To the editor:

March 2, I attended the last in a series of public forums concerning the school budget crisis. A cloud of tension filled the auditorium as each person made their plea to the school board. And then, like the sun shining through the cloud, a sweet innocent young girl from Central Junior High School stepped up to the microphone.

She asked the board to imagine the whole city of Lawrence coming together around our schools to raise enough money to keep them open. She was asking for something beyond the status quo (that had jaded most of the hearts in the room that night). She was asking the school board and the community to be heroes.

Our children need more heroes, and many in the community are willing to be just that. Lawrence school board, we as a community have the chance to be a model of ingenuity for the rest of the country. Everything you need to keep schools open and neighborhoods vibrant is available to you in the bright, creative minds that are at work. School board, we do not need to be saved from ourselves. We are the answer. Let us be the heroes that little girl needs us to be. Or I fear an opportunity lost … and innocence lost.