One project I opposed as an individual is the French High School. The developers tried to say how much Palms would benefit from this high school. This is untrue.

Few families in Palms can afford the tutition. Look at the value of the cars their kids drive. Few Palms families earn that much in a year. This school caters to the north-of-Sunset elite. Real estate in Palms is cheaper than real estate closer to their home.

The school is in Palms, but they call it the "West L.A. Campus." Palms to them is where the riff-raff live. That is the only reason the super-rich would "slum it" and send their children here.

To get their development approved, they hired a high-priced public relations firm, lobbyists and lawyers. Since we have not even held our election and sworn in our officers for our future Neighborhood Council, our opposition was no match for all the money they spent to oppose us.

We raised a concern about parking. They do not have enough. Their $450-an-hour lawyers said the students will be told not to park in the neighborhood. It is naive to think that these spoiled rich brats will have any regard for the "locals."

It is not just Palms that has schools for the elite. Across our border is Windward School, a competitor of the French school. There are other competing private schools in the area for which this part of town is "cheaper" real estate.

There are other examples of development in which we had no say; the French School is just the most gross.

I strongly disagree with your mean article on the Lycée.  You are ignorant of many facts and you sound extremely jealous.  I am not rich and my daughter has been attending the school for 12 years now. 

How can you generalize your opinion on more than a thousand young children?? Are they all brats?  Do you personally know them?

I think you need to look at your motivation for writing this article. This is America.  Everybody has an opportunity to study, be creative, work hard and make money.  I could say a lot more . . .

I'm fairly new to Palms — I've only been living in my little one-bedroom on Westwood Blvd. for 15 months now — so I probably don't know nearly enough about the situation with the French school on Overland to make an informed, reasonable comment. However, the vitriolic Cliff Cheng rant currently on The P-V Sun page just screams for a response.

In large cities throughout the country, there are tens of thousands of working- and middle-class parents who send their kids to Catholic schools and private schools like the Lycée Français because they do not have faith in a broken public school system. These parents, many of whom are ethnic minorities, work themselves into an early grave to pay exorbitant tuition for the sake of giving their kids greater opportunities than those offered by public high schools. Had I not gotten the chance to attend the renowned, proudly public Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, I am sure my parents would have done the same.

While I'm sure that there are a few budding Paris Hiltons among the Lycée's students, smearing all of them as "spoiled brats" is reprehensible. I know a thing or two about private school graduates, being an alumnus of Cornell and a current Ph.D. student at USC, and to say that all of them are arrogant scions of wealth is simply untrue.

I'd like to respond to Cliff Cheng's blog commentary regarding the new Lycée français campus on National Blvd. Cliff raised some points that should be clarified for the record.

While Cliff stated his personal opposition to the school, in the fourth paragraph he gives the impression that the Palms Neighborhood Council opposed the project.

This is not true. At the May 2004 joint meeting of the [then-uncertified] Neighborhood Council and Neighborhood Watch, stakeholders voted to support the school proposal, subject to the mitigation of parking and traffic impacts.

Mr. Cheng says, "The school is in Palms," and he takes issue with the school's designation as the "West L.A. Campus." However, the proposed school is not located within the borders of the Palms Neighborhood Council. The school site is located within the Westside Neighborhood Council.

Some developers would have been content to ignore the neighboring council. However, I appreciate that the Lycée français took the time to outreach to our council even though their project site was located in the Westside council.