Your letters for March 8, 2024

By NewsPress Now

No need for new buildings

Why is this school board and superintendent, Dr. Gabe Edgar, so determined to waste our tax money? Our three public high school buildings are in excellent condition! There have been great improvements to our facilities in recent years.

Most, if not all, are newer than the more than four hundred buildings at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A similar situation exists at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri.

I had the honor to chair the Benton facilities in three different decades. The North Central National Accrediting Committees reviewed our findings and agreed. Over 50 members of the N.C.A. evaluated our research and agreed that the Benton classrooms, offices, infrastructure, auditorium, gyms, field houses and football/soccer fields and track were and are in excellent condition.

If we at SJSD go to two new high schools of 1,600 students each, so very many deserving students will be cut from casts in school plays, elite singing groups, there will be drastic cuts in football varsity teams, basketball teams and many other varsity and junior varsity squads. There will be cuts in cheerleading and pom pom squads.

I had to break the hearts of so very many in all school musicals, plays, variety talent shows, ect. It broke my heart, even to this day, and Benton was only 800 to 1,000 students then.

These are co-curricular activities and the lessons they stay with you for a lifetime. Please, pay the staff a livable wage commensurate to their many, many years of college education and advanced degrees.

Increase school discipline and hold the parents/guardians, administrators and instructors accountable. I’m against a four-day school week! Let’s not continue the dumbing down of America!

John Hoffman

St. Joseph



Offering an accurate portrayal

I was both amused and appalled at a submitted item in March 1’s News-Press that referenced College Hill, which draws its name as the location of the former Christian Brothers College. This may seem like a bit of nit-picking, but College Hill has some interesting history and is entitled to an accurate portrayal.

The submitted information accompanied a photo of the old school, and described College Hill as “east of 22nd street” and “west of 10th street.” It actually is a half mile or so west — not east — of 22nd, and two blocks east — not west — of 10th street. Unlike Goosetown, which can get only a general boundary definition, College Hill is very specific: It is one square block, bounded by 12th, 13th, Henry and Ridenbaugh streets. For those not familiar with streets in that part of the city, College Hill is a few blocks north and east of the Cathedral.

Correcting this may seem trivial, but the area is historic and deserves accuracy. It draws its name from the former Christian Brothers College in a building constructed before the Civil War. Union troops took over the building during the war and classes by the Brothers weren’t offered until 1868.

Christian Brothers College was not a college, but a school offering a three-year curriculum based primarily on religion, the classics, business and discipline. The school operated as CBC until the 1920s, when it adopted a standard high school curriculum and in 1924 became Christian Brothers High School. The building pictured was abandoned in 1927, when a new school — now Bode Middle School — was opened on Noyes boulevard. That land had once been owned by the Ku Klux Klan.

The Brothers left St. Joseph in 1970, after more than a century of service. College Hill helps remind us of what they brought to St. Joseph and the presence of Union soldiers sent here to keep order in a city loaded with Southern sympathizers.

Bob Slater

St. Joseph