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School safety is back in the headlines after the recent tragedy at Harding High School. ("After stabbing death, answer call for change," editorial, Feb. 14). It is a reality that many students no longer feel safe in our public schools. As a teacher, I desperately attempted to hold students accountable for their actions by following the district's Student Rights and Responsibilities Handbook. Unfortunately, this handbook was revised annually with consequences lessened (or eliminated) year by year. I completed written referrals to administrators. I was met with little or no administrative support. It was easier to blame a teacher than for district administrators to take action. Rather than look at what the student's actions were (physical altercations, continued classroom disruptions, repeated bullying, unsafe learning environments) and hold the student accountable, the district focused on their racial identification and did not hold all students to the same standard. Thus began the steady decline of discipline and student safety.

When out-of-control students disrupt the classroom, it is the majority of students who suffer and feel unsafe. For far too long, St. Paul Public Schools has ignored the rights of the majority of students who are there to learn. These students cannot learn when fists and furniture are flying. By not holding students (and families) accountable for their actions, school districts are the ones feeding the school-to-prison pipeline.

Kate Swensen, Woodbury

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Maybe the St. Paul and Minneapolis Public Schools should reconsider employing school resource officers.

The offer of a large donation to Minnesota to move Fairview Health Services under the governance of South Dakota laws needs to be put in context ("Health merger has $500M for Minn.," front page, Feb. 14). That donation is a drop in the bucket for the huge organization that Denny Sanford wants to leave Minnesota for his state. Instead, Fairview, as a $6.2-billion-a-year business in Minnesota, should be forced to have better management. It should not be allowed to scurry away from its responsibilities to Minnesota's citizens.

Fairview is not a well-managed or well-run business. For years, it has survived because of donations to its foundation, a Minnesota nonprofit, and because of payments from the Affordable Care Act and other federal health expenditures, including Medicare and Medicaid. Moody's has just downgraded its rating on Fairview Health Services' debt, forecasting weaker margins for Fairview amid higher labor costs and already-reduced patient volumes ("Fairview bond rating downgraded," Jan. 23). Moody's also downgraded Fairview in 2020.

There are many factors that led to Fairview's $1.6 billion of debt. Fairview tried to blame its funding of the teaching hospital at University of Minnesota. Officials at the U disputed this, saying that that support to the U is a minuscule factor in Fairview's revenue of $6.2 billion a year.

There are excellent public reasons to oppose the takeover of Fairview by Sanford Health. South Dakota is home to Sanford executives and administrators. To be a citizen of South Dakota is to follow their laws and public policies. These are not the laws and public policies of Minnesota.

For example, a heavy percentage of personal bankruptcies are caused by inability to pay medical debt, especially for hospital charges. Minnesota law sets usury limits — South Dakota has limited usury protections. That is why credit card companies left states like Minnesota to establish their businesses in South Dakota. Again, it is significant that medical costs are a big reason for individual bankruptcy.

Pat Davies, Minneapolis

The headline of the story reads "Study reveals the deadly toll of being homeless" (front page, Feb. 13). That title is wrong.

The article describes the high mortality in the homeless population in Minnesota. It then goes on to confuse correlation with causation. Yes, in Montana the most forest fires occur in the summer months. And in Montana the most ice cream cones are sold in the summer months. But that does not mean ice cream cones cause forest fires. It only shows a correlation.

Clearly there is an unacceptably high death rate in our population that is homeless. The study specifically lists fentanyl overdoses and HIV infections as challenges for this population. Perhaps improving their health should focus on chemical dependency or infection prevention rather than lodging.

To improve the health of our homeless population we should carefully use science to guide our interventions.

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In the midst of a persistent crisis of homelessness, a Star Tribune reader asks the question, "What happened to boardinghouses?" (Readers Write, Feb. 13.) During the first half of the 20th century, boardinghouses were an option for low-income singles, often transient laborers or young women from farming communities — and now much less so. A major reason is as follows:

Between 1960 and 1980, the number of long-term psychiatric hospital beds in the U.S. shrank from around 400,000 to around 14,000, and these ex-patients flooded the boardinghouses. Promises were made that the money saved by closing the state hospitals would flow into community mental health services, but few of these folks ever received any.

Over time, the conditions in these unlicensed, unfunded and de facto mental health facilities became scandalous, and in about 1980, the state of Minnesota shut them down in favor of "community treatment facilities." But long-term treatment is expensive, and over time the state of Minnesota established strict limits on how long any individual can receive such treatment.

And since short-term treatments do not generally cure serious mental illness, a disturbing percentage of people with these illnesses end up in prison or homeless — both conveniently cheaper, at least on the surface, than maintaining hospital beds. That's what happened.

The writer was director of Tasks Unlimited from 1978 to 2009.

In a rather lengthy essay ("Whatever happened to the work ethic?" Opinion Exchange, Feb. 11), Adrian Wooldridge cited publications going back to 1883 to explore the challenges of capitalism and the causes of worker discontent. The conclusion was, "The easiest way to start addressing America's work ethic problem is to start making work itself more attractive." Yet in all that verbiage, Wooldridge missed a glaringly obvious point: The way to make work more attractive is for workers to have a genuine voice in the workplace. The solution goes back farther than 1883: Allow workers to organize into strong unions.

In my 30-plus years in the labor movement, I have observed that unionized workers, in a wide variety of jobs, trades and professions, take greater pride in their work and find it more rewarding, both in the financial sense and in the professional status the union card bestows. Wooldridge advised, "Treat workers as responsible adults." This is not achieved with disingenuous "team" messages from the CEO or cutesy little programs from the HR department. It can be achieved by dealing with workers respectfully across the bargaining table.

Mark Bradley, Roseville

In the piece about the objects shot down by military planes ("U.S. shoots down another object," front page, Feb. 13), I read with amusement that "so little was known about them that Pentagon officials were ruling nothing out — not even UFOs." If nobody knows what they are, they are by definition UFOs.

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Given the news of the Department of Defense shooting down an object over Lake Huron on Sunday, the headline should have been "Pentagon shoots down octagon."