Editor’s Notebook -- Danette Goulet

In March voters in Huntington Beach will be asked to pass a

$30-million school bond to repair and refurbish outdated schools.

Since this news was reported in the Independent, we have received an

influx of calls and letters, many in support and a few against or

questioning the need for taxpayer money.

We are told that the average age of these 10 schools is more than 30

years. Dwyer Middle School is 60-some-odd years old. So the need for

repairs is undoubtedly there. Any structure left without major repairs or

upgrades for that long, especially one that sees the abusive traffic of

exuberant youth, would need an overhaul.

The question, it seems, boils down to whether additional taxpayer

money is needed to take care of the problem.

It would seem so.

Before coming to work at the Independent I spent two years as the

education reporter at the Daily Pilot, where one of my primary duties was

covering the Newport-Mesa Unified School District.

During my time covering that district, voters passed a $163-million

school bond to fix its 28 schools.

It took years of planning by both the district and a devoted citizen’s

committee. I covered this story, and the rest of the happenings in the

district, with a reporter’s detachment.

I don’t have children and didn’t even live in the cities at question.

But I did pay close attention.

So here it is. School districts, in my opinion, do indeed waste time

and money on things that really aren’t all that important. They spend

money to send board members to the California School Board Assn. meetings

in Sacramento or on other odd programs rather than keep art, gym and

music programs -- that is left to Parent Teacher Assn. groups. But none

of these minor infractions, which are done with the best of intentions to

improve the district, schools and children, would pay for what we’re

talking about here.

This is about providing a suitable place for these students to learn.

By suitable I mean would you spend your day, your youth there?

Would you go now and spend your day in one of those 10 schools or

would you demand that certain things be fixed?

And I don’t want to hear sob stories aabout how bad you may have had

it -- the bottom line is children should not be sent, day after day, to

an arcaic run-down building.

If we want to be globally competetive now and in the future students

need to be exposed to technology early.

In many of these letters of support, residents urge voters without

children to think of their property values. Forget your property values.

It’s payback time. Whether you went to school here or somewhere else, if

you went to a public school taxpayers paid your way. If you went to

school in Huntington, why they were the same schools only 10, 20, 30

years less rundown. Someone paid to build those schools you went to -- it

wasn’t you. This is simply the way our society works. You took in your

youth and now it istime to give back.

Its not about what you as the taxpayer will get out of the school

bond. It is about the children and about what you already got.

* DANETTE GOULET is the assistant city editor. She can be reached at

(714) 965-7170 or by e-mail at o7 [email protected] .