Students need to be healthy to do well in school

Ellen Wright

Tobacco companies have become enormously wealthy by enticing

school children to become addicted lifelong smokers. Proposition 10

takes money from those same tobacco giants to help poor sick kids

avoid smoking and live healthier lives.

If that isn’t a good idea, what is?

If now isn’t the right time, tell the mother of a sick child when

the time will be right.

If West Costa Mesa isn’t the right place for a free clinic for

children, why not?

Recent writers claim they’ll have to wait a few seconds longer to

make left turns. Others, living in five-year-old tract homes claim

that 25 times the cost of their homes when new is not enough -- that

prices are depressed in their neighborhood so children who are their

neighbors should either go without health care or travel to some

other area for free medical care.

What kind of a society are we becoming? What is more important

than the well-being of our community’s children? Can’t we see the

links between under-performing schools and pupils too ill, tired or

malnourished to learn?

I have lived in Costa Mesa for 40 years. During 20 of those years,

I taught in Westside Costa Mesa schools (Wilson and Whittier). I can

tell you that ailing kids do not do well in school.

They can’t wait for us to get our sense of morality and compassion

in proper order. Their minds and bodies are forming now. These

children are our future and, as we shape their futures, we are

shaping our own.

Someone reportedly asked Jesse James why he robbed banks. He gave

history’s first recorded, “Duh” answer -- “because that’s where the

money is.”

Why does CHOC want to open a free clinic in West Costa Mesa to

treat poor, underserved, unhealthy children?

“Duh.”

* ELLEN WRIGHT is a Costa Mesa resident.