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In response to the article "Yes, sex ed belongs in elementary schools" (April 20):

I am 51 years old. When I was 8, I went to the bathroom while I was at church with my family and a man tried to molest me.

I was extremely innocent at 8 years old. I did not know what sex was; I am quite sure I had never heard the word "vulva," and I know I had not had any "good touch, bad touch" lessons at school. However, I ran away from the man because, although I did not understand what was happening, I absolutely understood that this was not a good situation. I knew this because my sexually innocent 8-year-old self knew:

• Men do not belong in the women's bathroom.
• Private parts are supposed to be private.
• Adults are not supposed to ask you to keep secrets from your parents.

I immediately told my mom, who told my dad, and my parents went straight to the priest. The priest called the police, a policeman sensitively interviewed me in the presence of my parents and a county social worker visited our house twice over the next months to see how I was doing. Everything was handled just as it should have been. This was in a very small town in Iowa in 1978. (The police never caught the man; he was a stranger to me and I certainly would have recognized a member of our small parish.)

Over the intervening decades, I honestly didn't think about that experience very often. But it has been on my mind lately with all the clamor about how we need to let school employees have sensitive sexual conversations with small children. This kind of "education" might actually have slowed me down in that situation years ago.

What if I had been taught the insane idea that some women have penises — and therefore that this person belonged in the women's bathroom? What if I had been exposed to lessons about genitalia that normalized 8-year-old girls discussing and looking at penises? What if I had been assured by people outside my family that it was OK to share secrets with them? After all, if teachers will keep my secrets, why wouldn't I keep theirs?

Parents should teach their own children about sex in a way that parents consider developmentally appropriate. Families can come to different conclusions about the right ages, the right information and the right approach. But arranging for school employees to have these conversations with children not only violates the rights of parents to teach their children what they think best, but it breaks down barriers of privacy and innocence that actually protect children. I can't help adding that I am quite bewildered at the idea that any adult would want to have these conversations with other people's children.

Catherine Walker, Minneapolis

NAME CHANGES

Not erasing but building anew

The Star Tribune recently reported on the Minneapolis school board's vote to change Sheridan School's name to Las Estrellas ("Sheridan, Jefferson schools renamed in Minneapolis," April 14). Unlike the insinuations in the comment section, this name change is not about erasing history or being politically correct. Instead, it's symbolic of the continued work that schools must do to challenge the norms that devalue diversity and perpetuate harm against global majority students.

Since fall 2020, I've had the privilege of leading the volunteer name-change committee, which included representatives from the school site council, PTO and neighborhood association. We reflected on the importance of a name and have lamented the violence and apathy surrounding the wide use of the name of Gen. Philip Henry Sheridan, who perpetrated atrocities against Native communities in our country.

Our bilingual school is committed to doing better when we know better. We gathered many name suggestions from our community, including those of inspiring figures like Dolores Huerta and Sylvia Mendez. We committed to a collective engagement process rather than pushing forward our own ideas in the name of being efficient.

The name "Las Estrellas," which means "the stars" in Spanish, was the first-choice vote of our students. It speaks to infinite possibilities, and it honors many of our ancestors who have been harmed by the ignorance of white supremacy thinking and the violence against the Indigenous people of this land.

To those with us in the fight against injustices we have inherited and who wish to challenge harmful systems, I hope our name change brings you hope.

Sonya Perez-Lauterbach, Minneapolis

NOKOMIS

Mother Nature always wins

Theodore Wirth may have been a visionary park designer during his long tenure as Minneapolis park superintendent. But he failed the grade as a soils engineer.

The peat-filled areas around Lakes Nokomis and Hiawatha are not the only examples of Wirth's hubris in reshaping the hydrology and geology of Minneapolis to create the city's nationally known system ("The hole story in Nokomis," April 20).

There are numerous examples of Wirth's design decisions that have gone awry to plague modern park designers. Just like the Nokomis area, the dredging at the Chain of Lakes, especially at Lake of the Isles, left parkways and paths built on unstable soils. The sinking paths around portions of Isles required extensive modern reworking to move them to areas more likely to remain above groundwater levels.

Perhaps most spectacularly, Wirth's shearing of West River Parkway along the face of the bluffline across from the University of Minnesota produced the spectacular collapse of that slope in 2014, the same year when excessive rains flooded Hiawatha Golf Course. The collapse threatened nearby hospital buildings, cost $5.6 million to fix and closed the parkway for 26 months. Even before, seepage of groundwater left that parkway icy in winter.

It's not as if Wirth lacked examples of the perils of building on unstable soils. The short life span of the problematic Kenwood Armory demonstrated that folly.

As the future of the Hiawatha Golf Course awaits a Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board consensus, civic leaders should remember the folly of insisting that nature accommodate human desires rather than listening to what nature seeks to tell us.

Steve Brandt, Minneapolis

The writer is a member of the Board of Estimate and Taxation.

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A flock of male red-winged blackbirds descended on my backyard bird feeder on Monday as I was reading Becky Alper's commentary arguing that we should get rid of the Hiawatha Golf Course ("We must save a planet, not a golf course," April 18). I watched as these hungry birds consumed a pound of bird seed in about 10 minutes. Don't red-winged blackbirds belong in a swamp? What are they doing in a residential neighborhood? Apparently, we have built our homes on their natural nesting sites.

Now I read that major parts of south Minneapolis are built on a swamp near the also wet golf course. Using Alper's argument, we should return those areas to their natural swampy state to save the planet. But wait, the city recommends that residents instead spend their own money mitigating the water problem installing sump pumps and gutters. In 50 years, because of climate change and increasing rain, the water table will be far above their basement floors. How do you mitigate that?

So, we destroy Hiawatha Golf Course because it is built on a swamp but save a neighborhood built on a swamp because ... the only reason I can think of is property taxes. If we return the Nokomis neighborhood to its natural state, maybe the red-winged blackbirds will leave my bird feeder alone and carb-load in their own territory. Obviously, Alper is not a golfer.

Richard Crose, Bloomington