LETTERS: SUGGESTIONS FOR NEW MILLENNIUM

To the editor:

As the year 2000 approaches, here are a few ideas to stimulate actions to improve our community.

Religious participation: If all the churches lit their steeples, they would be beacons of hope to their neighborhoods and the community.

If all the congregations developed activities for their immediate neighborhoods -- not must members -- with emphasis on youths as the Rev. Mike Woelk of the Livingway Foursquare Church has instituted, they would create additional beacons of hope.

Public partnerships: The loss of our neighborhood schools should not be taken lightly.

Conversions of Washington and May Greene schools into viable entities should be a high priority of our Board of Education and City Council. Families need public institutions to maintain their pride in their neighborhoods. Abandoning these schools would be a major blow to the vitality of these areas of town that are already in decline.

Public meetings jointly hosted by the Board of Education and City Council at those schools should be held to give the people affected a chance to provide input. One can imagine picnic shelters, ball fields, playground equipment, city-school library branches, reading rooms, craft rooms, meeting rooms, indoor-outdoor recreation, music and art classes and concerts.

Cooperation I'm suggestion has been done before during my tenure on the Board of Education. We entered into agreements with the City Council on the conversion of Lorimier School into City Hall and the joint swimming pool project.

Imagine with me the midnight of Dec. 31, 1999: every church lit, every church bell ringing, church-neighborhood activities in progress and plans for conversion of neighborhood school in place. Wouldn't this be a better community in which to live and raise a family? Wouldn't there be renewed hope that our older parts of town would remain vital? Wouldn't these efforts and others be beacons for the millennium?

JERRY FORD

Cape Girardeau