CHILDREN’S SCHOOL
30 years of service
On May 31, Mayor Dave Bieter proclaimed it “The Children’s School (TCS) Day.”
TCS opened its doors in 1980 and was one of Boise’s earliest schools for early childhood education during a time when many were skeptical of the importance of education for our youngest children. TCS remains an advocate of the importance of early childhood education and the benefits it provides to all aspects of a child’s development.
During the past 30 years, TCS served as an early childhood education model, received national recognition for its work on conflict resolution and graduated more than 1,000 children. TCS students range in age from 2 to 8, so it’s not hard to believe that many alumni live and work in Boise and make important contributions as civic leaders, doctors, teachers and more.
With support from McAlvain Construction and Erstad Architects, TCS completed a major remodel in 2010 to create a facility that matches the high-quality education provided for our students. This green remodel offers a healthy environment that contributed to an 80 percent reduction in absences due to illness in the 2010-11 school year.
Thank you, Mayor Bieter, for recognizing The Children’s School as a thriving school for Boise children!
CLINT TATE, board president,The Children’s School, Boise
PLACES TO PLAY
Old school properties should be public parks
I don’t know whether the Boise schools have sold the properties, now vacant at the locations where Franklin Elementary, Cole Elementary and West Junior High once stood. If the district has sold them, we just may have lost a huge opportunity to build three parks before businesses are built there, which will only contribute to more urban sprawl, vandalism and other crimes. Is this what we want for Boise?
It is now a proven fact that those communities that provide more parks where playing, walking and bicycle riding are provided have the happiest and most satisfied people. Through the years, Boise has done a pretty good job of providing parks, trails and friendly areas for all of us. We must not get behind with these endeavors as the population grows and needs become greater. As a model, we could look to California’s San Luis Obispo.
Boise is still one of the friendliest and most desirable cities in which to live in America. Please don’t let business interests take it away from us — because it would be gone forever. And that would be tragic.
LAVERNE VINSON, Boise
POLITICS
Great education doesn’t make a good president
John Quincy Adams began his diplomatic career in 1778 at the precocious age of 11, serving his father as secretary on a mission to France. Two years later, he was interpreter on a mission to Russia.
Woodrow Wilson was arguably our best-educated president. He attended Princeton, the University of Virginia and Johns Hopkins and was a professor at Bryn Mawr and Wesleyan; he wrote nine books, too.
The peanut farmer Jimmy Carter had high intelligence and became a senior officer in Adm. Hyman Rickover’s nuclear submarine program.
Three brilliant men who did not make good presidents.
When Obama took office, the deficit was $9 trillion. Two and a half years later, Obama has done what every liberal Marxist government head of a country does: Push the debt up to $14.3 trillion, massive job losses, foreclosures, bankruptcies, personal failure, suicides and a bloated federal budget wasting money on foolishness that liberals love.
Add to that Obama’s lack of credibility, shady Marxist friendships, lack of experience in business and government, Islamic influences and tendencies, and the fact that he’s not educated beyond reading a teleprompter, and it adds up to this: He’s a fraud.
DANO SAVINO, Kuna
TAX ASSESSMENTS
Who’s telling it straight?
In a recent hearing with the Ada County commissioners concerning my 2011 property tax assesment, I was told that “the Idaho Statesman’s job was to sell papers” when I referenced the May 25, 2011, article quoting the Ada County assessor on the amount of assessed value drop in Ada County.
Were the Ada County commissioners insinuating that nothing in the Statesman is to be believed, or was this just a convenient “out” for the commissioners?
PATRICK R. BOTTE, Eagle
