Lone Star Ma

Over 25,000 CCISD students were eligible for the free and reduced price lunch program in the 2009-2010 school year – a number that does not include children who are not old enough for school or students at the four other school districts in Corpus Christi. For many students, the meal they receive at school is the most food they will get in a day – for some students, it is the only food they get. This makes summer a problem for families who are struggling to get by in these tough economic times.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) should be deciding on the contested air permit for Las Brisas soon - sometime this summer, possibly quite soon indeed. While they are supposed to listen to the state administrative law judges who ruled that the permit should not be issued as written, they are not absolutely required to do so. Politics can trump expertise as we have seen here in town. Now, this very week, is the time for the citizens of the Coastal Bend to remind the TCEQ that we do not want that filthy, dangerous plant here.

On Tuesday, May 11, the Corpus Christi City Council voted to allow the City Manager to negotiate a water contract with Las Brisas, even though doctors, parents and teachers filled the chambers begging them not to do it. Doctors and scientists presented ample information on the health and environmental risks that such a plant would cause and the Council members blithely ignored them although, puzzlingly, some of these Council members claimed they were "going with science" - very strange.

March is Women's History Month. Girls do not learn a lot about the history of the important contributions that women have made to the world as school curricula tend to have a bias towards teaching war as history and certainly towards teaching mostly about men. In 1971, the year in which I was born, a study of thirteen popular U.S. History books found that only 1% of the content was about women.

We spent the morning of St. Patrick's Day at the Nueces County Courthouse trying to convince the Nueces County Commissioners not to vote to give a tax abatement to Las Brisas. The fact that Las Brisas doesn't need a tax incentive because no one else in the world is going to allow that dirty plant to be built in their community aside, my family does not think we should be giving tax incentives to people to come and poison the children, elderly and sick of our community.

I meant to write more about this sooner but I just can't. It's too upsetting. For those who have not heard, the State Board of Education has been working on revisions to the social studies TEKS that remove the names of many important women and minorities in the TEKS and add in requirements for teachers like teaching the "disadvantages" of multiculturalism and glorifying right-wing ideologues.