Decathlon Winners

El Camino High School from the Los Angeles Unified School District has won the national Academic Decathlon (April 27). Has anyone noticed that the winners are from those dreaded public schools? Has anyone noticed that the winners are from the even more dreaded LAUSD?

A private school education is not a guarantee of excellence and a public school education is not a guarantee of failure. Let’s all work together to make sure that every public school is able to offer the same educational advantages that private schools do.

PAULA PARR

Los Angeles

* Re “District Pays for 5 Administrators’ Decathlon Trip,” April 25, and “LAUSD’s Winners and Losers,” editorial, April 28:

A flock of freeloading administrators in the bureaucratic miasma is nothing new in LAUSD and serves as an egregious example of the confused priorities in the district. This same district is sending graduated seniors to the Cal State University system, where last fall 47% of entering freshmen lacked the skills to handle college English courses and more than 50% couldn’t manage college-level math.

What these high-paid, high-ranking administrators should have done was stay home and work on priorities in the district that would make more schools successful. Assistant Supt. Dan Isaacs could do some homework about inequities in the district where teachers work endless hours beyond the school day for no pay and no acknowledgment.

ULA PENDLETON

Los Angeles

* When I read that the El Camino decathlon team had pledged to eat Spam if they failed to win, I was reminded of a cartoon from World War II. The first panel showed two lost and starving GIs emerging from the jungle into a small Army camp. In the second panel, one of the GIs asked what was being served for chow. When told Spam, they headed back into the jungle.

KEN HERR

Westlake Village