Editorials
Where is the Student Voice?
  
Due to low test scores, some schools in D.C. will be taken over by the city. In a recent article printed in The Washington Post, the Parent Teacher’s Association at Eastern High School suggested that the teachers be replaced. In their opinion, too many teachers have the wrong attitude, and are only interested in picking up a paycheck.
  
One teacher quoted in the article said parents need to be more involved in their child’s academic life. For her, the PTA represents less than 10 percent of all the parents in the school.
  
Both sides bring up good, valid points. But when do the students get the chance to speak their peace?
  
Though both parents and teachers have a vested interest in what happens to these schools, the students themselves have a right to weigh in, too. After all, the wrong decision could prove to be detrimental to their future.
  
Replacing teachers might satisfy parents, but for the students, they may be losing a teacher they trust and confide in. Any adult figure knows that establishing trust with a younger person, especially a teenager, is no easy feat. Ridding any school of its teachers could cause some emotional damage in the life of that student that depended on that relationship to get them through adolescence.
  
More parental involvement is almost always a necessity in the schools. It’s imperative for parents to know who’s teaching their children and how their sons and daughters are performing in school. However, the first step of parental involvement is to communicate with their child.
  
Too many teenagers rebel against authority figures because no one asks them for their opinion. No one is concerned about how they feel or what makes them tick. It’s not until they do something wrong that we think to pay attention.
  
DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee will be meeting with both parents and teachers to decide the best way to handle these schools that are facing academic trouble. Though they have not been issued a formal invitation, let’s hope the students will take it upon themselves to let their voices be heard.

Money Can Buy Health
  
It is a well known saying that if you have your health, you have everything. Or this little gem – money can’t buy good health. Well, in some cases, perhaps it can. Certainly the reverse is true. Without money, getting proper healthcare can become an impossible task.   
  
The ongoing troubles of Prince George’s County Hospital are part of a disturbing cycle that mirrors the nationwide healthcare crisis – our inability to provide our citizens with adequate healthcare. Prince George’s County Hospital is currently being operated by Dimensions Health Care, a non-profit organization, which was prepared to close the doors for good, until the County Council stepped in with a temporary solution – to extend funding for an additional 15 months.
  
That 15-month time frame will end in July of 2008. Although a plan appears to be in place that calls for the County and the state to split to cost of funding the hospital, the details have not been finalized, and a hospital that services an estimated 180,000 people per year could still end up closing its doors permanently, just like D.C. General did.
  
The state’s second busiest trauma center, Prince George’s County Hospital is suffering from the same fate that most hospital’s do – inadequate funding, understaffing and an inability to take care of the needs of all the patients who utilize emergency room services because that is their only source of healthcare.
  
Many of the same people who once relied on D.C. General now use Prince George’s County hospital, so its closure would be yet another cruel twist of fate.
  
It is time for leadership on all levels from the county to the state to the next occupant of the White House to come up with creative solutions to this national crisis.
  
Prince George’s County and the Maryland legislators are clearly working on a plan but they are quickly running out of time, and if an 11th hour solution is not agreed upon soon, yet another hospital in our region will become a sad statistic, and an epic failure that will cost far more than dollars, but lives.