To the editor:

The students in the Mehlville School District deserve the best education available to them.

They deserve highly qualified teachers. They deserve smaller class sizes. Thus far, our teachers and administration have done an outstanding job with limited resources.

They work above and beyond, oftentimes spending money out of their own pockets to help educate our children and push Mehlville student performance to the mid-range level when compared to surrounding school districts. That is amazing considering only one district, out of these 23 surrounding school districts, spends less per student than Mehlville does. We only get one shot at education. We cannot go back and do it again. Second to last is not good enough for the students of the Mehlville School District.

Proposition C, the referendum on the ballot Nov. 2, will restore the pride for Mehlville. It will provide what has been lacking for so many years within our schools — updated technology, security, updated curriculum, early intervention and severely needed updates to facilities. The ties that bind our school district community are the educators. We must be able to retain our current highly qualified teachers and be able to attract newly qualified teachers. We must be able to retain the new teachers after we train them.

Oftentimes we are training teachers and then losing them because we are paying $7,000 to $10,000 less than competing districts. This is unacceptable. Mehlville students deserve the best education available to them. Please help make that happen. Vote “yes” on Prop C.

Teresa Willyard

Oakville