Campaign for Discipline in Schools

Washington Prep High School suffers from a lack of willpower. I counted five “wills” in “District Calms Campus” (March 29). Principal James Nobel said “their parents will be called in for meetings ... students will be sent to other schools.” Administrator Bill Elkins said “students will no longer be allowed in hallways unless they have passes. And the enrollment ... will be evened out, starting July 1.” Supt. Roy Romer said, “I will muster every resource I can to bring order.”

All of these promises are after-the-fact recognitions of problems that should have been addressed when a riot at the school erupted last November. As for Lt. Charlie Araujo, watch commander in the sheriff’s Lennox station, who said, “It appears to be a normal school fight,” since when do we consider fights at school “normal”?

Abraham Hoffman

Canoga Park

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The principal calls an assembly the day after a student riot where rocks and plastic bottles are thrown at police. He says he will identify 150 troublemakers, and those who don’t change their ways will be sent to other schools. I am a discipline dean at an L.A. Unified School District middle school. We transfer several students out as a discipline tactic only to have the other schools transfer their troublemakers to us. It is a shell game that solves nothing. Romer is blowing hot air when he says that he’ll bring Washington Prep under control until he reorders district discipline strategy so that it has teeth. “We’ll send you to another school” should change to “you’ll be expelled or arrested, or both.”

Dan Hennessy

Arcadia

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Money is spent on waging war instead of education. Washington Prep and other troubled schools could benefit from some attention and tax dollars to make them truly learning centers where students are educated, not battered or abused. Assaults on students should stop. The “tension and rage” that these “out of control” students bring to school cannot be dealt with by more repression.

Similarly, students who protest the war against Iraq should not be violently attacked when they are worried about their future, as budget cuts bedevil our educational system. Making it a priority to spend billions on death and destruction rather than education is immoral.

Imagine if a fraction of the war chest was spent on repairing our schools and other failing systems. Maybe we could offer, God forbid, adequate health care for the people.

Mahmood Ibrahim

Pomona