Letters to the Editor: Betsy DeVos is a product of Trump’s indifference to public education

To the editor: While your editorial delineates Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ callousness and indifference to the pandemic, it is your observation that President Trump is “not all that interested in education” that resonates most.

As reprehensible as DeVos is, she is only doing the bidding of a man who doesn’t care about education and who risks lives in order to win the election.

The secretary is complicit in Trump’s insistence on reopening schools so that he can tout success at putting people back to work, many of whom are women and people of color who were forced to quit jobs because they had no child care.

As a former teacher, I find it tragic that DeVos and Trump are using children as cover in his attempt to get elected regardless of the toll.

Elizabeth Triana, Mission Viejo

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To the editor: The Times couldn’t be more right about how our nation is still waiting for a real secretary of Education. Consider how DeVos, with no public-school experience, became Trump’s pick to head the U.S. Department of Education.

Trump owed his improbable election to the overwhelming support of the evangelicals to whom he relentlessly pandered. DeVos, a prominent evangelical, famously believes that education’s purpose is to “advance God’s kingdom.” She moreover has ardently championed government funding of private K-12 schools, most of which are faith-based endeavors.

Trump of course doesn’t much care whether public school students get a quality education — not when he finds low-information voters so easily manipulated.

So, putting a notorious evangelical private school fox in charge of the secular public school henhouse has served Trump well. DeVos inspires evangelicals to back him and keeps our pubic schools churning out middling students. What more could Trump want from her?

Robin Groves, Pacific Palisades