Speaking Out on Schools

In response to the Commentary on Education by John F. Dean (“Initiative Isn’t About Choice, but Money for Private Schools,” April 12): Mr. Dean correctly identifies the existing choice that parents have in sending their children to virtually any school that they choose. However, he overlooks the fact that if you choose private education for your children, you still have to pay for his public school system, like it or not!

The problem for Mr. Dean, which will result from an inevitable shift from public to private school enrollments, is how to support an overburdened, overgrown public school system, which tries to be all things to all people and which is usurping the educational desires and responsibilities of parents, with less money.

The Parental Choice in Education initiative gives parents a long-awaited alternative to the centralized, big government ideas of the public school system.

Mr. Dean doesn’t want you to believe that a private school can deliver a better education for less than what is being spent per student by the County of Orange. He labels the idea as “patently absurd.” For him to say otherwise isn’t consistent with the (public school) bureaucracy’s continual requests for more money to be spent on their idea of a school system.

The truth is, under the Parental Choice in Education initiative, you could spend less than the County of Orange to educate your child, you could spend more, or you could send your child to a public school.

The real choice boils down to how your child will be educated. Will your child be schooled amid a politically correct curriculum of condom availability, homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle, lack of discipline, evolution as truth, and Godless social environment, or will you opt for an educational environment with more self-respect? These are the types of things that I and many parents want a choice on. I don’t want the above attitudes dictated to my child at his (and ultimately society’s) moral expense.

STEVE WILLIAMS, Anaheim