Keeping Schools Out of the Line of Fire

I am a retired elementary school principal from Illinois. While visiting California recently, I learned that the certain school board members in the Fountain Valley district are being challenged due to school closures. At first, I shrugged, thinking “that’s politics.”

But--and this is a big but-- part way through the article the issue of “electromagnetic field” was mentioned.

There is a comprehensive article in the July 9 New Yorker magazine that discusses an abnormal amount of cancerous tumors, leukemia, birth defects, etc. experienced by individuals living near or attending school under the cross-country wires. The article singled out La Jolla and Santa Barbara, in addition to Fountain Valley and Huntington Beach.

How do teachers feel about teaching in schools located under the electromagnetic field? Apparently the parents in Fountain Valley are upset because a school in a safe zone was closed rather than a (perhaps newer) school located under the wires. Was this decision made by the administration or the school board?

Forget the daily radiation danger attributed to the electromagnetic fields for the moment. In the event of war, the enemy’s first target is the power supply. Without power, America is virtually crippled. Can you envision high-tension wires raining exploding fireballs onto the playground while innocent children are at play? Although the bomb may have been dropped miles away to hit a power station, live flames could hopscotch along the wires, raining flames that look like fireworks and fall like snowflakes from the skies onto the playground. The enemy would not deliberately bomb a schoolyard of no military value, but who would expect a school to be built under the electricity?

Would I have liked to be the principal at a school located under the electromagnetic fields? I answer this question with another question: “Would you?”

BLANCHE JAROS, Clarendon Hills, Ill.