To The Sports Editor:

The points made by principal Amanda Fagan and athletic director Jim Buonocore in their May 4 letter regarding Ledyard High School are excellent.

It is a terrific high school, but any crack - whether it be cutting a few sports or eliminating the actual publication of an award-winning school news magazine - is worth pointing out.

They do not, however, rebut Mike DiMauro's points.

Eliminating the print publication of The Colonel, such an important part of the school's basic building blocks with a "well, it doesn't impact very many students and others are doing it," to me, ignores the history the school is founded on, a history Mrs. Fagan and Mr. Buonocore know very well.

How much can this possibly be saving? The infrastructure is still there. The only possible cost is production and I have to wonder if any attempt was made to find someone to underwrite at least part of it. Were there thoughts, perhaps, of a business class taking over selling advertising?

Is this personal? Sure, as a former adviser of the paper and the father of one of its former editors - along with being a print journalist - I am certainly invested in seeing The Colonel remain what it has been and get better in the future.

Those of us who were there will never forget the snowy morning when long-time adviser Lance Rockefeller died, will never forget the passion with which our students put out a memorial edition in his honor.

Holding that in our hands, flipping the pages, remembering how it all went together, well, that's not going to happen looking at a web-based magazine.

Please do not chip away at the greatness that is Ledyard High School. Please restore the small amount of money it takes to maintain a tradition as strong as any of those other mentioned in their letter.

The writer was a social studies teacher at Ledyard High School from 1992-2002 and served as co-adviser and adviser of The Colonel news magazine for several years.