Look to Sacramento for School Funding

Re “Schoolkids Go Begging as Military Gets Billions,” by John Carter, Voices, Sept. 6:

If indeed schools are being shortchanged, then look to Sacramento, not Washington. Education is the business of the state, not the federal government. The fact that the federal government gives any money to schools is supposed to be gravy, not the meat and potatoes and not the crayons and paper.

Rail against Gov. Gray Davis and the legislators who expanded state government by 38%. Proposition 98 guarantees that at least 40% of the state budget goes to education; in other words, the first bite out of the pie. But if the pie has already been eaten, yell at Davis and the legislators who ate it, not at our nation’s military, which is doing its job protecting us.

Angie Papadakis

Rancho Palos Verdes

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Seems that everyone I know is afraid to speak out, just like the first-grade teacher in Carter’s piece, who had to buy her own classroom supplies.

America, speak up!

Steven N. Copley

Harbor City

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As an ordinary citizen of L.A. County and one with numerous friends and neighbors who are teachers, I sympathize with Carter’s outrage at our misplaced priority of empire and its wealth for the few over the well-being and education of our children. I would normally agree with Carter’s solution -- “Get thee to a polling place!” -- except that voting doesn’t matter if counting the vote is manipulated.

Before we can get to a polling place we should demand that proper accounting procedures apply to voting as well as to Enron: no proprietary or “secret” programming, no “networked” voting machines for a hacker’s or a dictator’s delight, no electronic databases that are so susceptible to corruption and manipulation. I want to be sure when I go to my polling place that I will be allowed to vote if I’m registered and that my vote will be counted accurately.

Judith Strawser

Monrovia