LETTERS: Public education wastes money on bureaucracy

I read with interest Sylvia Lazos' commentary on Education Savings Accounts ("Education Savings Accounts imperil public education," Tuesday Review-Journal). It is obvious Ms. Lazos did not do her homework or was afraid to share how successful ESA programs have been in other states.

One of the major problems with the public education system is the bureaucracy involved. When our youngest was getting near school age, my wife — always focused on researching anything we do — looked into the public school system in the state we had just moved into. What she discovered is that for every teacher, there were at least five bureaucrats preforming some type of administrative duties. This is beyond ridiculous.

Among the other problems is the fact that under our current system, thanks to the teachers unions, you cannot fire incompetent teachers. My wife elected to home school initially and, as our son grew older, we enrolled him in a charter school. He has since graduated from college with a 3.5 grade-point average.

The money wasted in our current public school system is only outdone by the waste in Washington, D.C.

Bill Clark

Las Vegas

Order on border

Norman Paley disgustingly compares Donald Trump to the Nazis in his letter to the editor ("It worked before," Tuesday Review-Journal), simply because Mr. Trump wants to stop the flood of undocumented immigrants into the United States from Mexico, Central America and the entire continent of South America.

Mr. Paley goes on to graphically highlight the grisly methods the Nazis used in their persecution of the Jews, as if the United States would stoop to that level.

What is realistic, however, is that millions of undocumented immigrants have crossed the southern border and contributed to many worrisome situations in this country — overcrowded schools, crime, drugs, nearly bankrupt medical facilities, disease, job loss and on and on. And the problem is not just occurring on our southern border. Countries around the world are securing their borders because of war, strife and other economic chaos.

Borders are put in place for a reason: to protect sovereignty, monetary security, culture, etc.

How many people would Mr. Paley welcome into his home until he reached the point of saying, "No, I don't have room for anyone else?" Would Mr. Paley let a person into his home with whooping cough, exposing his family to the disease? Would he let a known sexual predator into his home?

There are limits to everything. Americans cannot afford to feed and care for the entire world. It is time for foreigners to build their own countries, instead of coming across our border to avail themselves of free care, free food, free shelter, free everything at our expense. It is time for our government to quit taking our paychecks to support the rest of the world and instead let us keep the money we have earned for our own families.

Ron Moers

Henderson

Trump on immigration

Norman Paley's letter comparing Donald Trump's ideas on immigration with Adolf Hitler's systematic extermination of Jews is disingenuous ("It worked before," Tuesday Review-Journal).

Mr. Trump's plan is to first identify convicted felons in this country illegally and immediately deport them. He also wants to challenge the automatic birthright citizenship of children born to those who overstay their visas or who illegally enter the United States for the purpose of having a child here, in order to become citizens.

Mr. Trump also wants a functional e-verify program. That alone will cause many people in this country illegally to self-deport.

There is no comparison between Mr. Trump's plan and Hitler's decision to put Jews in boxcars and ship them to concentration camps — where their money, jewelry and gold from their teeth were removed and stolen — before they were murdered. Mr. Paley's comparison is more appropriate to what the Democrats did when President Franklin D. Roosevelt rounded up Japanese-Americans during World War II and confiscated their wealth and possessions before shipping them to "relocation centers."

Michael O. Kreps

Las Vegas