Letters: District has to care about books

AS A retired teacher. I know that getting books for students was a major problem. It seemed, no matter how many books we had, that after a year or two, we were short.

The main reason: Students would damage the books. Lost books also contributed.

Parents would complain that the book was damaged before their child got it. They'd complain that someone else took their child's book, so they didn't have to pay for them. At best, parents paid a few dollars toward a $50 textbook.

No matter what the School District says, if the parent complained, the district would tell us not to pursue the matter.

Stewart Mash, Newtown

Women's wages

During a research project on gender inequality, we became quite upset at the state women's pay is still in.

Though women have gone from being paid, on average, half of a man's dollar to 77 cents, the effort to close the gap has slowed greatly.

Here are two proposals.

The public needs to stop supporting negative images of women. That applies to every movie, TV show and magazine that is helping these negative stereotypes to persist. These images only help maintain the gender gap in pay.

This also applies to the U.S. government. They need to revise their views on what the typical modern family unit is and reform their tax system accordingly. Women's wages are taxed more heavily if they are married and have children because it is still assumed that the man of the family is the primary wage-earner.

We feel this is absurd due to the many single mothers and different type of families we now see. How can women's earnings still be seen as secondary? Don't women work just as hard? These tax laws are old and times have changed too much. If the government revises their tax laws, it will help make women more equal with men.

Kelly Healy, Broomall