"Mirror, mirror, on the wall; who's the fairest of them all?" purred Snow White's stepmother, a vain and wicked Queen. "You are, your Majesty," the Magic Mirror replied in the immortal children's folktale, Snow White, written by Jacob L. & Wilhelm (the brothers) Grimm. We all remember how furious Snow White's wicked stepmother became when, one day, the Magic Mirror informed her that "...Snow White is the fairest in the land." Snow White, banished from her home by the wicked Queen, seeks refuge in the forest with the seven dwarfs and eventually marries her Prince Charming. This story has a happy ending!

Snow White could also be the pretty fifth grader who lives down the street and attends one of Levittown's six elementary schools.

The children on the Levittown school board, like the wicked Queen, also want to be loved and look pretty. Unfortunately, when they look into their Magic Mirror they only see their own reflection. And so, dear taxpayers, when no one was looking, they passed a resolution amounting to $54,963.73 (prorated over eight months at $43,971) to hire a public relations firm (BOCES Public Relations Services) to make themselves look pretty. Now, when they look into their Magic Mirror they like to think they look pretty.

Poor Snow White, in the meantime, is falling further and further behind her classmates in her schoolwork. Snow White, you see, has great difficulty reading at her grade level and there is no money in our $100,000,000 budget to help her. She is one of over 210 Levittown youngsters (one third of her Levittown fifth grade schoolmates) who scored poorly, last spring, in the NYS Education Department's Fourth Grade English Language Arts Test. Levittown scored so poorly in this test that it ranks near the bottom one third or is in 33rd place out of the 53 elementary school districts in Nassau County. Students in nearby Wantagh and Island Trees school districts, on the other hand, rank in the top 10 percent range with mean scores placing then in fifth and ninth places, respectively.

Month after month, Snow White's mother and her neighbors, concerned about the plight of their children's education, tearfully implore the Levittown School Board to do something to alleviate the overcrowding and somewhat chaotic educational environment in our elementary schools. Each month their pleas fall on deaf ears. As a matter of fact, at the December school board meeting, one of our board members rudely informed these mothers that their children were not suffering nearly as much as other district children. This clod should be nominated for the Marie Antoinette - "Let them eat cake" - award. I'm sure she'd win, hands down!

And so, Levittown taxpayers, the next time you see the children on the Levittown School Board strutting around or preening themselves, remember that it's with your tax dollars and at the expense of our children's education.