PUBLIC FORUM; SUPPORT OUR SCHOOLS.

We should support the decisions of schools leaders which aim to improve student achievement. While the LAUSD must address a wide range of critical issues in order to ultimately deliver the caliber of education our children need, on one specific issue we should all agree - the district's central office must be made to function effectively and efficiently.

That's why we applaud the willingness of Superintendent Ramon Cortines to search for ways to do just that. While the details of his proposed decentralization plan will deserve careful scrutiny, this much is clear: Well-run organizations have lean headquarters operations. They push resources and autonomy to the front line, to the ``headquarters of learning'' - each school site.

- Virgil Roberts

- William Ouchi 

Co-Chairs LAAMP/LEARN Regional School Reform Alliance

HYPOCRITES ALL

The candidates for president from all parties are a bunch of hypocrites. Their brave words of saving Social Security are a fraud.

Today there is talk of a budget surplus. Our glorious leaders will spend it all to buy votes to get elected and re-elected. If, indeed, one does materialize, it should be used to pay down the outrageous, several-trillion-dollar national debt, on which the Treasury Department shells out several hundred billion dollars per year in interest payments, a third of them going abroad.

I care not for myself. At my advanced age - I am in my late 80s - I will not outlive the present healthy condition of S.S., but my son and granddaughter should have our glorious country handed over to them in better condition than it was on my natal day.

- John W. McLean

West Hills

WORSE OFF

The Democrats are attempting to take credit for the cyclical economic boom of the last 10 years.

Toward that end, they are now taunting and daring the Republicans to ask, ``Are you better off now than you were 10 years ago?''

Well, I can answer that inquiry with a resounding, no.

Ten years ago we had more civility, less road rage, more neighborliness, less profanity, more courtesy and manners, less violence, more time to relax and contemplate, less urgency to accumulate things and wealth, more acceptable TV and movies and less acceptance of moral and social degeneration.

- Herb Wiener

Encino

ROB-MAY BACKER

Re Debra Mayer's March 8 Public Forum letter on the high school site at Robinsons-May:

The Studio City resident who wrote to support taking the Robinsons-May store and corporate headquarters for a high school . . . is as misinformed of the facts as is Caprice Young.

The Robinsons-May site at Laurel Plaza is well south of where student overcrowding is most severe, a fact of which the LAUSD is well aware, but ignores. The suggestion that Robinsons-May move across the street to Laurel Plaza, or anywhere else for that matter, displays an astonishing ignorance both of the operations located there, and the fact that it is already situated at Laurel Plaza.

For the residents of Studio City to so blithely give away something that is not theirs to give, at a cost minimally estimated to exceed $100 million - to be borne by all taxpayers - is astonishing to us who have taken the trouble to learn facts, and whose neighborhood will actually be affected. We already have two public high schools and one elementary school within a mile radius of our neighborhood.

If Studio City is truly concerned about public education, I believe there's a nice piece of open land there currently in use as a golf course which could be given up to the school board to build a high school.

- Amy Ryder

Laurel Plaza Neighborhood Association

BATTLE TESTED

When a top-rated television station, airing the news show at a popular morning hour, earnestly discusses whether or not a ``marriage between a 'lady' and a 'millionaire' on the 'honeymoon' has been consummated'' - have we not reached the bottom of the barrel? (Of course, there is always the clicker but I was trapped in a cafe with the TV blasting for all to enjoy.)

I was with George Patton in the Battle of the Bulge. Maybe I have just lived too long to enjoy these momentous news stories.

- Clark Knox

Reseda

MAYOR LOVES CASH

The sound of the cash register is deafening. One of the latest ideas to pay for the lawsuits, involving the police scandal, was suggested by Mayor Riordan. He suggested, we'll just use the cigarette tax. It wasn't that long ago that he wanted to use the money for handicapped access for sidewalks, because the city dragged its feet and waited for the state to threaten it with a lawsuit.

Remember when all those cigarette taxes were passed, the cry was, it's for the ``children,'' the high medical costs associated with smoking illness, etc.

My question is, how much longer will the citizens continue to let the politicians conduct these scams?

As a society, have we been dumb-downed to a point, that when a politician puts his hand in our pocket, we just smile and say, ``that feels good.''

- Ron Jackson

Lancaster