My name is Brennan Hodgins, I am 10 years old in fifth grade, and I am writing to you because I would like more people to see the difficulties we are having at Lakeridge Elementary. Our school is too small for all of us 600 kids.

I am in the biggest class in Lakeridge and possibly the whole district. I have 28 kids in my class, and my math class is even bigger with 30 kids.

My math class is in a small portable classroom with kids at the back table and at computer desks.

The multipurpose room at Lakeridge is used for a cafeteria, a gym, theater room and assemblies.

We have to have three different lunches, and my lunch starts close to 1 p.m. because it is too crowded and noisy with just two lunches.

When we have assemblies the people who are performing have to do it twice because there is not enough room for all of us to fit in the gym at once.

We don’t have much room at recess either, so we have to share field space with the younger grades. We have four different games being played on a field made for one baseball game. So I don’t see any reason to add on to the schools we have now and take away our playground even more.

There is not enough equipment for science, so not everybody gets to see the experiments, and in math when we use protractors for homework, often we have to share with somebody.

The bathrooms are too far for kindergartners, so sometimes they don’t make it on time and they get embarrassed, and it’s hard for them to concentrate on what they are supposed to be learning.

Operetta practices are in the hallway by the piano, which means the people who have to go out in the hall to work on something, for whatever reason, can’t do their best because of the music and singing from the operetta practice.

When we switch classrooms for science, there aren’t enough desks if a large class has to go to a portable classroom, so some kids have to sit at computer desks or the back table, like in my math, and it is hard to concentrate at those desks.

For all these reasons I am in favor of building new schools. We need more space.

So please vote “yes” on the bond to build new schools.

Brennan Hodgins