Getting Involved

This past Tuesday, I took a tour of the Crestwood school with Mrs. Linda Reeves, the principal. She escorted me around the building and graciously introduced me to the teachers and staff that were there working with our K-2nd grade children.

Afterward, we chatted briefly, and I learned that Crestwood is in the same boat as Park school: the library is only open three days each week because we do not have the staff to have it open those other two days.

This is a terrible situation for the students.

Any reputable study from any decade clearly shows that teaching and encouraging solid reading habits in students improves performance in virtually every other subject, including math. The reverse is also true: poor readers do poorly in every other subject.

Those libraries are vital to our kids' success - now, and in their later lives as adult citizens.

If we had just a few dedicated people willing to volunteer their valuable time to help out, we could keep both of those libraries open all week long. Just a couple of hours each week would make a huge difference!

To that end, I have volunteered my Friday mornings to be at the Park school library. I am in the process of working out details of also volunteering for library duty at Crestwood.

Our kids are our future - they will be making our cars, dispensing our medications at the pharmacy, running corporations, repairing our roofs, flying our airplanes, nursing us back to health in the hospital, caring for our teeth every six months, staffing our nursing homes, and teaching the next generation of students. It is vital that we give them the best educational foundation possible to help them succeed in their chosen field of endeavor - and that means they need to read, and read well.