It's a SNAP

Plus: Over Troubled Waters, Season of Discontent, Rump Roast

Comments (0) Thursday, Dec 26 2002

Both Rogers and River Oaks have wonderful magnet programs, but River Oaks has an extensive playground with a track, nature center and athletic fields, while Rogers's fields are dominated by four fenced baseball diamonds constructed by the Post Oak Little League ["Power Plays," by Margaret Downing, October 24].

Her assertions -- that Rogers has outgrown its facilities and the Vanguard program needs a new location -- are curious since Rogers's enrollment has grown by just 4 percent in the last ten years. Rogers is a unique school with 743 diverse students from pre-K to grade 12 in programs for Vanguard, deaf or multiply impaired sharing the common facilities and interacting in physical education and other classes, lunch and schoolwide activities.

Ms. Kohlhausen's words seem hauntingly similar to HISD board member Jeff Shadwick's recent statements that there are many ways to resolve the situation, including moving Rogers to a different location. Those sound like threats to us. Would you really dismantle one of the most unique and successful schools in the city over baseball fields?

Rita Rodriguez and Joe Higgs
Houston

Democrats' Doom

Who could imagine a worse Lott? There may be room for debate over why the Democrats did so poorly in Houston [The Insider, "Bush Envy," by Tim Fleck, November 14], but elsewhere the reasons were obvious.

Statewide, Texans just could not get around that dead cop and those suitcases filled with drug money. Nationally, the chief Democratic spokespeople were an aging semiliterate Hollywood actress, an unemployed calypso singer and a New York senator's spouse best known for adultery, disbarment and a perjury conviction.

Fact is, the voters were smarter than the pollsters gave them credit for, and they were certainly smarter than those party functionaries who were asking them to vote for the Democrats.

Richard Sohn
Houston