School Integration

Jonathan Gaw’s article “Integration Plan Draws Ire in Vista” (Jan. 11) attempted to explain what has become a snowballing problem in the Vista Unified School District for many years--the “ethnic imbalance” of Vista schools.

This is not an issue of “rich people in north Vista wanting to keep Mexicans out of their neighborhoods,” (as one parent said), and I truly resent that implication. If the new Mission Meadows elementary school had the radical imbalance that currently exists at Santa Fe/California school, I would still want my children to go to Mission Meadows. We live five doors from the proposed school.

I want my kids to walk to school. This issue isn’t about race. This is about neighborhood schools--a concept that at one time was the very essence of the Vista Unified School District philosophy.

BARBARA L. McMULLIN, Oceanside