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In ''Way Beyond Bake Sales: $1 Million PTAs,'' on the cover of last Sunday's Metropolitan section, Kyle Spencer wrote about New York City public schools where parents' groups raise amounts in the $1 million range annually. On NYTimes.com, readers debated the role of private wealth in a public education system. A selection of comments is below. Readers also responded to Ginia Bellafante's Big City column, which examined the word ''gay'' and its changing currency as an insult in light of a court ruling that a false accusation of homosexuality could no longer be considered slander. In a large public-school system where the city gives the same dollar amount for each child, this is how the class system stays maintained. The haves have more. The have-nots don't. How different is it from the suburbs where local taxes support local districts, where wealthy towns have well-provided successful schools and poor towns have poor, failing, underfunded schools? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corbin City, between Cape May and Atlantic Counties, was settled in the mid-19th century as a home for seafaring captains whose ships were unloaded at the end of the Tuckahoe River so cargo could be shipped to Philadelphia, 65 miles away. The ship traffic disappeared nearly a century ago, but Corbin City remains. It has a population of about 500, an annual budget of nearly $1 million, and a work force of one full-time and four part-time employees. It is home to one of New Jersey's notorious ''nonoperating school districts,'' meaning residents finance school administration costs even though Corbin City has no schools and its 90 students attend classes in adjacent Upper Township. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]