Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

Page 4A The Braselton News Wednesday, November 21, 2007 Opinion “Difference of opinion leads to enquiry, and enquiry to truth ” -Thomas Jefferson rase I too ns by John Sheppard "Well Captain, X think we have a winner with this new camo fabric." letters editor’s memo The News will be an aggressive newspaper BY MIKE BUFFINGTON EDITOR & CO-PUBLISHER THREE YEARS AGO, we began separating news from Braselton and Hoschton and putting it on a spe cial page inside The Jackson Herald. Over the coming months, we expanded that until news from this area was made into a special section within The Herald. Last fall, that section was spun-off into a new news paper — The Braselton News. The coverage area was expanded and new beats were added. This slow gestation of The Braselton News was intentional. We wanted to grow the new newspaper in stages, accruing resources along the way and tweak ing how we covered news in the Braselton-Hoschton area. Now, three years after its start, The Braselton News is the largest newspaper covering the Braselton- Hoschton-Mill Creek-Chateau Elan-South Hall area with a circulation of over 16,000. No other newspaper comes close to this large distribution, or our depth of local news coverage. The birth of The Braselton News from The Jackson Herald was a natural progression for us. The Herald has been covering the Braselton-Hoschton area for over 100 years. A new publication gives us the opportunity to offer much deeper and more focused news coverage than is possible otherwise. The Braselton News also carries the aggressive DNA that has made The Herald one of the nation’s top weekly newspapers. The Braselton News was not designed to be a “fluff & puff” publication. If you want feel-good spin, read another newspaper. But if you want a newspaper that is tightly focused on local events and that isn’t afraid to ask the difficult ques- tions, then we offer you this publication. The Braselton News is a real newspaper that covers the nitty-gritty of local issues. We will not carry water for those who might wish to spin the truth. And we will not shirk from commentary about important local news that affects the lives of area citizens. A newspaper should be a mirror to the community, exposing both good and bad. So The Braselton News will indeed be aggressive in our coverage and commentary about issues important to the lives of those living in the Hoschton and Braselton area. Growing communities face a myriad of challenges and we will not be shy about discussing and debating those issues. In the coming years, we will continue to expand and grow this newspaper. We will add new features and new beats. And we will continue to tweak our current coverage, just as we’ve done in covering the area for the last century. Along the way, we welcome your comments and input as well. Let us know what you think and send us your letters about important community issues. The Braselton News A Publication of The Jackson Herald & Mainstreet Newspapers, Inc. Email: news@mainstreetnews.com Web Site: braseltonnews.com Classified Advertising classifieds@mainstreetnews.com PO Box 908, Jefferson, Ga. 30549 General Phone: 706-367-5233 Says education is important Dear Editor: Today in society, the knowledge that education brings us is the most important thing in each of our lives to have. However, most individuals out there are struggling during their high school years. That leaves them to either fail the current grade they’re in, or acquire the option to drop out. Every child’s perspectives on education is dif ferent and whatever decision that child makes can create either a successful future, or an unsuc cessful future. I feel that every child out there who feels like they cannot graduate on time and has to drop out should attend a special academic class where we council these individuals and explain the impor tance of having an education. I agree that there should also be night school sessions to raise your current GPA up as well. I definitely know there are many ways to prevent kids from dropping out of high school and every child deserves a bright future ahead. With a little assistance, I think we can do it! Sincerely, Kamini R Lawrenceville School hours should be changed Dear Editor: I would like to suggest that the Gwinnett County Board of Education change the school hours. A typical high school student has a job which they work during the evenings and at night and on top of that homework from every class, which in turn adds us to about two hours of homework almost every night. This means that after working all day at school and then going to work and working and then coming home to two hours of home work that is hardly enough time for sleep. If only the board of education would change the school hours for high school students to the time that the middle school students get up. Even if we get home later, that still gives us enough time to sleep, work and do homework and still be awake and fresh in the mornings for school. Many teachers complain that we sleep in class and that is why we have bad grades when techni cally, if we had more time to sleep, we would not be sleeping class. In turn, if we did not sleep in class, our class grade would go up and so would our SAT scores and other grades and scores. I am sure that if you changed the school sched ules, there would be plenty of happy students. Sincerely, Jakie O. Free clinic needed Dear Editor: As a citizen, I believe we are right to go to a hospital when we are sick. However, money that we have to pay is too much so that most of people cannot afford it. Because of that, many people are living with illnesses. Also, people get big disease from little flu because they couldn’t get free medical care. Thus, the community can build free clinic. The community can give people permission to be able to get medical care from a free clinic. If there is a free clinic, not only poor people will go, but rich people and people who can afford it themselves will go too. A free clinic will affect a lot of stuff for people and many people will be saved. Sincerely, Jason Chang Management of colleges and tech schools a state strength CARL PATTON announced the other day that he will be retiring next year from his state job. Unless you are a college official or part of the academic community in Georgia, the name probably won’t mean anything to you. But Carl Patton performed a valuable and enduring public service to the tax payers over the past 15 years that he has spent as president of Georgia State University in Atlanta. From its location near Five Points in downtown Atlanta, Georgia State has long been an institution that provided higher education opportunities to the non-traditional student: the person who had to take a job or join the military right of high school and decided years later that he or she wanted