Edward F. Travers

You’re doing great, Bill. Keep moving forward!

Thanks for sharing your concern about our schools.

It seems to me that an educated workforce may be a necessary (at least helpful) condition, but is not a sufficient condition for creating jobs. As a region, we also need to enact economic policies that ensure there are good jobs. When even highly educated, well qualified people are having a hard time finding jobs, young people will think twice about going deeply in debt for college.

It’s also important to look at more than isolated data about education, but also the context. For instance, we might ask whether the struggles of our students are due to shortcomings in the schools or some other factor. It turns out that when controlling for socioeconomic status, American students score among the highest in the world in Int’l comparisons. This data would indicate that it is the relatively high rate of childhood poverty that is at least partially to blame.

It’s also worth remembering that systematic problems usually require systematic solutions. We can’t just ask students and teachers to hunker down and work harder. We need to ask what the underlying problems are.

I applaud the Port Jobs program and your efforts to improve our community.

Thanks for listening,

-Demian

Keep beating the drum for education.

Pat

I believe this is our single biggest challenge to sustainable prosperity – for all; and, I think it is this type of mega-challenge that if effectively managed would produce our largest / mega economic competitiveness opportunities. I also think that David Brewester’s remarks @ Rotary this week are incredibly relevant to harnessing the political will to tackle this Mega-Community issue. I believe we engage the emerging political base of highly educated Y and Milennial generation citizens to help them realize this is their generation’s issue – their biggest challenge, their biggest opportunity to shape their commuinity’s future whether they have children or not.

Willing to help anyway I can.

Best,

John Powers

I do not understand how the depreciation you mention fits into the picture, particularly as we look to the future. I would hope that it is used to define the basia for future capitalization and modernization, otherwise it is just an accounting gimmick.

Thanks again and keep up the good work.

Frank W. Meyer

What you refer to as industrial lands, in reality are Duwamish Indian lands, old Italian and Japanese farming lands, and Residential lands. I think your campaign, and the Port of Seattle, could benefit from acknowledging this fact, and taking it into consideration in present and future planning. Thanks.