Getting Bang for Education Bucks--Look Closely, Either Private or Public

It was reported (Newswatch, Sept. 1) that most of the growth in the Santa Ana schools has been from Latinos and Vietnamese, with minorities now at 93% of students. Unless I am unaware of some new math, when is something a minority when it is 93% of anything?

The article “Overcrowding Sorely Tests O.C. Schools” (also Sept. 1) was largely devoted to the newly found, savior-like solution of portable classrooms and the dramatic increase in bilingual teachers.

Well, there is a serious and growing concern of sorely tested and overburdened taxpayers about the education mess too. Since it’s getting to the point that California taxpayers are individually taxed on their needs, what they consume and require, why not employ this same fair and logical taxing to our overglutted school system?

For example: The more vehicles in one’s household, the more tax and license one pays. The larger house you have, the more taxes you pay. You want alcoholic beverages, cigarettes or Twinkies, you must pay the additional taxes.

Why couldn’t our (over-benevolent) state pay schooling for a certain number of offspring per family? Then, if a family wanted additional offspring educated, there would be an added tax cost for each additional offspring. But then, some would say that is not the American Dream--to get something for nothing.

Simple, clear-headed logic literally shouts that we cannot educate everyone, from everywhere, forever. We can buy, tow in and wire trailers until all our schools look like county chicken coops, but the miserable mess will still prevail.

Quality education has long been extinct, and “some” education is not for long, it appears, unless the growing number of benefit receivers provide some hard bucks back to the benefactors.

BILL LAWSON

Costa Mesa