To the editor:

I am having a hard time trying to envision what the Lawrence school soard is trying to do by closing East Heights, New York, Centennial, and Riverside elementary schools. I believe that this would damage the center of Lawrence, and how visitors see the city of Lawrence.

Those are mostly neighborhood schools and they should stay that way. I grew up in the Woodlawn neighborhood and it is still thriving today. Why would we want to kill our neighborhoods by closing these schools? So the school district can spend more money that they apparently do not have on improving the schools they are keeping open to transfer more students from the schools they close? And then come to the patrons of the Lawrence School District again with another bond issue to build another school two or three blocks away when they should have kept the old school open in the first place.

I am not very happy with our beloved state of Kansas and the mess we have with the our state’s education system. What happened that we have such a shortfall for educating our children but we can’t get our state legislators or our governor to budge on this issue. You would think that they would put our children first to obtain the very best education that we can provide for them.

As was published from an Oct. 24 letter to the editor, it is not the building that teaches our children, it is the teachers inside. And I think they would want us to do what was best for everyone involved. And as a parent with children at Woodlawn Elementary I want them to have the best education possible.

Keep the neighborhood schools open for our children’s sake. They are depending on us to make their futures bright and promising.

Bessie Foster,

Lawrence