Deukmejian and Education Funds

The article by Bill Leonard should be required reading for all parents, taxpayers, legislators, school board members and school administrators.

The third column is the most important because Leonard emphasizes the increase in the numbers of administrators, specialists, and non-teaching employees that school districts have been hiring with the extra funds they have been receiving from the state.

The districts have not increased teacher salaries as they should, nor have they lowered class sizes. Instead they merely cry for more and more funds to waste on non-classroom personnel.

I would like to know why so many people are so protective of the non-classroom bureaucracy.

I really cannot understand why the teacher unions and principals have not actively sought to reduce the excessive overhead so that teacher salaries could be raised and class sizes could be lowered. Everyone knows that teachers are more important to the education of kids that are the non-classroom personnel.

RICHARD F. ARTHUR

Cerritos