Business Classes

In response to your editorial “Job Payoff for Teens,” Nov. 29:

How can we train kids to get jobs when business teachers are being slowly eliminated from California schools?

In the Los Angeles city schools, senior high business departments that once bustled with classes and activities are becoming ghost towns of few people and few course offerings. Courses in shorthand, business English, accounting, advanced typing, law, etc. have been discarded year by year. Business education programs that took years to build are being severely cut back in California schools.

How do I know? I was a business teacher at Roosevelt High School in East Los Angeles for the past eight years. I taught brothers and sisters and cousins. I reached kids, and I gave them job skills to prepare for the outside world.

Today I am a displaced business teacher looking for a job.

MARIANNE FRIEDMAN

Alhambra