Readers React: Want to teach kids English? Then teach their parents.

To the editor: The Los Angeles Unified School District is trying to fix something it broke. (“California schools step up efforts to help ‘long-term English learners,’” Dec. 17)

Amid the Apple iPad fiasco, sex abuse scandal and new computerized student attendance problems, few have decried the cruel destruction of the district’s nationally acclaimed adult education program, which could help the parents of LAUSD students learn English.

Of the 300,000 students in the program before 2012, there are now 97,000 (plus a long waiting list); of the 3,200 teachers, there are now 850.

If the parents of non-English speaking children cannot learn English, how can their children? Children need help with their homework and their self-esteem. Seeing their parents going to school and learning English creates wonderful, lifelong role-models.

Prior to 2012, the LAUSD graduated adults fluent in English and American culture, holding high school diplomas as well as credentials from the excellent vocational programs. As a retired longtime adult education teacher of English as a second language, I have yet to receive a good answer as to why these cuts were made.

Planaria Price, Los Angeles

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