PUBLIC FORUM : DON'T EXPECT WASHINGTON TO FIX EVERYTHING.

The article by Elizabeth Schutte, Opinions, July 24, ``Dole needs to do his homework before the next class,'' is a typical liberal diatribe trying to put Bob Dole in a bad light and accusing him of not understanding the problems of educating children.

Based on an honest but general statement by the Republican candidate to the effect that ``over our public schools hangs an air of failure, frustration and futility,'' Schutte goes to great lengths to castigate candidate Dole for not understanding her problems with inattentive students. She claims her problems are because children come to school hungry, sleepy or carrying guns or knives.

Isn't it the responsibility of the parents to see to it that their children are fed, get to bed on time and don't carry guns or knives to school? At most this would seem to be a community problem and not one for candidate Dole to solve.

I suggest Schutte get busy and organize her community to deal with these problems and not look to national politicians or the federal government for solutions. Even Bill ``Slick Willie'' Clinton has finally realized that ``the era of big government is over.''

- Homer M. Fuller

Westlake Village

School bonds needed

Regarding ``Closing the gap,'' Editorials, July 30:

Efforts to make class size reduction a priority are long overdue. By investing in class size reduction in the 1996-97 state budget, Gov. Pete Wilson and state lawmakers took a major step toward improving the quality of instruction, especially in the lower grades.

With this investment, however, the job is only partially complete; there are many school districts in California that lack the classroom space to make smaller classes a reality. The education community is supporting a $4 billion bond measure for the November 1996 state ballot to help alleviate some of these problems.

This bond issue, complementing the 1996-97 state budget, would devote $1 billion to building and modifying facilities specifically for class size reduction. The remaining funds would be used toward the multibillion-dollar backlog of construction needs in schools, community colleges and public universities throughout the state.

The governor and Legislature would be wise to continue their commitment to class size reduction, our schools and our students, by placing a bond issue for kindergarten through university levels on the November 1996 state ballot.

- Cheryl Ernst, President

Association of California

School Administrators

Sacramento

Leadership needed

Regarding ``Smaller classes may have to wait; settlement could stand in LAUSD's way'' (Daily News, July 29):

Where is the innovative, gutsy administrative leadership that is really interested in the kids? Does it take a legal mind to clear the uncommon, common-sense road that makes it possible for schools with extra space to add classrooms and not delay cutting class sizes?

I am not a lawyer, but to me the statement by the Rodriguez plaintiffs' lawyer that ``the district has a duty under the state constitution to provide an equal education to all students'' bears intense scrutiny.

Scientists claim that smog is harmful to health and in some instances affects the mind. This being true, how can we have equal educational opportunity without equal smog distribution?

Could it be that top Los Angeles Unified School District administrators have been so affected? It's time for our school leaders to get moving. If not, we taxpayers better move them.

If said leaders find leadership so difficult, they should ask the kids for advice.

- Ben Gomez

Los Angeles 

Burbank council praised

Kudos to the City Council of Burbank for repudiating Mike Nolan's remark. As a life member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars who qualified for membership during the Vietnam War era, I do not appreciate hearing a racial epithet from the brother of a former Republican assemblyman.

Nolan's claim, that because he is a Vietnam veteran he can voice an anti-Asian expression, is an insult to each and every one of the U.S. personnel who made the ultimate sacrifice in defending the republic of Vietnam.

As a supporter of the California Civil Rights Initiative and Proposition 187, I am greatly troubled by Nolan's remark. How can I convince the opponents of these important initiatives when someone I thought was on my side spews out a racial epithet like that?

I hope this is an example of an uninformed idiot's remark rather than a widely held opinion of the Republican Party and other conservatives.

- Richard K. Yamauchi

Sylmar

Where, oh where is the American Civil Liberties Union when we need it? As we all know, the ACLU is constantly filing lawsuits to protect those whose constitutional rights are supposedly denied, at least in the ACLU's opinion, much to the consternation of many of the general public.

Well, it seems to me that Mike Nolan, recently fired from a Burbank utility advisory board, has had his right to free speech seriously infringed upon. He was fired simply because he used a politically incorrect term to express his frustration with the influence of Japanese people and companies in the Los Angeles area. Now, unless I've missed an important law somewhere along the line, offensive speech, even a racial slur, is not illegal. It certainly seems to me that any such law would quickly be declared unconstitutional the first time it made it to court.

True, this specific term doesn't usually apply to Japanese people, but 50 years ago, many men in my family and other families fought and died for the right to use the much worse terms applied to the Japanese people of the day. By those standards, Mike's term might even be considered mild.

- Jerry Schwartz

Granada Hills

Fighting terrorism

The editorial, ``Fighting terrorism,'' July 30, 1996, brought to mind an article by William Safire in the Feb. 16, 1994, Daily News: ``Uncle Sam an unwanted house guest.''

Safire wrote about a ``clipper chip'' and the notion of President Clinton to put a chip in every telephone and computer made in the United States. It seems that this has been a goal of the president for some years now.

With Attorney General Janet Reno in Paris at a conference on terrorism, will it be the goal of the president to have all countries put clipper chips in their telephones and computers?

- Peggy Alpaugh

Van Nuys

A possible solution to terrorist bombings might be to include a ``homemade bomb competition'' in the next Olympics, to be held in a vacant lot outside town, where all these despicable low-lifes could show off their wares, and if they blow themselves up in the process, so be it.

Since that is unlikely to happen, the next best solution is to give the authorities a freer hand to investigate suspicious or threatening people.

When the government attempts to do that, however, it is called a Gestapo for violating people's rights, as at the standoff in Montana recently.

I would be in favor of compromising some freedoms if it would make my world safer for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

- Lorraine Migliore

Northridge

Boland bill and politics

I also would like to comment on the editorial ``Muddying the waters,'' but my remarks may not take the same direction of Richard Close in his letter to Public Forum, July 26.

Close mentions that Assemblywoman Paula Boland is a Republican running for the state Senate. Isn't state Sen. Tom Hayden planning to run for mayor?

There is nothing wrong with Boland's bill, AB 2043. As the Daily News put it so well in its editorial, her bill is clear-cut, straightforward and effective. City Hall doesn't like it and neither do a lot of Democrats. Tough. A lot of us do like it.

I suggest to Close that he use his title of president of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association and get the City Council to eliminate that surcharge on our water bills called a sewer charge. We need all the help we can get.

- Johnny Rotella

Van Nuys

Death penalty and human rights

As a long-time supporter of the human rights organizations Americas Watch, Amnesty International, Witness for Peace and the Southern Poverty Law Center, I was pleased to read of Matthew Yedlin's concurrence that ``human rights means securing the liberties of decent and innocent human beings'' (Public Forum, July 25).

However, my own experience indicates the opposite of his conviction that most of the Americans who support the death penalty also support human rights: None of the many death-penalty supporters of my acquaintance was much concerned about the liberties of decent and innocent Guatemalans, Salvadorans and Nicaraguans who were tortured and murdered with impunity by U.S.-supported dictatorships and ``freedom fighters'' during the Reagan-Bush years.

Nor are they now particularly concerned with the appalling labor conditions in the Third World, where U.S. corporations contract with corrupt governments and rich oligarchs for the production of most of our apparel and many other consumer goods that require dirt-cheap labor. In many Third World nations, it's worth one's life even to talk about improved working conditions.

There are human-rights advocates whose vision, action and principles apply both at home and abroad, and there are those who demand no more than that the murderers of their compatriots be executed. Let us not confuse the two.

- Bill Becker

Woodland Hills