Textbook Shortage in L.A. Schools

It was with outrage and revulsion that I read The Times’ expose of the scandalous “well-kept secret” of the textbook shortage in the L.A. Unified School District (July 28).

I call on--no, I demand--those in charge drop everything and put the eradication of this problem on the front burner. Do what has to be done: 1) Transfer funding from the prisons back to education. Our children are far more important than criminals’ comforts and the excesses of political budgeteering. 2) Rearrange the state budget. Provide more for textbooks. 3) Forget the gratuitous tax rebate ideas. Put that money into textbooks. 4) Raise school taxes. 5) Put a textbook bond issue on the next state ballot. 6) Publish the LAUSD line-item budget. Let the public see what kind of nonessential pork is being subsidized at the expense of the textbook budget. 7) If you don’t return a textbook, you pay. If you don’t pay, you don’t get any others. 8) Move us from 47th to 7th.

MARC MAYERSON

Woodland Hills

I just wanted to know if the school board is going to proceed with that incredibly expensive, wasteful school complex they’re planning to build in the mid-city area that smacks of corrupted palm greasing? Or, will they buy books and make the repairs many schools now desperately need instead?

CARRIE JACOBSON

Los Angeles

I think that ideas on how to get more textbooks into the hands of students are more important than complaining about shortages indicated in your story.

The present budget for schoolbooks would be more than adequate if the students were given books that had the appearance of pocket books. The students could keep the books for later reference since they would be very inexpensive (less than $4 each).

All that would be necessary is to convince a pocket book publisher to make the limited run required.

IRV SIMON

Chatsworth

I was a teacher in L.A. Unified for 10 years and saw and experienced how worthless public school education is.

One year I taught regular English and none of the students could read or write--14 years old and couldn’t read or write! Another year I taught basic math and the students were 14 through 18 and they couldn’t add 2+2 and come up with 4.

We have such a wonderful public education system. All it needs is more money! What a lie!

You could pump 10 times the amount of money into the public system and they still wouldn’t be able to read or write or add!

School vouchers for private schools with 100% equivalence of funds with the public school system are what’s needed. The public school system can’t be fixed and it should be abolished completely. Parents should have a right to decide where their child goes to school and what he is taught.

PHILLIP STALIANS

San Clemente