To the editor:
Brown County schools have long opened their doors to this community.
Let’s start with their track and football stadium. For as many years as I can remember, the school has hosted the Lions Club Fourth of July fireworks — which, by the way, are awesome.
The Brown County Bantam Football League has used their football practice field and played their games on the school’s football field since it started.
They have opened their track to the community to use for walking and to host the Relay for Life walk and concert to fight cancer.
They host a top-notch Veterans Day program to honor our Brown County veterans along with a light breakfast and a light lunch following.
They have opened up their main campus facilities to the Brown County Parks and Recreation Department to use for their programs. To name a few (because I can’t remember them all) there is the summer day camp for parents to have a place to take their children during the summer so they can go to work knowing that their children are well taken care of. Not only do they open up their facilities, their food service department serves the children a free breakfast and lunch — which, by the way, is open to all of Brown County’s children up to 18 years of age so they, too, can receive a free breakfast and/or lunch in the high school cafeteria during the summer.
The school corporation also provides buses for their use to take the children on field trips up to three times a week.
The parks department has long used our basketball facilities for men’s adult league basketball and for boys and girls youth league basketball and volleyball during the summer months.
The have also had men’s weight training programs and this year are doing a wrestling camp using the school’s facility and their mats. This is a yearlong program.
Until they opened up Deer Run Park they used the schools’ ball diamonds for their Little League program. They still use them for practice.
The school corporation has also provided buses to the YMCA and the summer BETA program for their use to take the children in their programs on field trips.
The school has also made available to the public their tennis courts to be used for county recreation.
Every elementary is also used by the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts for their meetings. They also help our local churches with the Backpack Program.
The school corporation also gave the Salt Creek Trail committee permission to run their trail along Salt Creek on their Eagle Park property.
When building the trail was to start, it was stopped because they had to destroy some wetlands and it was going to cost them from $150,000 up to $250,000 to buy land to replace those wetlands. They came to the school corporation for help. They needed 1.5 acres of wetlands to replace what was being destroyed so they could build the trail. The school corporation agreed to let them have the state use 1.5 acres of Eagle Park property for new wetlands to replace what was going to be destroyed so the county could have a beautiful trail to walk.
This, by no means, covers all the school provides to this county, but you should get what I mean. They not only give our children a top-notch education, but also open their doors to all Brown County residents.
The school corporation steps up for this county.
Thank you for your support.
Judy Hardwick, Brown County
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