School district backers using state information

In his Nov. 18 letter to the Democrat-Gazette, Robert Anderson of Centerton accused the Bella Vista Patriots of using misinformation to support forming a new school district in Bella Vista. The Patriots are getting their data straight from the Arkansas Department of Education. I don’t know where Mr. Anderson is getting his information, perhaps from social media.

Mr. Anderson went on to say that I was raising this issue just to burnish my own ego. I will have to admit that as an ex-Green Beret, we were indoctrinated to believe that one Green Beret could whip three Marines with one hand tied behind our backs. I think some of our group bought into that and showed up back in our clinic with broken noses, black eyes and multiple lacerations.

He went on to write that Bella Vista doesn’t have enough land to build our schools on. We don’t need seven golf courses. Approximately 18% of our residents now play golf. Our demographics have changed and we now have more children and fewer golfers. We have seven golf courses to attract golfers from surrounding cities and other states so Cooper Communities Inc. and our Bella Vista Property Owners Association can make money.

Mr. Anderson downplayed the fact that almost all of our children spend about two hours of their school day just riding a bus. He closed by saying that there are lots of cities in other states that have a population of 30,000 that are without their own school districts, but he failed to name one. After reading Mr. Anderson’s letter, it makes me wonder if someone provided him with a school.

JIM PARSONS Bella Vista