To the editor:

Samuel Johnson wrote that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels. We might more appropriately say that the last refuge of the incompetent is to hide behind children.

Those who speak of the school board’s desire to benefit children by building a major series of athletic facilities at LHS should ask themselves a few questions:

1) Why do we suddenly require a major expansion of athletic facilities at a time when the school board admits that they don’t have the money to pay for them?

2) Why was the Haskell stadium suddenly no longer good enough for football?

3) Why, if new facilities are desired, must we have two of everything?

4) And why does the school board spend energy on athletics and ignore the fact that the school population has declined by 1,000 students in the past 10 years?

This building frenzy has nothing to do with children, and everything to do with building monuments to departing school administrators. We are rewarding administrators who have presided over the greatest loss of children in our Lawrence’s history.

If Lawrence schools were a bank, they would be bankrupt.

They are losing customers at a staggering rate. The administrators are spending money they don’t have. They are rewarding themselves with monuments for a job badly done. And they are sending us into debt to buy products that we don’t need.

And to avoid blame they hide behind children.

Have they no shame?

Arly Allen,
Lawrence