To the editor:

As a former student and then a teacher in the Troy City Schools, I want to encourage my fellow citizens to vote for the levy being placed on the ballet this November.

I started school at Edwards , built in 1956. Second grade was part of Troy High School—a new school then in 1958. My third and fourth grades were spent in Pennsylvania, but then returned to finish my elementary years at Kyle, middle school years at Van Cleve and graduated from Troy High School in 1969.

In 1975, I returned to Troy to teach third grade at Hook Elementary, which had been built in 1966- making it only nine years old at the time. I spent years away, but Troy brought me back to teach twenty seven years at Kyle Elementary, which had been built the year of my birth—1950. If you haven’t done the math, that is 73 years ago.

While I would like to think that with age I have gotten better, I know for a fact that the buildings I grew up in and taught in have NOT!!! In the spring and fall of each school year the students and I would be drenched with sweat and have a very hard time concentrating making it hard for students to learn and teachers to teach. In the winter, many of the buildings were heated with an old boiler that probably can’t be repaired today. These schools have served student s well, but now need to be removed to make way for the new.

Again, I appeal to the citizens of Troy to pass the levy so that new buildings can be built to better serve the children of Troy now and for years to come.

Darla York

Troy