Should Parents Pay for School Days Kids Miss?

Re “District Requests $40 per Absence,” Aug. 28:

The Los Alamitos Unified School District wants parents to pay for their children’s absences. Jean Scheele complains, “I think the schools ask for enough money as it is.” To justify this statement, she notes “the cost of cheerleader outfits, yearbooks and volleyball games” and adds “When does it stop?” She’s missing the point. All those arguments she stated are for optional extracurricular activities.

Do they cost too much? Then quit them. The goals of schools are not to produce cheerleaders, yearbooks and volleyball players. Schools are supposed to produce educated members of society. Schools pay for teachers, utilities and supplies based on all the students being in attendance. In a class of 30 kids, you don’t dock a teacher one-sixth of a day’s pay if five children are absent. Nor does the school get a discount from the electric company for the absent child. The classroom still has to have lights.

But the state does dock that amount from the school’s funding. This is the reason absenteeism hurts school budgets. In better times, this wasn’t an issue, but in case you haven’t noticed, school districts all over California are hurting big time in the budget department.

Contrasting this story with one a few days earlier, the parents of Capistrano Unified School District made a statement of parent commitment to the value of education by raising $1 million to keep 50 teaching jobs and smaller class sizes. The attitude of those parents puts Scheele’s attitude to shame.

Ronald H. Nakano

Cypress

*

Last week I was out of state. According to the rationale of the Los Alamitos Unified School District, I should send money to all the restaurants I normally frequent for lunch to pay for the meals they didn’t serve me while I was gone. After all, they still had to have waitresses, busboys, cooks and dishwashers on duty during my absence.

Only in the public sector do people believe they should be compensated for a service they were not required to perform. This is so absurd. It’s hard to tell if the district’s rationale is the result of pathology or arrogance.

But let us assume their position has some merit. Will they be consistent in its application? For instance, if a teacher is absent and a substitute comes in and baby-sits for a day, will the district refund that day’s attendance money? If so, to whom? The parents or the state? If a student is found at the end of the year to have learned only half of what he was expected to learn, will the district make a refund? If so, this one should go to the parents so they can hire a tutor to make up for the learning shortfall.

Bruce Crawford

Fountain Valley