Riordan on School Board

Re “Tensions Rise as Mayor Miffs School Board,” Feb. 6: Three cheers to Mayor Richard Riordan for his honesty in saying that the L.A. school board members lack “the mental equipment” to run the school system correctly. My wife and I have a newborn baby, and we have already started discussing her education. We are extremely reluctant to even consider sending her through the public school system because we feel that she would not and could not get the education that she deserves.

If [board member] Barbara Boudreaux’s grammar--”If you declare war on me, I declare war on you back”--is any example of the English being taught in our public schools, my daughter would be as misplaced as her modifier.

LYLE D. KURTZ

Los Angeles

*

One L.A. City Council member is an admitted cocaine user, another is under federal investigation for financial improprieties. Millions have been spent on a subway that few can use and that cannot be completed. Several areas of Los Angeles feel so poorly served by city government they are attempting to secede. Some parts of City Hall are unusable because they are rat-infested. It seems Riordan should have enough to do addressing the things he was elected to address.

Riordan says members of the school board “are more worried about their own ethnic group, their own districts . . . than they are about children.” Isn’t this the same man who requested 12 of 15 city councilpersons to endorse him in his reelection bid, including some of his staunchest foes, yet did not make this request of a single African American on this body until reminded of the omission in the media?

ROBERT BOONE

Los Angeles

*

I agree fully with your Feb. 9 editorial’s comments, and the mayor’s. You offer some good suggestions for improvement. But your note about “nepotism and cronyism” caught my eye. What does that mean? Who has been doing what for whom? If you have evidence, let’s have it in print.

NATHAN KRAVETZ

Sherman Oaks

* I taught for 24 years in an upscale neighborhood. My wife teaches in one of LAUSD’s “infamous hundred.” My students were well fed, well clothed, experience-rich, facile with the language and highly motivated. My wife’s students are typically not. Mayor Riordan visited at a faculty meeting at my wife’s school, and basically blamed the teachers for the low student achievement. His one suggestion was to stop wasting time on field trips. (Each class is allowed one field trip per year.) Mr. Mayor, a trip to a museum is not robbing a student of education time. Is this the depth of your insight on the problems in the L.A. schools?

Now we read of Riordan’s slur on the school board. It should be noted that part of being smart is knowing what you’re dumb at, and in that regard, Riordan is none too smart.

TOM MAEDER

San Pedro