To the Readers' Forum:
In 1960, I went to Germany to study and during the first two weeks I lived with a family near Bonn. The father was a teacher in a Catholic school. There was also Lutheran and public schools in the town. The three were about the same size and each received the same amount of tax money for each student. That is ''freedom of education.''
The German family was shocked to find out that all the school taxes in the U.S.A. go to our public schools. They exclaimed: ''There's no freedom of education in America!'' Right, all we have is ''free education'' for everyone if they go to a public school.
On March 21, I heard on FM88.1 that it costs $5,000 to educate each of the more than 15,000 students in Buffalo's Catholic schools and $20,000 per student in the public schools. Taxpayers should be shouting for the city to give $5,000 vouchers to students and allow them to go to a parochial school if parents so choose. That would also give many of the inner city kids a chance to break the cycle of poverty, dependency, jails, etc.
Shortly after the 2008 election, President Obama eliminated vouchers in Washington, D.C. and then sent his children to a private school. That should cause one's heart to ache for those poor inner city kids.
God be thanked. There are parochial schools in our area, so we still have some ''freedom of education.'' Until giving vouchers becomes the law of the land, please support our parochial schools.
Robert G. Pumford
Jamestown