It appears that my child's health and comfort are bargaining chips in labor negotiations. As a vaccinated first-grader in St. Paul, she wears a mask all day, even to gym class. Her glasses are supposed to stay high up on her nose to keep her eyes from becoming permanently crossed, but that is simply too much to ask of a child her age when combined with a mask. I am ready to choose to prioritize the health of my daughter's eyes.

On Feb. 25, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced new guidelines. No longer is the entire nation "high risk"; because of the changing nature of the virus, most places are "low" or "medium." Ramsey County is "low," so masks are not recommended.

A cascade of blue states were already dropping mask requirements before the CDC's announcement, and it accelerated. The list now includes California and New York City schools, many suburban and rural Minnesota schools, Minnesota state employees, attendees of the State of the Union address, and visitors to the Minnesota Children's Museum.

Curiously, Minneapolis and St. Paul Public Schools are not on that list. This feels eerily similar to the fall and winter of 2020, when you had to be suburban, rural, rich or Catholic for your child to attend school; now the same is true of basic health guidance. Neither the school district nor the teachers' union has my daughter's best interests in mind, an obvious fact that has spurred years of public school enrollment declines and will continue to do so.

Shari Albrecht, St. Paul

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As a senior at St. Paul Central High School, I've run myself mentally aground trying to arrive at a strong opinion on the impending strike. On one hand, the teachers' demands seem to me to be entirely valid. Public schools undoubtedly need and deserve more staff and resources. Believe me, I've seen it all— classes too large for classrooms; sweat-soaked lunchroom staff serving increasingly pitiful lunches; inadequate and damage-control-style responses to systemic, cultural issues; a distinct lack of school buses ... meanwhile, teachers adjusting entire curricula on the fly, rearranging semesterlong plans to meet immutable, external deadlines and trying new things in order to deliver an adequate education despite constant disruption. Without a doubt, everyone in an SPPS school deserves better.

Here's my sticking point: I'm reasonably sure that the administration is aware of this? As in, they don't want any of this to be happening either? I use question marks because union rhetoric has me questioning administration statements that, at first glance, seem to be almost incredibly reasonable. How is the administration going to spend money it doesn't have? To this question, I have been able to collect three different answers:

To which I respond: Huh. OK.

No matter what happens, I will graduate in June. It would be lousy if the strike led to me losing out on college credit from AP exams or my University of Minnesota writing class (taught in Central by a Central teacher). It would be lousy if the strike threatened the financial stability of any one of the SPPS families less fortunate than my own. It would be lousy, in general, for everyone involved, but at this point, whatever happens happens. I just hope it pays off.

Samuel West Robertson, St. Paul

After reading Jim Hovland's opinion article on the continuing Southwest light rail fiasco ("Stop the blaming: There's no turning back," Opinion Exchange, Mar. 2), I have come to a couple of reluctant conclusions:

First, no matter how badly planned and incompetently managed, the project will have to be completed. This may seem like a good-money-after-bad decision, but if everything that has been spent on the project so far is discounted as sunken funds, and the billion dollars that would have to be refunded to the feds if the project were abandoned are considered, benefits to be derived from what must be spent to complete it will probably exceed remaining costs.

Second, once completed, the benefits of SWLRT will never justify its inflated total costs, even if rosy ridership projections are met. SWLRT will therefore be the last light rail project to be constructed in the Twin Cities metro area. Changing technologies and political backlash from this entire fiasco will see to that.

So it appears that Hovland is right, there is no turning back. I guess we just have to get on with it.

Jeffrey Loesch, Minneapolis

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Hovland's opinion piece, while stating that "there is no going back," contains the seeds of many of the reasons that we should, in fact, go back. For instance:

Hovland says we can't unwind what has been done. Seems to me that not only we can, but we must, and designating 10% or so of the state budgetary surplus to do so would cover the cost. Better to admit defeat now than to set ourselves up for an unknown and unknowable construction cost, followed by decades of public subsidy.

Bill Sutherland, Eden Prairie

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It's hard to tell whose side Mathews Hollinshead is on vis-à-vis the light rail ("Transit may be a wreck, but Met Council didn't derail it," Opinion Exchange, Feb. 19). He's making a pretty convincing argument for chucking the whole sorry mess. He can blame Ramsey and Hennepin Counties for thwarting Met Council planning, but it was the council that failed to consider that other individuals, companies and government groups would have agendas not in accord with its own. Instead, it went ahead and drew up plans that, in the execution, are unworkable fantasies.

That it would even think Warren Buffett, the owner of Burlington Northern, would turn over a chunk of a multibillion-dollar operation out of the goodness of his heart was delusional. Or that the impacted counties and municipalities would roll over and play dead just to make council dreams a reality. And he doesn't even mention a major sticking point in the Kenilworth corridor, in that the Minneapolis Park Board, another recalcitrant agency, won't give them a permit to close Cedar Lake Parkway for a year. All this should have been put in place before construction was even considered, and failure to do so is all on the Met Council's doorstep. Blaming others for not bending to the council's will is the ideology of a bully. Hollinshead wants the Met Council to be given more authority, money and tools, but it can't handle what it's already been given.

Garrett Tomczak, Golden Valley

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