Irvine Schools Must Cut Back

* Re “Irvine District Votes to Put $95 Parcel Tax on Ballot,” June 22:

The Irvine Unified School District could easily meet its operating costs by expelling all the out-of-district students that currently attend the local public schools.

About 5% of the Irvine Unified student body does not even live within the district’s attendance area boundaries. A 5% cut in the size of the student body would certainly free up a lot of extra money for academic programs.

Every year the district cries wolf and declares yet another phony “budget crisis.” Yet they resist with all their might any efforts to impose fiscal accountability or allow operational oversight.

Each year the budget gets bigger and bigger and the ranks of the nonteaching bureaucracy swell.

There is apparently no end to the hiring of additional staff and the creation of new peripheral programs. The growth of the bureaucracy and the constant demand for more money are relentless and unending.

The city of Irvine has proposed a cost-effectiveness evaluation of the district. This is long overdue.

The school district is, of course, fighting this. But the district has to learn how to live within its budget, just like all the other city agencies and just like all the individual households that have to pay taxes.

The taxpayers are not cows to be milked by the school district.

SUSAN LEANG

Irvine