School construction questions troubling

Re “The Times is blind to bulldozers flattening homes,” Outside the Tent

column, Current, Nov. 27

For months, members of the Right Site Coalition, Echo Park community members and businesses have tried to get The Times interested in this critical issue of overdevelopment by the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Despite The Times’ (Oct. 12) report of LAUSD’s enrollment dropping dramatically throughout Los Angeles, especially at the elementary school level, the district pushes on with the bulldozers, insisting on building numerous elementary schools in increasingly declining enrollment areas, totally disregarding shifting demographics and charter school enrollments.

Meanwhile, students are boycotting at South Gate High School (Nov. 5) to highlight their frustration over the lack of teachers, books and classes.

With all of these reports, you’d think The Times would question these contradictions. Who, besides the developers, will benefit from this building blitz? Why isn’t the much-needed funding being focused in the classrooms, providing quality materials to better the education process?

These are questions the Times should be asking.

CHRISTINE PETERS

Echo Park

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Why has The Times refused to question the bully tactics of LAUSD in its wholesale destruction of established neighborhoods in order to build new schools? And why have L.A.’s politicians and social organizations displayed a shocking indifference to the plight of the thousands of poor Angelenos currently facing eviction by LAUSD?

Today, at a time of plummeting student enrollment, thousands of impoverished renters and homeowners face eviction by the district to build 18 more schools.

A majority facing eviction are low- to extremely low-income wage earners. Many are seniors or disabled, yet no one in our city has shown the backbone to stop this.

This is nothing less than a social injustice on a massive scale, yet The Times has ignored this story. Why?

DOUG HAINES

Los Angeles