Plans Don’t Address School Overcrowding

Re “Plans Target Troubled L.A. Schools,” April 11: Not addressed in the plans by Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Roy Romer to overhaul ailing schools is the severe overcrowding.

As it has been explained to me, even when my school reverts to a single-track system in the next few years, we will still have as many students on campus as we do at any one time now.

Teachers will still have to travel. Students will still stand in long lines for lunch and to use the restrooms.

As dedicated as our librarian is, the library itself will still be too small.

Our school is already divided up into student “cores.” The idea is nice, but teachers are still responsible for between 150 and 200 students.

Until politicians and the voting public decide it’s time to deal with the sheer number of students, we are, indeed, just rearranging the deck chairs.

Carol May

Los Angeles

*

Hire more consultants? Does it require the services of highly paid consultants to point out to Romer and the L.A. school district what’s wrong with the so-called problem schools?

A vast majority of low-achievers in the public schools come from homes where a language other than English is spoken and the parents are only semiliterate in that language.

Parents who don’t speak English and don’t read books are ill-equipped to help and motivate children struggling with their curriculum.

No matter how much money Romer and his cohorts throw at the schools, that problem will persist until a new generation of English-fluent parents replaces the immigrants currently filling our schools with their children.

Even this will not alleviate the problem until the United States gets full control of its borders and changes the automatic citizenship provision of the Constitution.

Jack Bailey

Studio City