to start work on a college degree. They could attain that degree by taking the night courses that GSU offered for working people. Under Patton’s leadership, Georgia State grew to an enroll ment of 50,000 as it continued its important role for non-tra ditional students. The urban college also expanded its role of providing classes for the more traditional students as well. The addition of new buildings and the renovation of existing structures on the “concrete campus” revitalized a shabby area surrounding Atlanta’s central business district and made that part of the city a little nicer place to be in. Carl Patton played a big part in making all of that happen, so he deserves praise for a job well-done during his time at Georgia State. His accomplishments as president are also illustrative of the positive things that happen around the state through our network of public universities and technical colleges. It is a favorite pastime of newspaper editors and political commentators to gripe about what government does poorly and to criticize our politicians for the things they mess up and the mistakes they make. Heaven knows, there are a multitude of mishaps that you could point out. When it comes to post-secondary education, however, I would argue that the administration of our public colleges and technical schools is one of the things that Georgia’s state government actually does rather well. We are fortunate enough to have two research institutions - Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia - that consistently show up among the top 20 in aca demic rankings. We have a top-flight medical school in Augusta, the Medical College of Georgia, that could one day have a sister campus in Athens. We also have more than 30 other four-year and two-year institutions that make up the University System, along with 34 well-acclaimed technical colleges helping train the state’s workforce for jobs that pay more than the minimum wage. These institutions, big and small, provide a chance for a better life to the hundreds of thousands of Georgians who attend classes there every year. The campuses also are a leading source of employment and a magnet for business development in the communities where they are located - whether you are talk ing about Georgia Southwestern, or Gainesville State College, or Coastal Georgia Community College, or Coosa Valley Technical College. We also have made it possible for more students to attend these colleges, thanks largely to the efforts of Gov. Zell Miller and a group of legislators who had the foresight in the early 1990s to establish a Georgia Lottery and use the funds it generated to provide HOPE scholarships. The number of students who have been able to attend college or technical school through the benefit of this financial assistance is nearing one million. Miller is a cantankerous old man who has angered a lot of his former friends and supporters with some of the political zig-zagging he’s done in recent years, but there could be little argument that his tireless work to create the HOPE program is a legacy that surpasses that of any other governor of the past half-century. It opened up the doors of our colleges to a larger number of Georgians who are better citizens as a result. Our network of colleges and technical schools has its faults, as any large system would, and you could always quibble with its leadership over the tuition it charges and some of its spending practices. On the whole, though, I would consider the system to be one of those things that state government does right. We should all give thanks for that. (Tom Crawford is the editor of Capitol Impact’s Georgia Report, an Internet news site at www.gareport.com that covers government and politics in Georgia.) Reasons to be thankful THERE IS an old fortune cookie paper in my wallet that reads: “You have so much to thankful for.” It sits above a photo of my daughter dressed in her Georgia Bulldog cheerleader outfit and a “secret angel” that an anonymous person sent me. The truth is, my daughter, Katie, has had some rough times in the past year. She had her first heart surgery at a week old, a second heart surgery when was three months old, and a stomach surgery to control acid reflux and install a feeding tube at 10 months old. Another heart surgery is on the horizon for next year. Along her journey, there have been numerous major complica tions. We have spent a total of five months in the past year at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston — which was literally our second home. The most recent, unplanned visit was just yesterday to the ER (but Katie is home today as I write this). It’s hard to turn to God some times and say “thank you” for all that we’ve been through in the past year — but living an experience like this, you know when thanks are due. I give thanks that God blessed us with such a wonderfully happy child. Katie is a child that lights up a room when she enters — she loves people and squeals in delight when she gets the chance to see others. Her joy, at times, has even stumped some of the medical pro fessionals. I give thanks that so many doc tors, nurses and therapists have cared for Katie. They have also worried during the low-points, but rejoiced in the good moments and steps forward. One of her nurses at Egleston was crying when we were heading home after a very long and rough admission. She said she worried about Katie during that hospital stay, but was happy to see us walking out the door with Katie in her stroller. I give thanks that we can hold Katie everyday. We couldn’t hold her for a month after her second heart surgery. Even touching or talking to her immediately after the surgeries would cause her blood pressure to soar. I give thanks when Katie is home — where she isn’t hooked to a ma chine or monitor, and can play like any other child. I give thanks that things actually seem “normal” for us right now. Sure, Katie will always have to take medicine, and for now, is she on a feeding pump, but things are looking better. When she is discon nected from the pump, you’d never know that this delightful, active little girl has had some rough days. She doesn’t “look sick” and she doesn’t have to wear the “koalas in space ships” hospital gown — we can dress her in her own outfits. I give thanks that our family has pulled together to help Katie during the past year. We would have had an even harder time without them. I give thanks that so many people in the community have helped us. Many of you continue to ask about Katie when I’m out in the communi ty, rather it be at city council meet ings or in the grocery store. I give thanks that God has given us Katie — because we have so many reasons to be thankful. Kerri Testement is news editor of The Braselton News. Her e-mail address is kerri@mainstreetnews. com. Kerri Testement kerri@mainstreet- news.com