To the editor,

Do you believe there are children on the Northside of Madison who have never learned to swim? Many good neighbors — the Circle of Friends — have been working to bring a pool to the Northside for 30 years! Yet we still don’t have a pool at the WPCRC so our neighborhood children can learn to swim here.

To learn to swim now, our Northside kids have to travel an hour on the bus to the Goodman Pool, then an hour back on the bus, taking up most of their summer day on a hot bus. Apparently, our city government thinks this is “good enough.” Why isn’t there a pool for our Northside kids on the Northside?

Unless their parents can afford lessons at a private fitness center or other facility, how many more of our Northside kids won’t learn to swim without spending most of the day on a bus before we get our own pool? This is, well, just plain wrong.

Many of the Mendota Elementary School kids live in my Sherman Neighborhood (although the school itself is not within the neighborhood boundaries). Mendota’s Community School Committee has written to the mayor supporting this pool at the WPCRC. Our Sherman Neighborhood Association has participated in the annual walks for this pool. The Northside Planning Council is also supporting this pool.

So many of our good neighbors, who have worked for decades to make this happen, are now ready to do fundraising to finally make this dream a reality. It would be such a wonderful thing for our neighborhood — for the young, for the old and for the in-between. The mayor and our alders should be making this pool happen! Our kids are waiting!

Dolores Kester
Long time Northside resident,
former co-chair of Sherman Neighborhood Association