Centinela School Board Has Many Supporters

Your efforts over the past month to provide balanced coverage of the events in (the) Centinela Valley (Union High School District) have been a little inconsistent. Witness how (The Times’) March 29 article on the March 27 school board meeting catered to the “podium pounders” and paid little attention to the many students, parents and community members who expressed their support for the school board.

As a social studies teacher at Hawthorne High School, I feel the need to express my thoughts on a basic principle of our democratic system. That principle is that, with the rights, we share some corresponding responsibilities.

If we have a right to speak out, then we have a responsibility to let others speak out.

If we have a right to take part in an election and support the candidates of our choice, then we have a responsibility to allow those who win that election to carry out their duties free of threats, disruption, harassment and intimidation.

If our young people have a right to a free public education of the highest quality, we have a responsibility to make sure our schools have effective leaders, leaders who are busy solving problems, not busy creating problems.

If administrators feel they have a right to publicly question the cultural sensitivity of entire faculties, then those administrators must accept responsibility for not providing multicultural training programs to deal with that alleged insensitivity.

If we have a right to equal opportunity in employment, then as teachers and administrators we have a responsibility to be held accountable for our performances.

Who is it that really applies a “double standard” in this district? Not the teachers, not the voters and not the school board, which those voters overwhelmingly elected.

I commend the school board for the courageous, dignified and forthright way they have carried out their responsibilities under far from ideal circumstances.

I have confidence they will continue to take the tough steps necessary to move us beyond this nightmare.

Finally, we as adults have no right to burden our young people with the responsibility of solving our adult problems.

JOHN WHEELER

Torrance