The Cupertino Courier

Letters

Paper-waste article was informative, but had a few problems

The March 18 issue had an informative article on the use of paper by businesses. Unfortunately, the statistics given are a turn off. "Offices use nearly 1.5 pounds of paper per person each day. The average office worker throws away a half-pound of paper each day; an employee at a financial institution throws away two." I scurried over to McWhorter's and established that 1.5 pounds of 8 and-a-half by 11 paper is 3,900 sheets. The average work day only has 480 minutes in it, employers are lucky if office workers give them 400 of those minutes. So employees are processing one sheet every two minutes, and throwing away a sheet every six minutes or, if you're in a bank, you're throwing it away faster than the bank is buying it!

Well, the business community has only reduced its waste by 37 percent (it must now be at 63 percent of where it was) with a goal of 50 percent. The solution is straightforward, fire one out of every six of those wasteful office workers!

The relevant numbers have nothing to do with employee head count but rather with community benefit, crudely put, tax revenues to the city responsible for disposing of their waste (or negotiating that service with commercial providers.) Perhaps the city should evaluate each "significant" business against such criteria and act to correct gross inequities, high waste out vs. low tax revenues.

R.A. Blais
Cupertino

Chang's attitude was offensive

After attending the school board meeting last night, I felt very offended. Mr. Chang suggested that he was smarter than the others in the room because he could speak Chinese and English. The presenters from the English-Mandarin Two Way Immersion Program also made me, a non-Asian-speaking citizen, feel inadequate in my own community. Their reason was that I do not speak the language of the future and am not interested in having my children learn their language. I have a college degree with a major in child development and feel that I know some information about learning patterns of children. Therefore, I did not think that it was necessary to be criticized by the board member. Also, one of the program presenters said the high-tech world workers need to speak Chinese. I do not think the largest high-tech person, Bill Gates, needed to speak Chinese to get where he is today.

Secondly, the information regarding the funds for the English-Mandarin Two-Way Immersion Program are coming from state EIA funds and the state's general fund. Does Cupertino School District qualify for EIA funding? The speakers for the program said that it does not cost any money. Well, the money has to come from somewhere! It is not free. As a taxpayer, I pay my state taxes, which, in turn, uses the money for state funding programs. The general fund is used for many different areas. Some of the areas are supplies, teacher wages, etc. Therefore, the money is being taken away from some programs in order to fund this program. The program only benefits a minority, not a majority of children. Why not have a music program that would benefit many students and raise the test scores of more students, rather than a selective few? Studies have also proven that music is a great way of using the left and right side of the brain, just as a foreign language does.

Thirdly, my daughter attends Pepperdine, a prestigious private school, without learning Chinese. She was accepted by taking four years of Spanish in the high school. My daughter's major is nutrition and Spanish is the language that is in more demand for this field. I feel that the Chinese language is not needed for every occupation.

Finally, I ask the board to consider how many students will benefit from the program as compared to the cost of the taxpayer. I am willing to pay taxes on programs that I support. The programs would be for all of the children of the community. I have donated a lot of money and supplies to the schools in the past and plan on continuing my contributions to all the children in our community.

Pamela Hershey
Cupertino

Immigrants shouldn't impose their language or culture on America

Thank you for your continuing coverage about our local affairs. The issue of immersion is of particular interest to me as I am an immigrant from Germany. My parents were proud to come here and looked forward to becoming Americans. I question any culture that comes here and tries to impose their language or culture on our country. I challenge the Chinese community to this observation: Whether it is politically correct or not, how many Asians do we encounter who have problems with English? How can tax dollars spent on Chinese instruction help this situation? I began kindergarten not speaking English, and today I'm able to communicate very effectively with my fellow Americans, thanks to an immediate immersion in America and its English language. As immigrants, these people should be concerned with integrating into American society; otherwise, why are they here?

Hans H. Haug
Cupertino

Clarification

A word was edited out of a letter written by Marty Provencher that ran in last week's Courier, altering the author's meaning. In his original letter, Provencher suggested that the parents in favor of the proposed Mandarin immersion program pay for any additional costs, in the same way that the parents at Christa McAuliffe pay more money for their special program.

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