I am writing to express my disappointment with some of the dialogue at the Jan. 17 community forum on redistricting. Several members of the audience advocate cultural diversity as the main criterion for redistricting. I disagree wholeheartedly.

Cultural diversity is just a political correct social experiment. These experiments always fail (i.e. busing and bilingual education). All these experiments ever lead to is parents taking their kids from public schools and moving them to private schools. It also results in test scores precipitously dropping. A viable education should be the main focus of redistricting and I believe that is achieved by neighborhood schools instead of ludicrous gerrymandering to meet quotas. Schools are established for the basic tenets like reading, writing and arithmetic. We do not need to inject political correctness into our educational system, because it takes away from real learning.

I believe the school board should expunge this form of special interest. Children in elementary school do not need political correct nonsense, they need to learn. When these kids reach the middle school, then they can experience different cultures. They will be older and wiser to make those distinctions. I hope other parents in the community feel the same way and make their opinion known to the school board.

Patrick J. Verdi