PUBLIC FORUM.

Safe school campuses

Re ``LAUSD police ask for more - pay, officers'' (April 16):

Imagine how a student feels upon hearing that the LAUSD police don't want to walk a high school campus alone. If you thought low test scores were the biggest problem, keep in mind that trained, armed police officers don't feel safe on our high school campuses. As a veteran teacher, that frightens me.

It ought to frighten the parents of our students, and it certainly ought to give pause to the leaders of our school district. While we wait for leaders in the LAUSD to take action, I have some words of advice for them: Don't walk the high school campuses alone.

- Debbie Faerber

Birmingham High School

Keeping it clean

Re ``Deadly freeway debris'' (April 15):

I am scared to drive on our freeways. I do check the Web site of the CHP on a daily basis (www.chp.ca.gov) and there is a log of happenings on roads and freeways in the Southland. It is not uncommon for them to log large and small items that fall off of vehicles where some inconsiderate slob didn't have the right vehicle for hauling the item and/or didn't secure it down properly.

This is happening much too frequently for comfort. As a registered car owner, I feel like our roads are not safe for us. More preventive measures need to be taken. If a CHP officer observes anything on a vehicle that could be potentially dangerous to another motorist, he should be stopped and not let back onto the road until it is fixed.

- Rikki Kirchner

Santa Clarita

Paying for potholes

Re ``Gaping potholes chewing up cars'' (April 17):

Repair the potholes and pay for the damages to our cars that result from hitting one. We don't care where the money will come from; just don't think about raising taxes, or ask us to stop worshipping at the ``Altar of Personality'' long enough to pay attention to how corrupt politicians are really spending our tax dollars.

- Jennifer Rabuchin

Burbank

Not the solution

Re ``Commission to help chart LAUSD's future'' (April 15):

The future of LAUSD is uncertain when we have one government entity helping another when they are similar in the way they operate already.

The shuffling of higher-ups and the same faulty structure in smaller sites is not the answer. Let's get some parents on the commission. Let's get real about what needs to be done and make changes, not movement.

- Terri Recchia

Woodland Hills

Not my priority

Re ``Antonio's challenge'' (Editorial, April 17):

If Antonio Villaraigosa takes the list of ``must do'' as prioritized by the Daily News, then I will find something better to do than vote on May 17.

How can anyone consider giving yet more money and authority to neighborhood councils as a No. 1 priority? This is our hard-earned tax money and it should not be squandered. This inept layer of bureaucracy ran by City Hall should be allowed to die on the vine.

- Pauline Tallent

Winnetka

Go ahead, ask me

What a waste of my time, watching Sunday's debate between James Hahn and Antonio Villaraigosa. All I heard Villaraigosa say was ``My wife is a schoolteacher, I am a Catholic, my kids go to Catholic schools and that's why I want to be mayor.''

As for Hahn, he beat around the bush also with his answers about why his administration has been under investigation by the state and federal governments. Neither shows me anything that I should waste my time going to vote. The Daily News asked why there is so much voter apathy. Just look at who's running for mayor.

- Benjamin R. Laufer

Sherman Oaks

Pope's legacy

It is clear that John Paul II has reshaped the Catholic Church by his infallible ``just-like-me'' bishop appointments during 26 years. He has moved it ahead to the Middle Ages again. So we can expect that issues like birth control, a la Galileo, can wait several more centuries.

I hope the Holy Spirit is not on vacation during the next two weeks.

- Francis J. Petracek

Woodland Hills

Stem cell bid

Re ``Stem cell bid bungled'' (April 13):

Once again the incompetence and lack of prioritizing by Mayor James Hahn and his gang have cost L.A. money, prestige, etc., in losing a new $3 billion stem cell research center. Once again Hahn is too busy politicking to see past his nose and that earlier planning could have helped his tarnished image and even got some votes.

I love the last paragraph of the article, a quote by Bruce Ackerman: ``As one of the people involved in it, I don't think we screwed up.'' Indeed.

- Dorothy Marie Vitale

Van Nuys

Druggists saying no

Re ``Some druggists say no to morning-after pills'' (April 18):

I am outraged by any pharmacist that refuses to dispense Plan-B based on any personal beliefs. I do not begrudge them their feelings or beliefs, but they have no place when doing their job. If I worked at a fast-food place, and you ordered a fish sandwich, and I told you that I hate fish, and I refuse to sell it to you, I'd be fired.

What other medications will they stop selling next? Zocor? Aspirin? Maalox? What's to stop them from arbitrarily adding to this list of ``disallowed medications''? If they feel that strongly about this, maybe they should find another career that doesn't interfere with their belief. If they want to remain in the public pharmacy field, then do your job.

- Stuart Locascio

Panorama City

Rent control

Re ``Affordable housing'' (Your Opinions, April 15):

Responding to the writer who wants more affordable housing and a 25 percent reduction in rents to go with what he calls meaningful rent control, I suggest he wake up to reality. Someone has to pay for all the free services. So how much do you want your taxes and the cost of other goods increased? Perhaps a reduction in wages so that your employer could pay for the increase in taxes?

I own, in partnership, an apartment in Los Angeles. Most years it does not create enough income to pay all the costs. We have rent control, but it does not apply to our suppliers - the DWP, insurance, rubbish collection, repairs, Social Security, water, sewerage are not regulated like rent. What the writer wants is what they had in the USSR - low rent, but nothing else.

- Gene Hardy

Valley Glen

With or without guns

Re ``Culture of violence'' (Editorial, April 15):

It's amazing how we beat our heads against the wall and how psychologists, sociologists, pundits and anti-gun liberals must spin new theories about where to place the blame when a gun wasn't used to end a life.

Gun owners have been trying to tell everyone for years that people kill people, with or without guns, any time, anywhere and for any reason whatsoever. But don't listen to us, we're just a bunch of kooks.

- Eric Dresser

Burbank

Activist judges

Re ``Criticize judges, but protect them'' (Their Opinions, April 14):

Archconservative Thomas Sowell criticizes Sandra Day O'Connor for her ``extreme judicial activism.''

If that's how he feels about Justice O'Connor, them he must have really been upset about her vote for George Bush in Bush vs. Gore in 2000.

- Richard R. McCurdy

Burbank

Tell the people

President Bush has said he has to inform people about Social Security. He should also inform them about how they got screwed by the prescription drug bill, the cost of which has almost doubled from the original $400 billion to $700 billion a year.

All the benefits go to the drug companies, which are reaping a windfall of billions of dollars. Would it be too much to ask if the American people could buy their prescriptions at the same price as Germans, Swiss, Canadians and others?

- Will Johnson

Northridge