School Trustees Right in Imposing Recreation Fee

How appalling to read The Times’ account of how residents of the Orange Unified School District would call their elected representatives “traitors to the American system” for trying to find a responsible way to fund decent school facilities for our children (“Orange Trustees Approve Disputed ‘Recreation Fee,’ ” June 29).

The quality of our public schools continues to decline. Classrooms are terribly overcrowded. In some cities, the buildings are crumbling, the neighborhoods are unsafe, and without needed individual attention our children are left prey to gangs, drug abuse and disillusion.

Here in Orange County, we are far more fortunate. The populace is more wealthy, gangs are not as entrenched as in Los Angeles County, and school buildings are newer and therefore not as decrepit.

How disillusioning to see that there are those who are so miserly that they would scream “Traitors!” and “Recall!” at Orange Unified board members trying to raise enough money to keep from turning our schools, and our children, into another pit of despair. The $30 annual maintenance fee is only $2.50 a month. Can’t these modern-day Scrooges dig just a little bit deeper to invest in our future?

America’s standing in the world is already sliding, in large part because Japan, Germany and other farsighted nations spend far more on educating their youth than do we. Our failure to similarly invest in our future is tantamount to economic surrender.

Yet, when a few brave leaders such as those at Orange Unified stand up to protect what makes America strong, they get vilified as “traitors.” If anyone is a traitor, it is these people who’d rather spend money on a manicure or another mug of beer than the welfare of our young.

STEPHEN C. SMITH, Santa Ana