EDITORIALS:Back 9 is for golf; park JWA cars elsewhere

Golf courses and golfing venues are not exactly in short supply in Orange County. And the Newport-Mesa area boasts some of the best private and public courses around.

While the Newport Beach Municipal Golf Course is not near the caliber of Pelican Hill or Santa Ana Heights, it is nonetheless a community treasure to many.

And so it was with some distress that we and other community members learned of the possibility of the elimination of the back nine portion of the 18-hole course in favor of a parking lot.

Even worse is the reason for the parking lot — to divert the extra parking that comes with the expansion of John Wayne Airport.

To not understand why that’s troublesome is to not understand the history of the airport. Residents near John Wayne and beyond in Newport Beach have for years clamored for and won controls over the airport and its accompanying noise. They fought valiantly to convert the closed El Toro Marine Corps air station into an airport to alleviate the pressures on John Wayne to no avail.

To lose a valued recreational spot in the golf course to the creep of the airport would be a clear slap in the face to Newport Beach, not to mention the owners of the golf course who have built a thriving business that would be taken away.

Airport officials need to abandon this ill-conceived and unfair proposition now. They should do the fair and correct thing and renew the lease on the golf course and seek space for more parking elsewhere.

To do otherwise will spark the wrath of not only golfers, but of the entire Newport-Mesa community — something we’re sure the airport leaders don’t want.

A right idea sends the wrong message

When some Newport-Mesa Unified School District teachers recently called in sick to send a message to administrators as they negotiate pay increases, they sent a message to their students too.

And it was a poor one.

The teachers were telling their kids that their education is a pawn in the struggle with their bosses for a pay hike. Certainly, we understand that wasn’t the message they meant to send, but we can’t help but feel that’s the one many kids and their parents got.

We fully support the teachers in their push for a raise. It’s inexcusable that our teachers are the lowest paid compared with Orange County’s other unified school districts, especially in a district with so many affluent residents.

Teachers have every right to picket at school board meetings, and we would encourage them to continue to do so until their demands are satisfied. We also support their right to strike because, at least in that case, the administration would be given ample notice to prepare for the walkout.

But a “sick-out” leaves a school district scrambling to fill classrooms with substitutes.

Considering the magnitude of this most recent sick-out, which included more than 50 absent teachers in Newport-Mesa’s secondary schools, it’s likely that all it amounted to was a wasted day of classes for students and some ill-will from the public for the teachers’ cause.

Teachers union President Jim Rogers sounded the right note when he said: “We told [the teachers], and we were very clear: We do not organize any kind of job action that’s going to affect the [school] day.”

That’s exactly right. Teachers need to work within the rules of salary negotiations and achieve their salary increases without hurting students or sending them the wrong message.

To do otherwise only hurts their image and creates ill-will between teachers and the district and, even worse, the public.