infestation of cars. Over 50,000 people who work here commute in and out of Naples every day because they cannot afford to live in this ghetto of wealth. Affordable housing could take 50,000 people off the road every day twice a day. Naples is a grid of six lane divided roads, many with double turn lanes. This rich infrastructure is inadequate to deal with the volume of cars, especially seasonally. Expanding 75 from 6 lanes to 8 lanes between Naples and Fort Myers is only going to funnel more car volume into our overwhelmed infrastructure. Pedestrians, bicycles, and an investment in mass transient could provide significant decongestion. At the moment bike lanes are defined by a stripe of paint that does nothing to protect the cyclist from the lethal encroachment of cars. It’s time to stop butchering pedestrians and cyclists on the altar of the automobile. They need a physical barrier beyond a stripe of paint to protect them from the infestation of killer cars brought to us by overdevelopment.
Patrick Frawley, Naples
Offer teachers competitive salary
The district claims to be addressing the teacher shortage in hard-to-staff schools by offering bonuses —but let’s be clear: this is not a real solution. They pop into schools for quick visits, take a few photos, and leave without ever asking the teachers — those of us actually doing the work — why these schools are struggling. They’re not engaging in authentic conversations. They’re not interested in hearing the truth from the people in the trenches.
And it’s not just “low-performing” schools facing challenges. Every school in this district is carrying a heavy load. These bonuses are nothing more than a carrot dangled in front of already exhausted educators — trying to entice us to leave one school to fill a spot in another. That doesn’t reduce the number of vacancies — it just shuffles the deck. It’s smoke and mirrors…