STUDENT RECEIVERS LETTER

The first day of school is anything but routine, but Nick Ellis was surprised to find a letter waiting for him when he arrived on the first day of classes.

Ellis, a sixth-grade student at Kelso C-7 School in New Hamburg, received a letter from Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar during his summer vacation.

The letter came to Ellis after he finished a project about Illinois in his fifth-grade class. Each student in the class was assigned a state to research and then write a report. They had about three weeks to finish the project, which included drawings of the state bird, flower and license plate, creating a tourism brochure, and writing a letter to the governor.

Ellis, son of Marian Ellis, was one of few students in the class to received a letter from the governor.