Financial literacy, flying objects, and the Northern State Parkway

Teach financial skills to all students

Schools haven’t been teaching script writing for many years, and now many students can’t write in script.

Businesses have been saying for years how important interpersonal skills are for applicants, interns, employees and leaders, yet schools do not teach them to all students.

Now, schools wonder whether they need to teach basic financial literacy to students [“Advocates push for required money class,” News, Feb. 8].

My question for educators is: Why wouldn’t you want to teach financial literacy to students so they’re prepared for life in today’s fast-paced world, which is based on knowing how to make intelligent decisions in properly handling finances?

Finances are all around us in everything we do. Every day. Yes, financial education should be required, with perhaps every year of education presenting age-appropriate financial lessons. This is crucial to understanding everyday decisions.

I ran into financial distress in 2008 when unscrupulous mortgages were being granted. An option to overcome this crisis was to remortgage my home. The events swirling around these issues are often emotion-packed and interspersed with mistaken and uninformed choices. I read a financial advice book and attended lessons on money.

I paid down my debt and paid off my mortgage. President Joe Biden called on Congress to crack down on “junk fees” [“President touts results, calls for unity,” News, Feb. 8]. They should be avoided — look them up.

 — Candace Schiffer, Lindenhurst

Few residents know better than those in some communities on Long Island about the harsh reality of living paycheck-to-paycheck [“Addressing food insecurity,” Long Island, Feb.  6].

Inflation and the excessive cost of living have wreaked havoc on our pocketbooks, leaving hundreds of thousands of those most vulnerable to food insecurity to make hard decisions on how to spend what they have.

Should they provide healthy, nutritious meals, or pay the rent, medical care, education, electric bills, pet care or car insurance? Not to mention filling up the gas tank.

It’s no wonder the six satellite food pantries operated by Long Island Cares saw unprecedented numbers of visitors to our facilities and meals distributed in 2022.

Our locations provided emergency food to 114,656 people in need — a 59% increase over 2021. The percentage increase in meals distributed was even greater — 64% — with nearly 1.1 million meals provided to the hungry.

There are no easy answers. The best we can do now is rally Long Islanders to sacrifice a little to help feed their neighbors.

Shoot down those objects at less cost

It’s agreed that the first balloon, believed to be used by China for spying, needed to come down, not to mention the subsequent unidentified objects in the sky [“Downing objects in ‘best interest,’  ” News, Feb. 14].

Here’s the issue: Our government used an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile to take down each object. Each missile costs more than $430,000. They could have used a 20 mm cannon at a tiny fraction of the cost. And they even had a miss on Sunday’s first attempt.

The 20 mm cannon also would have allowed the balloon to drift down in one piece instead of being scattered over the ocean, requiring a costly search. The four shoot-downs cost us more than $2.1 million. How much does the government care about taxpayer money?

Let’s hope that the unknown object shot down over the chilly North did not have four legs, antlers and a shiny, red nose.

 — Stuart H. Cooper, Richmond Hill

Hochul should ride on the Northern State

Gov. Kathy Hochul must be kidding [“Part of the Northern State Parkway to be repaved,” News, Feb. 9].

As someone who travels the Northern State Parkway daily from its start at Veterans Memorial Highway to the Meadowbrook Parkway, I will say that in no way is the area between the Wantagh State Parkway and Meadowbrook the worst stretch of this road.

Obviously, she has never been on the Northern State in Suffolk County. The westbound roadway from Vets Highway all the way into Nassau County is more like a bombed-out landing strip in the South Pacific during World War II than a parkway, and the same goes for most of the eastbound side.

Every day, there are crews out fixing potholes down the center of lanes, and those fixes usually last until the next rainfall or snow.

This stretch of parkway needs to be addressed. It is dangerous to motorists and damages their cars.