Vote yes on Measure B
Thank you, Town Crier, for your positive editorial explaining Measure B. If everybody gets out and votes in favor of Measure B, our wonderful prize-winning Los Altos libraries and their sister libraries in the Santa Clara County Library System will be able to continue to serve all of us with excellent services and materials.
Please let me tell you how Los Altos main library has helped the students and teachers of Los Altos High School. For nearly three years the school library was closed due to construction. As the library media teacher at the school, I worked with the reference and teen services librarians at the library to schedule time for our students to come to the library with their teachers and me to do research.
This arrangement worked out very well, thanks to the excellent resources and the cooperative and knowledgeable staff at the library.
Our students continue to visit the library in droves, many registering for the first time with application forms we have available here at school.
They have come to depend on it for evening and weekend study, and to borrow resources that we do not have available in the school library. Please don’t let these eager young readers down.
Just say yes to Measure B!
Nina P.Z. Waite
Los Altos
SAT scores have been ‘recentered’
I have in front of me the “Counselor’s Guide to SAT I Score Conversions,” published by the College Board in August of 1994. This document was distributed to help counselors, administrators and other interested parties compare SAT I scores “from test dates before April 1, 1995, with scores from test dates on or after April 1, 1995.” SAT I verbal and math scores were “recentered” at that time.
This meant that previous norms (with 500 considered an average score) and standards were lowered, since the majority of students in the early 1990s were scoring below 500 on each section.
The guide states, “This change will re-establish the average score near the midpoint of the 200-800 scale and once again realign the verbal and math scores. It will also affect the PSAT/NMSQT and SAT II.” For example, a pre-1995 verbal score of 430 is now 510, and a score of 590 is now 660.
Therefore, when one is comparing an individual’s test scores on an SAT I test prior to April 1995, to the scores on an SAT I taken subsequently, one should be mindful of the effect of “recentering.” The new scales are different from the old, and old scores would be significantly higher (by approximately 100 points, plus or minus) using today’s standards.
Angela Horine
Former career center
specialist at a local
public high school
Amusing article on ‘disgruntled person’
With some amusement, I read your article “Brown Act not Browned Out (Feb. 11)” and your description of my former student at Los Altos High School, D. Lawrence Hall, as a “disgruntled person who lives outside the city.” Your article went on to say that LAH Town Councilmembers were concerned that this outsider might be showing up “to try to disrupt things.”
Had you checked with the Los Altos Hills City Council, you would have known that Mr. Hall had spoken to the Council several times in the past regarding sewer capacity rights and at no time gave councilmembers cause for alarm or police protection.
Indeed, I have kept up with Mr. Hall’s achievements over the years when I first met him in my senior college-preparatory English class in the 1960s.
He was as committed as a student then as he is as a renowned architect now. Indeed, he was an amiable student who added spirit and zest to our class discussions.
Knowing Mr. Hall’s past and present demeanor and his considerable achievements, I am hard pressed to believe that the council actually felt so threatened by this genial, intelligent architect that it would call for protection from the Sheriff’s Office
I also find it amusing that Mr.Hall was considered an outsider by council standards. Since he was in my class in the 1960s, he probably has a longer tenure in Los Altos than most, if not all, of the councilmembers themselves.
I note in your obituary column that you often report on the deaths of “former” Los Altans who have moved away.
One wonders if you have to be deceased to remain a member of the Los Altos community or if former-but-still-alive-members of our community are to be forever vanquished.
All of which reminds me of Mark Twain’s still sound advice: “First get the facts and then distort them as much as you please.”
Both the Los Altos Hills Council and the Town Crier could profit from such wise counsel.
Claire L. Pelton
Los Altos Hills
Enter via Mexico, not Russia, to stay
Regarding Yana Slobodova, the piano teacher at CSMA who is scheduled to be deported back to Russia: Ms. Slobodova should have entered the U.S. via the Mexican border without any documents like so many other millions of immigrants who certainly haven’t spent any time in jail but rather are welcomed with free educational, medical and social benefits. What about Ms. Slobodova’s child (probably American born) and her husband? What kind of a double standard is this?
Peggy Goodman
Los Altos
Vote no on Prop. 56
Even though parts of Proposition 56 sound good, changing the rules to make it easier to increase our taxes is a bad idea. Our politicians already find it too easy to spend too much.
Sonja Jensen,
Los Altos Hills
