Schools: Prop. K’s Impact on the Future of a Quality School System

I have worked in the Santa Monica-Malibu School District, in good times and bad, since 1965 as librarian and teacher at Cabrillo, John Adams, Lincoln and SAMOHI. We have the finest students, the best teachers, staff and administrators, the most dedicated parents and the most giving community in California.

Santa Monica and Malibu parents and community members have supported teachers, librarians and students in all the tough times since Proposition 13. We hope they will continue to do so by voting YES on Proposition K. (The K is for Kids.) We need to educate our students now for their future and ours.

When we were young, learning the three R’s was enough. Now we have added IT, information and technology. No child currently enrolled in our schools, whether preschool or senior high, will be able to get along in life without knowing how to access, evaluate and use information, whether it’s available in print or electronically on CD-ROM or the Internet. We need the success of Proposition K not only to maintain the classrooms and libraries we have now, but also to extend our limited resources.

Our books are wearing out. The children, from kindergarten to high school, have read them to shreds. I wish you could see some of the picture books and easy-to-read books in our elementary school libraries that are falling apart. Dr. Seuss would weep. We need to replace outdated science, geography, biography and history books in all our school libraries. We need to add technology to our libraries and classrooms. ES is bringing us updated facilities. Now we need updated resources to put in them.

Those of us who work in the schools are becoming experts in fund raising and grant writing. Thanks to generous gifts from parents, alumni and community members, we are dog paddling in the oceans of the future. What we’d really like to do is swim. Please help us do that by voting yes on K.

MARY I. PURUCKER

Librarian, Santa Monica High School’s Mortensen Library