Book Shortages in L.A. Schools

Karen Grigsby Bates adopts an interesting attitude with regard to the book shortage in Los Angeles’ public schools (Commentary, Aug. 1). While she asserts that the taxpayers spend $5,000 per pupil each year, she nonetheless cries, “Shame!” on the entire city for its students’ lack of books and claims that other expenditures (e.g., sports arenas and concert halls) are unjustifiable while this problem remains unsolved. It seems to me that we taxpayers are guilty of extremely poor oversight, but not of parsimony. To argue that civic spending on other projects while the students lack books reflects faulty priorities is disingenuous at best, and to argue that throwing more money (taxpayers’ or not) down what already looks and smells like a rat hole is gravely irresponsible.

JOHN C. DOUGLAS

Santa Paula

When I went to school in Indiana during the depths of the Depression, we had to buy our own schoolbooks. We used to protect the books by making covers out of shopping bag paper. The purpose of this was to sell them to the next upcoming class of pupils. We in turn would purchase books from the preceding class students. This chain would be broken occasionally when books were changed or revised, which didn’t occur too often in those days.

From my observation most of the students do not take care of their books because they don’t have to buy or sell them. Ownership makes a big difference in books as well as other types of property. If people could scrape up the wherewithal to buy books in the depths of the Depression, then it should be easier now to do the same. If not ownership, then perhaps a deposit-type system could be initiated where the money would be returned based on the condition of the book.

SHIGEO YUGE

Los Angeles