More support for Hubble move

In their first public speeches since leaving Wheaton City Hall, former Mayor Jim Carr and former Councilman Alan Bolds this week stood in support of moving Hubble Middle School.

Both Carr and Bolds also are former Wheaton Warrenville Unit District 200 school board members. They were joined by Milton Township Trustee Jim Flickinger.

All three urged voters to support a Feb. 5 referendum question for $58 million and permission to build a new Hubble in Warrenville. The existing building in Wheaton would be sold and likely torn down.

Bolds had just returned from work in an impoverished community in Africa when he gave his speech to the school board. He said he saw the hope education can bring children when they have a school in their own community. Warrenville students deserve that same sense of hope, he said.

"It is time to move that school," Bolds said.

Carr said he decided moving the school is the right choice for two reasons.

A new school will provide a better education for the students, Carr said. And, selling the existing building will help bring new commercial growth to Wheaton through redevelopment of the site.

"We owe the young people who will come after us the finest education and the best opportunity possible for the future," Carr said.

Flickinger said he's believed Warrenville should have a middle school for at least 10 years now. As a one-time school board candidate, he put himself through the commute that many Warrenville Hubble students experience daily.

"That is a long way for a parent to have to pick a child up in the evening and for extracurricular activities," Flickinger said.

He also added the perspective of the positive changes building a new Longfellow Elementary brought in 2001.

"Who would want to go back, even to a renovated Longfellow?" Flickinger said.