To the Editor:
Fillmore High School Drama is blessed to have the support of so many in our community, from parents to local service organizations. Once again, the Fillmore Lions Club has donated to our program, ensuring we have the funds to provide valuable equipment for our students. Every year, these donations provide so many opportunities to our actors and crew members to bring a performance to the stage. Thank you, Fillmore Lions Club!
Josh Overton
Director, Fillmore High School Drama

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To the Editor:
We break it, we buy it. Aside from the not-so-fresh hell of recent politics, let’s not forget what many of the children under our protection, and to whom we owe the possibility of a decent future, are experiencing, and which will provide the foundation for the future.
First, families with children at the border are still being separated and some may never be reunited because of the deplorable records kept by this administration. What does Homeland Security and ICE – and what do we - think is going to become of those children and their families in the next 20 years and after? The depression, PTSD, and hopelessness that are already being recognized in children forcibly removed from their parents will only fester. We now know that PTSD in children can affect their brains at the cellular level, and so may not be subject to cure later in life. We broke it, we buy it.
Second, there may be hundreds of thousands of children who are homeless, whose parents are attempting to live a normal life along freeways, in cars, and in parks (Sacramento is a vivid example where there are signs “Watch Out for Pedestrians” along I-50 and I-80 and the signs of habitation abound). Poverty and stress are invading their lives often, again, at a cellular level. They are being left behind by the rush to riches, and by our tolerance for the corrupt abuse of democratic capitalism as demonstrated in vast economic disparity. We broke it, we buy it.
Third, children the world over have been protesting for their futures on the planet while ecosystems are collapsing due to the dark side of the Industrial Revolution, and all the while we had the means to curtail it. But it will cost money and we may be dead before climate change catastrophically alters our world. Those kids won’t. We helped break it, we ignored the warnings about it for decades, we buy it.
All of this is happening, and is largely being ignored, in our names. Do we care? In due time, there will be nowhere for any of us to hide, not even in the bushes along a highway. This generation will tell us what they think of the system and of us and they will act. They already are.
Kelly Scoles, Fillmore

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To the Editor:
Fillmore Unified educators are tired. Tired of being placed at the mercy of a school board and administration that fails its greatest assets among our students time and time again. We have consistently stepped up to support the district during difficult times with furlough days and work with dedication to implement the vast array of programs given to us on an almost yearly basis with minimal real support, and we are tired.
We are tired of watching our health benefits shrink and our bank accounts empty, making up for the 24% loss in benefits last year, while members of our leadership and other employees enjoy over $10,000 more in district contributions for health care this year and a $900,000 savings fund created by our educators. We are exhausted, waiting for our leadership and our school board to show their appreciation and return to us what we lost.
We are tired. Tired of listening to the call of our board for full and fair funding of our schools when year after year our superintendent is awarded hefty annual raises and countless other perks, while Fillmore educators are told with exhaustive consistency that there simply isn’t enough to offer even a cost of living allotment to its most dedicated professionals.
But tired is part of our job. Day in and day out Fillmore educators cultivate learning with tireless dedication and profound passion for students. Tired might be what we do, but tireless is who we are. Fillmore educators will not settle for less than we deserve and we will be unwavering in our efforts.
Kelley Hess
Fillmore Middle School