Why Can’t the Schools Deliver is the Question

Janet Bernson-Parmenter raises some interesting questions in her Valley Commentary article “Are We Too Poor to Deny Kids a Richer Education?” (April 24). However, she asks the wrong questions and appears to miss the point.

Yes, these courses and activities were once available to the children. We did benefit from the various classes that we were able to attend. Our parents did pay taxes for these things.

We, the taxpaying adults of this era, also pay for these things, and we pay significantly more than our parents did.

The question is not why don’t we pay for these things. The question is what happens to the taxes we do pay? Somewhere along the line our money is disappearing down some deep, dark pit, and our kids are suffering.

The question should be, why can’t the school districts deliver the goods for which we, like our parents before us, pay? Where is all this money going? It is, very obviously, not getting to the school sites.

The guilty ones are not the taxpayers or the on-site school staffs. The guilty spendthrifts are somewhere in the vast gray area between the two points.

KAREN E. NOVIKOFF Granada Hills

My daughter is a special-education teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District. I agree with Janet Bernson-Parmenter (Valley Commentary, April 24) that the schools need art, music, field trips, driver’s education, cooking and shop again. No doubt about it.

She is also right about there not being enough money for these and other programs. But that is where her logic and good sense stop.

In this state we spend approximately $30,000 to $35,000 per year per person to house people in prison. They get TVs and gyms to exercise in, three square meals a day, medical care, conjugal visits and all the rest--everything but hard work. I mean hard, hard work. Making little rocks out of big ones, road repair, picking up trash, cleaning graffiti.

Instead of spending $30,000 to $35,000 on them, we should spend only half that amount and give the rest back to the schools where it was taken from in the first place by our glorious elected officials. Add that to the paltry $3,500 per year per student spent to educate our children and see what changes take place in a very short period of time.

WILLIAM H. BITTER Acton