I read the article "District looks at options for school sites that will close next fall" in the Jan. 22 Acorn. I was struck by two observations.

First, all ideas for the sites involve opening of private schools. If the district is closing the schools due to lack of enrollment, why is there demand for private schools in their place?

Second, what began as a simple school closure and realignment has now turned into an incomprehensible quagmire.

We have a magnet school at Manzanita that's oversubscribed; there's a potential second magnet school at Meadows; on the same site or maybe elsewhere, there's a potential charter school; there's the idea of another magnet school in the district; there's the reallocation of large groups of students; and there are threatened lawsuits by upset parents- to name a few.

Has anyone calculated the cost of this massive disruption?

What's happened to the idea of simply providing a good primary education at a neighborhood school? While the school board is redrawing maps, they're ignoring the quality of our children's education.

If science is such a good idea in elementary schools, why aren't we teaching it at every elementary school? Why do we need a science magnet school for that?

Get back to basics!

Reexamine your assumptions about the cost savings from closing two schools versus the cost of distraction you've created. If you know anything about children, then you should know that they need to feel at home in their learning environment.

How can our kids feel at home in their schools with the administration creating this level of upheaval?

On Ms. Connolly's and Ms. Buckles' suggestion that the closures should proceed to maintain credibility- what a shame.

I voted for them because I thought they would stand up for what's right. Sometimes that includes recognizing and correcting a mistake.

The disaster that resulted from a federal administration that was unable to admit to and correct any mistakes for eight years should be a lesson to us at the local level.

Hopefully we'll not start practicing locally what we thought we just corrected nationally. Peter Pick Thousand Oaks