Pump Education Budgets, Not Iron

On Christmas Day I read with a mixture of sadness and anger that $200,000 has been raised by the Touchdown Club to build a new weight room for Corona del Mar High School. My anger comes from knowing that some of the high schools in the district have virtually no budgets to buy essential supplies and books.

Numerous students in the Newport-Mesa School District are without adequate books, while CDM High will be given $200,000 for 4,000 square feet of new gym space. I don’t question that the boosters have every right to spend their money as they wish, but, my God, the morality or lack of morality of such a purchase in this time of spending cuts staggers my mind.

If you want your boys and girls to build their muscles beyond what the school currently provides, find out where the elderly and infirm live and send them out to mow their lawns, weed their gardens, pull out unwanted trees and bushes. Rake. Dig. Carry their groceries. And if you want to develop flexibility in your athletes, send them into parks and along the beaches to bend and pick up litter. For stamina have them run and ride their bikes and leave their cars at home. All these things may end up building character as well as muscles. And you parents and boosters: How about buying those books and supplies for your sibling schools on the poorer side of town? It’s all in the same district, and don’t all of the kids deserve to have equal opportunity to develop their minds as well as their bodies?

JOAN ROSS, Laguna Hills. Joan Ross is a recently retired teacher from the Newport-Mesa School District.