Letters

School board meeting gets high marks

The Nov. 13 school board meeting was the best one I ever attended! It seemed to me that a lot of business was accomplished efficiently and without the static that one usually feels at these meetings. Communication was free and easy. YEA!

Though I arrived a few minutes late, I was immediately impressed with the fifth grader who was speaking at that time. Her name, I learned, is Sarah Christl. Her delivery, confidence, vocabulary and the content of her summary of the Nevada Day events was most impressive. We do not often hear such young people speak so eloquently these days. Great job, Sarah!

The discussion on the Empowerment Grant for one of our schools was very interesting. I was delighted to offer some information to Mr. Beck about the planning. It turns out not one but two of the forums PARENTS FOR QUALITY EDUCATION presented during this year were on Empowerment. One featured Dr. Micheal Strembitsky, the Father of Empowered Schools, who came to Carson City from Edmonton to enlighten us. The other forum was an outstanding presentation by Lisa Snell of the Reason Foundation who evaluates and assesses what works for empowerment. Being able to participate in this way was indeed the realization of a goal I have had to commingle and share information and ideas that impact our children.

The person who most influenced my high regard for this meeting was Mike Pavlakis, legal counsel for the school district. He presented a process and tool for the superintendent's evaluation with confidence and strength, assuring everyone intermittently that this or that was not a violation of the much dreaded Open Meeting Law. I was impressed. In the past few years not only has the Open Meeting Law been under fire, but the evaluation process has been criticized and at least once, out of hand. Prior to the meeting I did research the evaluation process and gladly, without pressure to Mr. Pavlakis offered my findings to him.

I was pleased and impressed with the evening as I drove home. Thank you.

Keep this approach alive and all things improve.

Ann Bednarski

Carson City

With all of the concerns about medical insurance and good medical care in Carson City, there is now another concern - doctors being allowed to abandon their patients. As long as the doctor notifies the patient that they have been "Dismissed" and are given 30 days notice, they can just drop a patient and not have to give a reason. That is what recently happened to my family. We were not only dropped by one doctor but also by two other doctors within a local medical group. Seems when one dismisses you, the others are asked to do the same, in which case they sign off on a piece of paper and that's the end of that. No more contact.

When I wrote a letter and tried calling the doctors for an explanation, I was told by staff that we were not allowed to speak to anyone since we had been "Dismissed." One of these doctors was my son's pediatrician whom he had for eight years and trusted. My son can't understand why his doctor won't see him anymore since none of this involved him nor his doctor. Another doctor that we were dismissed from was a specialist that I had seen for years and had a trusting relationship with.

It wasn't until retrieving and reading through my medical records that I had any idea why we were dismissed. Seems a nurse with the medical group got upset with me for disagreeing with the way she was rudely speaking to me. Based on these accusations, my family was dismissed from seeing any of the medical group's doctors. Neither the administration nor the doctors even bothered to discuss with us what really took place.

Sadly, a lot of people are without insurance. We are fortunate to have insurance, though there are very few doctors available to us under our plan in Carson City. Therefore, when we were dismissed, we were forced to look for doctors outside of Carson City. There seems to be some sort of trend among medical administrations to dismiss patients represented by certain medical insurances due to the amount they receive or the timely manner in which they receive payment. This is reflective of our present nation-wide medical system that is no longer responsive to the patients' medical needs.

What happened to the good-old bedside mannerism doctors used to have where you, the patient, was the primary concern; where you, the patient, could actually talk to the doctor about medical concerns without going through miles of red tape and other staff members' opinions?

There are some very good doctors in Carson City and if you are lucky enough to have insurance and to be able to establish yourself with one of them, feel fortunate.

Patients should have a right to disagree with a doctor or a nurse without being thrown out like garbage and abandoned. The nurse was wrong. She is the one that should have been let go but the administration chose to take the easy way out and let good patients fend for themselves.

Kathy Rhea

Carson City