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dotComments: What’s next?

Aspen, CO Colorado

One letter writer this week chastised Dan MacKeachen’s treatment of animals at Krabloonik and the T-Lazy 7 ranch, but was quickly told by a reader online that the town has moved on:

Didn’t anyone tell this guy that the “bash Krabloonik” fad has died down? If you want to live in Aspen, you must learn to take up the current cause and then let it go once all of your peers have agreed to start b!tching about something else.

Where’s the trust?



This week The Aspen Times Editorial Board wrote an editorial encouraging residents to call the Colorado Department of Transportation directly with complaints about local stoplights. Our readers agree that the stoplights need help:

It’s particularly bad between El Jebel and Basalt, where new lights (e.g., Original Road) haven’t been synchronized with lights to the east and west.




Light turns green, you accelerate to 20mph, and the next light turns red, right on schedule.

Our municipal entities and the bureaucrats they employ like to make noises about conservation, “green initiatives,” and other such laudatory goals, but they can’t clean their own windshields, let alone solve problems on a planetary scale.

If you can’t be bothered to get the small details right, stop browbeating the rest of us working commuters about our transportation choices.

And there was this:

CDOT also needs to hear complaints regarding aggressive driving by commercial vehicles. With no CSAP on HWY 82, and no sheriff deputies on county roads, commercial drivers have no qualms about zipping along.

And finally this comment:

Traffic lights on Hwy 82 are worser than those on Colfax Avenue in Denver. That’s because CDOT follows the auto disincentive policies of Aspen’s elected officials. Get out of your cars and onto the buses is a good lesson for our public school students.

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We ran an article this week about a new online system at the Aspen School District where parents have instant access to their children’s grades, homework, missed assignments and attendance records. But some readers wanted to know, is this really a good thing?

As a former AHS student, I can attest that the Blackboard/Powerschool system used when I was there was awful and an updated system will be a great asset. However, it seems to me that by giving parents full access to a student’s academic life is like saying, “We do not trust you to manage your education.” It is dangerous for a high school student preparing to be self sufficient at college to have constant reminders from parents about due dates and grades. This is setting the stage for complacency and irresponsibility.

Perhaps a better system would be to give parents access to this feature on a performance based system. A responsible student who keeps their grades up would be awarded with a more private academic life while a parent of an irresponsible student would be given access and reminders about what their child should be doing.

And then there was this comment:

Talk about Big Brother looking over your shoulder! This is just too much access for parents. Students- especially high school students- need to become independent, accountable and responsible learners. Having parents check lectures, homework due and missing assignments does not create the kind of independent adults we claim to want our children to become.