Schools are like businesses: Only the strong survive

It is indeed sad that parents are faced with the closure of their favorite schools. The sense of loss and upheaval to their routine and that of their children is most unfortunate and possibly unnecessary because there's a larger question and issue still unaddressed by us: What is causing this decline in enrollment?

Conejo Valley Unified School District would have us believe that declining enrollment is due primarily to financial demographics: Rising home prices make it harder for more people to live in our desirable area.

However, if that were so, one would expect to see a comparable or proportionate level of decline in private school enrollment as well, notwithstanding the cost.

Yet private schools in Thousand Oaks are seeing an increase in their enrollment.

How can this be?

Let me posit this response: quality.

Education must be viewed as the business it has become. Parents, long faced with but one choice in the public school system, have finally realized that the system is broken and perhaps beyond repair.

With a school board that can't seem to get out of its own way and a cast of characters that inhabit the schools, including principals who haven't a clue and many teachers who would rather pass kids along than truly teach them, there's more than enough fodder for a play titled "The Dance of the Lemons."

The public is just required to pay admission in the form of property taxes and bond issues, with little or no recourse or accountability by the cast of the play.

But opportunity knocked for the other businessmen, the ones who knew that if they were to control the quality of the product and the production process, eventually the people would say "enough" of the other system and begin to migrate away from dysfunction, like an antelope being chased by a hungry pack of lions.

So while it's difficult to accept the closure of any school, it was inevitable.

One wonders what would happen if parents were truly given choice in the form of vouchers.
I, for one, would love the opportunity, but facing reality I know that the teachers' union and the members of the school board who they bought and paid for would die trying to prevent it.
Paul Kessler
Thousand Oaks