Dilapidated Compton Schools

I was extremely disturbed to read the Jan. 26 article on the Compton School District. In my 28 years in the Los Angeles Unified School District, I have worked at seven schools and visited many more. We are not in great shape, but we have no schools with conditions nearly as bad as those portrayed in your article.

I think this is a crisis situation and the full resources of the richest state should be used to correct the Compton problems. When football and basketball players receive millions every year, it is hard to understand why we can’t educate children in a safe and clean environment. Or is it not important since these are poor, minority children?

TERESA RIDDLE

Assistant Principal

Paul Revere Middle School

* So the schools in Compton are sliding into decay! One could view this situation as an opportunity, a challenge to the people of the community.

I am certain there are many men in the school district who have excellent skills in the building trades, some of whom may be underemployed or at least have time they can spare for the children of the community. Surely the citizens could persuade the state bureaucracy to provide them access and money for materials to do necessary repairs. This would be an opportunity for people from different ethnic groups to form the kinds of relationships that develop when people work together for an important and common goal.

It could also be an opportunity for students, perhaps including some of those responsible for the vandalism, to learn both building skills and the pleasure of creating rather than destroying.

ELAINE HAMILTON

Whittier

* Why is it that students can walk into a clean fast-food restaurant, receive courtesy service and pay prices comparable to tonier suburbs, but when they walk into the neighborhood school, they receive a Third World education? Could liberals explain one more time how school choice will harm poor minority children?

JIM HORSMAN

Long Beach