Extend concern to schoolchildren

As a lifelong resident of Wheaton, I have made many friends. I feel that I am lucky to know so many good people. They pitch in when help is needed. They volunteer for programs that benefit the underprivileged. They give freely to churches and charities. This is a very good-hearted town.

If you want to be included in that group, make it a point to support our schools with your vote. This is one of the keys to keeping property values up and encouraging new people to replace us when we retire. Good schools are a real draw.

In November, you will be asked to approve a referendum that will allow the school board of Wheaton-Warrenville District 200 to move ahead and replace Jefferson School. They can take out a lease and pay it year by year with current income without a tax increase.

Jefferson - to put it bluntly - is between "well past its prime" and hopeless. Its mission is Early Childhood Education, but Jefferson no longer has the room or facilities required to serve the population of little people it has been given. Too small, too worn down, too crowded.

To rehab the place would cost as much as to build a new one and its population of 3- to 5-year-olds would be displaced for many months - perhaps all over the district. Not a good solution.

The Early Childhood Program checks out the health and abilities of the little people to see how they will do in kindergarten and the later grades. If they find problems in seeing, hearing, physical problems and so on, they work with the parents to benefit the kids and ready them for the future. Early intervention works.

It's a fine program that certainly never existed when I was a child. We should support it.

Don Sender

Wheaton