Public School Spending

Although I commend Weintraub for his excellent examination of public school finances, I am disappointed that he failed to raise questions about sacred cows that for too long have been grazing contentedly and uncorralled on the state’s limited finanical pastures.

One such unquestioned tradition is that of spending untold sums on interscholastic athletics in high schools.

I will give one example. At one of the high schools in the Santa Ana Unified School District, a science classroom was recently converted into a football office for the school’s dozen or so football coaches. At the same time, the district moved additional portable classrooms onto the campus because of overcrowding. This misapplication of classroom space amounts to a transfer of tens of thousands of scarce dollars over to competitive athletics.

If you would give your taxpaying readers an accounting of the percentage of each school district’s budget that goes into coaches’ salaries, athletic equipment and facilities, transportation, security, and so on, they would be shocked indeed.

LARRY NICHOLL, Irvine