Let Quality, Not Ethnicity, Guide Us

I must respond to Jan Kilian’s letter (“Parent, Teacher and Students Uphold Valencia High Virtues,” April 25).

Ms. Kilian apparently feels that because, after weighing the alternatives, she chose Valencia High School, everyone else must reach that same conclusion.

I, too, have looked at the alternatives and, just as Ms. Kilian, I feel the schools closest to my home offer my children the best education. Because I’ve reached that decision and choose not to have my children bused two miles across town, Ms. Kilian assumes it’s a racial or minority-based decision. Let me assure Ms. Kilian that nothing could be further from the truth.

I’m a first-generation American. My father was born in Serbia, though he’s ethnically Albanian. As most may know, the Serbians haven’t shown much tolerance for their minorities, including Albanian.

When my father escaped the persecution of the Serbians, he landed in the hands of the Nazis. He spent four years in Dachau, a Nazi concentration camp.

My mother was born in Eastern Europe of German descent. When the Russians rolled through in 1944, they took all able-bodied Germans, including 16-year-old girls, like my mother. She went to Siberia in a cattle car and laid pipeline as a slave laborer for four years.

I learned English in kindergarten because the language spoken at home was German. There were no ESL programs.

I don’t need any lectures on diversity. Anytime Ms. Kilian or others would like to discuss minority issues, I’m more than willing. But my perspective will be that of the minority.

Now as to the larger issue of ethnic balancing of the high schools of the Placentia-Yorba Linda School District. I find it extremely distasteful that Anglo parents of Valencia High School students petitioned the district to, in essence, send many local Hispanic children to a high school across town. In the process, they would want non-local Anglo children to attend Valencia.

They are, in effect, saying that their children can go to school with minorities, but not too many minorities. It is not Hispanic parents petitioning for this ethnic diversity. On the contrary, many have signed a petition requesting to remain at Valencia.

It is not only distasteful but hypocritical to then imply that my motives are racially or ethnically related.

There is only one thing I ask of this school district. It is the same thing every parent would ask of the district. Give my children the best education possible. Don’t make my children pawns in some diversity scheme.

The issue is not any more complicated than that.

BRAHIM ZABELI

Placentia