<h4>Isn’t making a stand the essence of who we are?</h4>
Beaufort County is so blessed to have this island so much to itself: as very nearly untouched by man, so close to the modern world as it is.

No matter how "green" any plan to develop a resort there may be, dwellings for people with all the proposed amenities – dining facilities, a spa, septic fields, etc., and golf carts on gravel paths (!), will be the absolute end of that unsullied ecosystem those same people will want to experience.

The world has so few of these places left; can't we please preserve this one? Isn't making that stand the essence of who we are in Beaufort County?

Let the developers build their luxury retreat on less fragile land nearby, and let people experience Bay Point the way we do Pritchard's Island now. Remember, "Take only pictures and leave only footprints"?

The tide of more and more Beaufort County development is ever coming on. The natural way of the world is disintegrating at every turn.

Do your part to push back. You each can decide to maintain this one small place, in memory of the edge of the sea as it was for many millennia past though it is mostly permanently now gone.

Thank you.

– Jay Weidner, Beaufort
<h4>
Lowcountry Montessori head, story unfair</h4>
As a journalism teacher and writer, I have greatly appreciated the journalism you do at The Island News. I include (Mindy) Lucas in this message because I have been particularly impressed by the clarity of her writing and the research, the "digging" she seems to have done in certain articles that I'd call investigative.

Really good journalism is not always easy to find in our small town and in our larger world. Imagine my surprise when I saw the headline on the recent article I reference: Lowcountry Montessori reports COVID-19 cases.<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span>

The administrators at this school where I teach have demonstrated rare leadership in this virus crisis time by clearly explaining their plans for instruction, timing virtual opening, hybrid instruction, and face-to-face instruction according to medical data as it develops and is published by SCDHEC. We have not opened our school to face-face or hybrid instruction because the data on COVID-19 cases and the trends in the spread of the virus in our area do not indicate that we should.

We are for the time being engaged in virtual online instruction only, wisely so, I believe. Data is evaluated on a timetable made available to everyone in our school community, and I'm sure our action plan could be made available to you.

The Island News headline implies that the virus is at or in the school, when, in fact, if any of our students have unfortunately developed the virus, it is not likely to have been "reported" by us. We are not physically with them at this time. Can you see how such a headline reflects negatively on a school that has taken the greatest measures to keep its community safe?

The headline is unjustified, misleading, and even a bit strange, I must say, when a following page shows photos of students from another school playing sports without masks or any sort of social distancing, a school that has "reported" no cases.

– Quitman Marshall,<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span>teacher at Lowcountry Montessori