Taking Back Control of Our Schools

If the parents of Orange County’s schoolchildren continue to accept the tough decisions of school district administrators, boards of education and state legislators, the educational cutbacks we are now facing will only signal the beginning of the end of any hoped-for future for our children (‘Schools Must Learn to Subtract Harder,” editorial, June 21).

Have we forgotten that these school and elected officials work for us, are paid by our tax dollars and, as such, are accountable to us for every dime they spend? When they tell us that they have no money to continue educating our children, we should be asking them for a copy of their budgets. No doubt, we could find plenty of places to cut before we reached our children’s educational services.

Although charging a fee for school bus transportation is aggravating, and eliminating zero period and reducing media-specialist positions is unfortunate, these cutbacks do not compare to the extreme crisis created by the Orange County Department of Education’s 33% cutback in instructional time for special-education students. The 600 severely developmentally disabled students served in this program cannot recover the losses they will experience if the time available for them to receive therapy and independence training is reduced from six hours to four hours per day.

The parents of these Department of Education special-education students were not surveyed prior to the cutback in our children’s educational program, as were the 4,500 Irvine parents. Instead, we received a letter from Supt. John F. Dean, informing us that budget cuts forced the Department of Education to reduce our children’s program by one-third.

We expect the Department of Education to explain the millions of dollars committed to administrative salaries, travel expenses and consulting reserves. We expect the Department of Education to clarify how it is saving money by paying teachers and staff for two hours of not teaching our children.

Tragically, educating our children has become political. We have allowed the control of our children’s education to rest in the hands of elected superintendents and boards of education. But these are our children. And this is our money. Clearly, power is misplaced in this situation.

Orange County parents take heed. As you sit back and watch your children’s educational rights slip away, remember this adage: If you are not a part of the solution, then you are part of the problem.

ROSLYN HOWARD, Fullerton