To the editor:

Four days last week, I drove by Lawrence High School and noticed that the athletic field lights on the new football field were on full bright in the middle of the day. I don’t really know, but I’d guess it might be 50,000 watts being used. Three days, there were only construction workers around; on the other day, the school band was practicing. Still, I’m a lot older than they are, and I wouldn’t have any trouble walking around or reading my sheet music in mid-afternoon without the field lights.

This sends a wonderful educational message to our youth that it’s fine to waste resources and that whatever goes on out there is a lot more important than what is going on inside the classroom. It gets attention for the unfinished mega-complex. Nearby, the conversion of what used to be green space for children at Centennial School into more developed facilities for high school athletics shows other community priorities.

Certainly, it’s better to have that electricity lighting up the sky than to have it be wasted on classroom supplies or teacher salaries. This is the meaning of the phase “money to burn.”

Your tax dollars at work.