How much of a difference will Wheaton make?

Wheaton is an award-winning community for the depth of its Make A Difference Day efforts.

But this year, there's nearly an entirely new commission organizing the city's participation on the nation's largest single day of volunteerism.

The question is: Will the city make more or less of a difference than it has before?

Wheaton Mayor Mike Gresk fired the leader of the organizing commission when he took office in May. Nearly all of the remaining commissioners resigned in protest.

That's created a shorter timeframe for the new commission members to organize the activities. Gresk said that shouldn't be an issue.

"I'm making no excuses for them," Gresk said. "I assume that every year it will be better than the previous year. I don't know how many people there are participating, but we'll see."

Gresk won't see it first-hand. He'll be out of the country on vacation for Make A Difference Day.

One reason for reorganizing the commission was a downturn in volunteer activities by schools for last year's Make A Difference Day.

Only seven of the 20 local schools had official events in 2006. Some people, including former organizer Michelle Senatore, thought it may have been the result of her vocal opposition to moving Wheaton's Hubble Middle School to Warrenville.

Maybe not.

This year, only four of the 20 schools in Wheaton Warrenville Unit District 200 are participating. And that's if you go by the commission's official list.

If you go by District 200's list, only three of its schools are participating. And only two of them have events that may qualify for inclusion on the national list of projects.

Senatore said that's a shame and may reflect a misunderstanding of the national rules for participation. The result could be failing to qualify for national recognition.

"They had such a crunch in time to pull it together," Senatore said, "they may not have known the exact rules.

"I'm certain they did the best they could for the timeframe that they had," she added.

Jennifer Alpers is one of the members of the new commission who helped organize Wheaton's volunteer events this year.

She said the city shouldn't be judged by the official list of events.

"I don't know much about what Make A Difference Day was like in previous years," Alpers said. "We tried to make sure that everybody in Wheaton would know what Make A Difference Day was like and give them an opportunity to participate."

Alpers said she expects every local school to have some volunteer event. She's just not sure what all those events are.

"Tracking down who's doing what has been our biggest stumbling block and sort of the least of our worries," Alpers said. "We're expecting the city of Wheaton to come together to do something good for everybody."