Commentary

It's not every day a Harford County high school team wins a state championship, and it had been largely unheard of for a girls basketball team to make it to the state final game until but a few years ago. Sports editor Randy McRoberts pointed out Wednesday in The Aegis , sister newspaper to this one, that in the modern era of high school sports – which began in 1973 when Title IX went into effect stipulating that girls have the same athletic...

Making sure 21,000 people can get to and from work is a logistics nightmare. To put the number into some kind of perspective, it is about three and a half times the number of people who can be seated at Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen, or a little less than half of a capacity crowd at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Consider also that Aberdeen Proving Ground has limited access through guarded gates for going in and out, roughly comparable to the situation for a stadium parking lot. Then there's the matter of most people who go to a ballgame are likely to be riding with at least one other person, whereas carpooling to work isn't as prevalent.

Last week, my husband and I read a New York Times commentary by one of our favorite columnists, Ta-Nehisi Coates, called "The Good, Racist People. " Coates' take on a racially tinged event involving a famous black actor and an upscale Manhattan eatery sparked lots of healthy debate at our dinner table and before we drifted off to sleep. My husband thought Coates was overreacting to this particular incident. I agreed. I've been trying to offer up more forgiveness than fury when it comes to small slights or race-related injuries, because I know that people have a lot of baggage around race and class that is tremendously difficult to overcome -- even for really well-meaning people.

Football season's over and baseball spring training games often don't rise to the level being topic for casual conversation, so last week's big snow that wasn't quickly became fodder for plenty of commentary at many levels. A major target when stormy weather hits is the leadership of the local public school system, which made the call before 6 a.m. to close schools last Wednesday, thus keeping buses packed with children off potentially dangerous roads. It was an understandable call.

The plan to substantially expand the Harford County Airport at Churchville in terms of runway capacity and number of flights per day has resurfaced, though in a more subdued form than had been pursued a little more than a decade ago. In short, the plan involves roughly doubling the width of the main runway to 75 feet and extending it by 1,000 feet to 3,200 feet, while closing two ancillary runways. Buildings on the property would also be upgraded. With a substantial portion of the airport on agricultural land, the Harford County Council made changes to the zoning regulations for agricultural districts to facilitate planned changes - thus allowing the airport owners to avoid the costly and oftentimes contentious process of having major upgrades approved through the county zoning appeals process.

I applaud Maria Santo's  journalistic valor in her article regarding abortion last week.  Her perspicacious treatment of our country's involvement in this sordid business aptly pierces the twisted logic that has rationalized and legalized the killing of 54,000,000 children. I have always wondered how some individuals abhor domestic abuse, blanch at schoolyard bullying, cringe at animal cruelty and wince at terrorist waterboarding while turning a blind eye and deaf ear to wide-spread torturing of the pre-born.

With respect to the Feb. 28 opinion piece by Ms. Santo concerning abortion, my wife and I want to compliment her for a lucid, logical and beautifully stated situation analysis. Her appeal for a "better way" than murder of innocents to deal with unwanted pregnancy should be a clear call to come together and find these alternatives. I am sure that in these polarized times there will be volumes of what can only be most politely called negative responses...

Hiring a superintendent to run a public school system that serves nearly 40,000 students is a daunting task, so it is understandable that the Harford County Board of Education is moving with a great deal of caution. Laid bare, the problem is simple. Harford County Public Schools is a $600 million a year enterprise with as many employees as a major corporation. Though a school system and a business cannot be run the same way on all fronts, there are certain parallels, not the least of which being that the pool of qualified applicants is relatively small, and, on the whole, they're very well paid.

Drawing parallels between government spending policy and household finances has its perils. There's an extraordinary difference in scale, for one thing. And there's the matter that people will often argue against government debt on the grounds that debt amounting to three or four times household income is financially crippling, even though just about everyone who owns a house and a car is carrying at least that much debt. A few realities of debt and finance, however, apply to every situation involving money.

Harford County Public Schools is in the midst of a situation that would have been difficult to predict 15 or 20 years ago: enrollment is declining. The number of students isn't down by all that much this year compared to last year. The number of students attending public schools in Harford County decreased by 354 from the 2011-12 academic year to this year. In a system that serves in excess of 37,000 students, that's a fraction of a percent. The issue isn't that enrollment declined for a single year, or even two years in a row, but it has declined by a few hundred or so students every year since 2004, which means the trend has been in effect for nearly a decade.