To the editor:

How many of you have heard of “dreamers”?

Well, I am a dreamer also. I dream for “public-school-free zones.”

That’s right.

An area set aside in each school district for the homeowners without children or those who pay 100 percent of their education to the school of their choice.

Now of course I want to pay my share of maintaining the public school and the cost of building new additions and buying the equipment to educate our little ones.

But Lindbergh’s education cost per child is about $10,000-plus annually.

Since my local elementary school only charges $5,000 tuition for a child’s education, I wonder why are public elementary schools $5,000 more?

Since individual home real-estate tax for Lindbergh is approximately $2,000, who is paying the $8,000 additional school tax?

It comes from businesses’ property taxes, lottery fees, casino admission fees, automobile personal-property taxes, state and federal income taxes and sales taxes.

Gee, that all comes from me also.

I know why our public schools cost $8,000 more per child, but all I want is to opt out of 50 percent of my real-estate tax bill.

I don’t want to pay for a public school teacher’s age-60 retirement.

And I don’t need to pay for $80,000 pensions.

And I don’t need to pay for post-retirement annual cost-of-living contracts to a teacher or principal or supervisor who did not spend one minute teaching my child.

Isn’t that fair?

Lesson: We already have alternative schools to educate our children at much less cost than public schools.

For those of you who insist on voting yes for paying public educators’ high wages and pensions, it’s time you pay for the teachers’ pensions cost and stop expecting to use other people’s money.

Maybe if the state forced every homeowner to pay an annual $2,000 tax for free haircuts from a certain salon, whether you use them or not, the message of fairness becomes clearer.

Peter Russo

Affton