On Dec. 16, the U.S. District Court in Portland was packed with newly minted U.S. citizens and those of us who were there to cheer them on. The more than 40 people who took their oath that day came from 19 different countries, an immigration officer told us, but by the end of the ceremony […]

During the 2010 and 2011 summers, I was a cashier at Walmart in Scarborough. I spent hours upon hours toiling away at a register, scanning, bagging, and dealing with questionable clientele. These were all expected parts of the job, and I was OK with it. What I didn’t expect to be part of my job was to […]

Learning takes place in hundreds of ways each day in the classrooms of the Portland Public Schools. Sometimes, it’s loud and exuberant. Other times, children quietly calculate equations, sketch a still life, edit an essay. Our teachers create the conditions for learning and nudge it along. Thanks to their efforts, students fall in love with […]

More than 1,500 people came to South Portland’s Mill Creek Park on Dec. 2 to kick off the festive season, making HolidayFest 2011 a huge success. In the park, people enjoyed the sounds of holiday carols performed by the South Portland High School and Middle School choruses; horse-drawn carriage rides, and donated hot dogs, popcorn […]

On behalf of the Episcopal Church of St. Mary the Virgin, I wish to thank The Forecaster for its coverage of the church’s renovation plans in the Dec. 15 edition. We would like to take the opportunity to provide an important correction: The work will increase the Parish House space by 1,300 square feet, not […]

My family is steeped in the Greely tradition; my children are the third generation to attend Greely High School. I was very disappointed to discover that one entire week in late October was devoted to the celebration of gay, lesbian and trans-sexual lifestyles at the high school. A movie was shown in advisory class and […]

Tony Donovan’s Dec. 7 op-ed on light rail cost per mile versus highway cost miles is misleading. He states that to build a mile of light (passenger) rail costs the same as a mile of highway. Nothing could be further from the truth. A few zeroes are missing. The real cost is a minimum of […]

Irony was probably not what the city of Portland had in mind when it gave OccupyMaine until Thursday, Dec. 15, to either challenge or acquiesce to an order to vacate Lincoln Park. But talk about ironic: Dec. 15 is the 220th anniversary of the ratification of the First Amendment and Bill of Rights. OccupyMaine believes […]

Emily Parkhurst reported that Portland schools may move away from traditional grade levels and grades. In a standards-based grading system, there are many standards for each subject. Each standard is graded separately on a 1-to-4 scale. Students must reach level 3 (or proficient) before moving to the next standard. Students move at their own pace […]

When Gov. Paul LePage unveiled his plan to drop 65,000 Maine citizens from the rolls of MaineCare last week in order to close a projected $221 million Department of Health and Human Services deficit, one of the online comments called the bad news LePage’s “Christmas card to the 99 percent.” To learn that you suddenly […]