SUBMITTED BY DAVE PHILLIPS

Letter to the Editor of Davis Enterprise:

We are about to turn over our schools' educational health to accountants and facilities operators. The doctor has said we need to lose some weight quickly, and the business people running this HMO have provided us with drastic options and a week to decide--no time for a second opinion or thoughtful weight loss: Cut off some combination of arm or leg.

They recommend left leg (Emerson) because it is a touch shorter, has some blemishes and would provide a lifetime savings on shoes and polish; the needed artificial leg would not count as an expense because it comes from a different budget line.

I'm sorry, but we need to go back to basics and have our Board of Education decide what we as a school district are to be; then we can ask the business-oriented staff how best to make that happen. We definitely should question the biased budgetary "analysis" presented to the public and board.

For example, listed under "concerns" for maintaining the status quo (i.e., keeping Emerson open), the district has "over 100 junior high school students continue to travel to DHS"; nowhere is mentioned a concern about 500 such students traveling halfway across town to Holmes. Fair and balanced?

As a district, we are best served by three uncrowded, unique junior highs, spread evenly across the city. Can we survive with two packed junior highs? Yes, we did four to five years ago. But we also chose to build a third junior high just to alleviate the same overcrowded, climate-busting conditions we are now proposing to revisit.

As we endeavor to save money, we also need to make sure we spend wisely what we have. The district has estimated a facilities cost of $400,000 to $500,000 just to move portables if Emerson were to be closed. Coincidentally, that is about the cost of buying three new science portables, which would largely take care of modernizing Emerson's science facilities.

Instead of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, perhaps we should start repairing the hole in the hull. Let's start planning now for a modernized Emerson. What lesson are we teaching our children when we just walk away from something that needs fixing?