To The USD 489 board and other interested parties:

I note that media reports are that the request to name the Oak Park facility after Emma Kolb, who dedicated her life to education here, was summarily rejected because someone ( nameless) in Topeka told someone on your staff not to name a building after a person. Please see my earlier letter about this.

Having been raised and educated in this school district, with schools named Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Felten, Kennedy, O’Loughlin, Wilson, and Thomas More, that reasoning seems to be logically fallacious.

It would be a break in tradition to NOT name the building after a person, and what better person than Emma Kolb.

Please try to apply some common sense to your decision as you deliberate this issue in the Toepfer Board Room at the Rockwell Center.

John T. Bird
Attorney at Law
Hays, Kansas