Our Schools Are Best--and Worst

* Statewide, the test results are in. The proof is undeniable: Orange County schools are the best, or among the best, anywhere.

Before we take our bows, accepting the well-deserved accolades for academic success, we must also recognize our schools are among the worst.

They are overcrowded and deteriorating before our very eyes. Roofs leak. Plumbing can no longer be patched.

Paint is peeling off the walls. Fifty-year-old schools cannot be wired to handle the electronic demands of the marketplace.

Orange County is rapidly becoming the Silicon Valley of Southern California, and those cutting-edge companies are well beyond the “inkwell and quill” method of communication.

Our schools cannot continue to meet the community demands of excellence in substandard buildings desperately in need of repair.

You and I would not tolerate such poor physical conditions where we live or work.

How can we possibly accept less than a respectable physical environment where almost half a million K-12 children spend more than 70% of their workweek?

Proposition 26 on the March ballot will allow funds to fix our schools, enabling the quality of the building to match the academic quality already there.

The will of the voting majority must be allowed to control the condition of our public schools.

Bond money builds and repairs schools; bonds do not pay salaries.

For pennies per day, responsible community members can provide learning stations that encourage academic excellence.

We pay less than 4% of our income for our public schools. How can we, in all honesty, deny the children of Orange County clean, safe and uncrowded places to learn?

JOHN F. DEAN

Orange County

Superintendent of Schools

Costa Mesa