CHIEF EXECS AT WORK

Safety is on the line here and over there

President Obama hopes 30,000 additional troops will make a difference in Afghanistan, and Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan worries that the $8 million shortfall will mean cutting corners that will affect public safety at large events, officer mental health and morale, and community crime prevention programs. I hope Obama is right and Dolan is wrong.

STEVE YOUNG-BURNS, MINNEAPOLIS

DECLINING ENROLLMENT

Focus on students and schools, not the districts

Regarding the Dec. 1 front-page article "Big school districts lose big as students leave": Former National Association of School Administrators director Paul Houston used to remind his members to distinguish "between the faith and the church," when talking about public education.

The challenge ahead is not to save school districts but to prepare young people in a wide variety of ways for the kind of economy we will have and the society we are still struggling to forge.

CURTIS JOHNSON, EDINA;

MANAGING PARTNER, EDUCATION EVOLVING

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This declining enrollment phenomenon of school districts adds frustration to No Child Left Behind, because of some of the children who are still being left behind. Those are the kids whose parents don't have the wherewithal or interest in moving their offspring. So the kids stay in districts with declining resources, even though they may be just the students who need increased resources.

Does the right hand know what the left hand is doing to the rest of the body? Or did elected officials anticipate this, and just don't care because the parents of these young victims are typically nonvoters?

JIM BARTOS, BROOKLYN PARK

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The debate over funding to schools and how open enrollment changes make it difficult for districts to meet budget demands is growing tiresome. Perhaps districts that are losing students need to look in the mirror and find ways to improve the schools to entice parents to remain.

The majority of infrastructure financing is done through bonds so does the Minneapolis School District have trouble meeting the needs of students with an operating budget of $500 million? The Star Tribune article discussed cuts to staff as a Last In, First Out process, thus leaving higher salaries on the books.

Perhaps it is time for state and district officials to wrestle back control from the unions. At the same time, study schools that see a net positive enrollment or have waiting lists and start emulating them. It is time for school district chiefs to put the crying towel down and step up to the plate to stem the tide of net loss enrollment.

Minnesotans do not need to hear the complaints; rather, we'd like to see solutions that do not contain the words "tax increase."

CHRISTOPHER LUND, HAMBURG

New rail lines

Whether or not you ride, you're benefitting

To the Eden Prairie letter writer insisting that fares be raised to cover the entire cost of the Northstar Line, I offer a counterproposal: Why don't we set up toll booths on the new segment of Hwy. 212 through his fair city so as to cover the $238 million check that taxpayers wrote for that transportation improvement? I would hate for people who don't drive on that road to have to pay for it.

All joking aside, infrastructure such as roads and mass transit are a public service to all, no matter what form it comes in and who does and doesn't use it. If you're not benefitting from using this line directly, you've got the indirect benefit of 3,400 fewer cars in your way each day, and that seems worth the price tag for Northstar to me.

MATTHEW KILANOWSKI, HOPKINS

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Won't the names of the rail lines be confusing to some passengers -- Northstar and Northern Lights (to Duluth)? Seems like another airport naming mess in the making.

DICK RIES, SHAKOPEE

Money still talks

Clearly, capitalism is alive and well

"Capitalism is under attack from all quarters," and capitalists are held in "low esteem" writes Caroline Baum of Bloomberg News ("Free markets and the first Thanksgiving," Nov. 29). (Michael Bloomberg himself, luckily, was able to amass his $16 billion before being thwarted by this attack.)

Would that it were so. In our society, money still talks, and buys elections too. The word "socialist," in case Baum hadn't noticed, has become a political epithet. No politician bothers to describe him- or herself as a capitalist; it is simply assumed.

If Baum (or any other entrepreneur out there) can find me more than five members of Congress willing to describe themselves and campaign as socialists rather than as capitalists, I'll pay her $100. I'm not too worried about my stash of Franklins. And I suspect that while they might scurry into their private jets a bit more quickly when they see Michael Moore approaching, neither the captains of industry -- nor the political and media establishment in which they have so heavily invested -- are really very worried about the so-called "attack" that they are under.

ANNE HAMRE, ROSEVILLE