Bessemer shouldn't leave students behind

To the Editor:

Over many years of hard work, students, teachers and school officials of the Bessemer School District have succeeded together in building a now nationally-recognized school system. Heads down to the task, quietly and unassumingly, they have built an academic and economic magnet for all of the Gogebic Range and beyond to prosper from.

Good schools are the cornerstones and hallmarks of communities that will ultimately succeed and flourish. While the rest of us adults may have been fussing over attracting corporate investment or government grants and government cost-sharing or government this and that, our kids, looking inwardly while guided by their mentors, have assembled for us with love of their community, quiet perspicacity, and famously scant resources, an economic engine that many communities of abundant financial means can only dream of.

Ladies and gentlemen voters of the Bessemer School District: The train is at the station. Not only are our kids driving this economic train and working it daily, they built it from scratch with their teachers — mostly from the passion for and the true love of learning.

The potential for a bright economic future doesn’t come better than this: small towns, big hearts, strong minds. This is a revved-up engine and the train is at the station, leaving on May 7. Please, go to the polls and vote yes to pass the school bond issue.

Let’s give our kids and our school officials the means and materials to carry us into a bright future. This is a considerable task, no doubt. We need to have faith, put our shoulders to the weight, take the hill like Teddy Roosevelt, as the song goes, and get on the train, whatever it takes. We need to get on board and not let our kids leave us behind.

Susanne Brown

Bessemer