Another way to boost local education

There’s no tax write-off.

You don’t get bonus points, extra credit or a shiny star.

But when you donate to this week’s drive to increase the delivery of free newspapers to Kootenai County schools, your investment, no matter how large or small, will change our corner of the world for the better.

The program is called Newspapers in Education, and you can read all about it on the front page of today’s Press. In fact, you can read about it each day for the coming week, which happens to be National Newspaper Week.

NIE dates back to the 1930s. According to nwitimes.com/app/nie:

Newspapers in Education is an international program that promotes and increases our children’s literacy by using the newspaper as a teaching tool. NIE is a unique way for schools, businesses and the local newspaper to work together in a partnership that benefits all of us — now and in the future.

Through the use of daily news, editorial, features and even advertising, students at all grade levels can learn math and cost comparison skills, geography and meteorology, history and current events and how they shape our world, all while improving reading and comprehension. The NIE program helps motivate and teach students with a textbook as fresh as each day’s news.

What that brief description leaves out is, we think, one of the key reasons you can feel good about your contribution to the program so we can ramp up free delivery of newspapers to schools throughout our circulation area: Local civics.

For an active, engaged citizenry, understanding how things work locally — governmental entities, businesses, secular and non-secular organizations, charities — is essential. The pages of a local newspaper like this one are packed with an education in what’s happening right here, who’s doing it and why.

Show us a citizen who doesn’t know there’s an important election just around the corner and we’ll show you someone who has not been properly exposed to a local newspaper.

Show us a citizen who doesn’t understand what a city council, a county commission or a school board does and we’ll show you somebody who hasn’t been properly exposed to a local newspaper.

Show us a citizen who doesn’t have a good grasp of some of the magnificent volunteer opportunities in our community and we’ll show you a person who hasn’t been properly exposed to a local newspaper.

You get the point.

Now, if we can make that introduction early and, over time, help students build a broader and deeper understanding of their surroundings, they win, the community wins and, yes, we win. Though The Press doesn’t profit directly from NIE, it does receive credit for audited paid circulation through the program, which helps establish advertising rates that ensure the lights stay on and the workers get paid.

When you send a check or call in with a credit card, you’re investing in a better tomorrow right here in your beloved back yard.

Mail: CDA Press, 215 N. Second St., Coeur d’Alene, 83814. Checks should be made out to Coeur d’Alene Press, with a notation that it’s for NIE or Newspapers in Education.

Credit card: Call 208-664-8176