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WRONG PRIORITIES
We need more people to turn their useless turf grass into native habitats that support life (“Prairie problems,” Aug. 19). Shame on the city of Springfield and the neighbors who reported this.
Shelley Cook-Bath
Springfield
ARTS EDUCATION FOR ALL
Across the ocean Pablo Picasso once said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” Right here in Springfield, popular writer Jacqueline Jackson quoted her nephew saying, “The difficult idea to get across is how important aesthetic experience is for kids.”
These statements are a fine path to National Arts in Education Week, being celebrated Sept. 13-19. Springfield Area Arts Council encourages everyone to defend a well-rounded education, from pre-kindergarten through college. Arts education is a proven driver of student achievement, personal creativity, community-building and workforce readiness. It is not a luxury.
Valid research indicates employers seek to hire those with problem-solving skills and an understanding of teamwork. Arts education helps students to hone these skills. Students in schools that offer arts-integrated learning are more likely to show better overall academic outcomes along with greater motivation and engagement in learning. Sadly, research also finds while 81% of all schools reported sufficient student interest in arts education, just 55% had adequate funding, facilities and materials. So, what can you do?
You can post the facts above on social media. You can tell literature, music, dance, art and theater instructors that you value their work. You can visit a school board meeting or talk to a board representative about why arts education is important. You can discuss the value of the arts at home and at work, including the financial benefit to a tourist-heavy city such as Springfield.
Nationally, you can encourage your legislators to protect funding for National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities as well as to support key federal arts education bills. Here at home, you can donate money to a local arts agency or to a school to fund classroom and school assembly visits by artists and writers and performers.
Because the Arts Council understands the value of arts education, it re-grants a few thousand dollars each year to schools in Sangamon and Menard counties. You, too, can help ensure arts education for every student, every community.
Sheila Walk, education coordinator
Springfield Area Arts Council
IRREPLACEABLE
The recent letter regarding the loss of the state champion Quercus × runcinata at Oak Ridge Cemetery should concern anyone who values Illinois’ natural and historical heritage (“Poorly managed,” Aug. 20).
I first became acquainted with this remarkable tree in 2012 while helping care for landscaping near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, an area our company helped support. Even then, the tree was an impressive specimen. In a part of the cemetery otherwise devoid of large trees, it served as a majestic focal point and a living reminder that our historical landscapes are shaped not only by monuments and stone, but also by the living organisms entrusted to our care.
As a master arborist, I view stewardship of large oaks as a grave responsibility. Oaks are recognized as a keystone species in many ecosystems. A single mature oak can support thousands of other organisms, including fungi, lichens, insects, birds and mammals. The ecological value of a large, healthy oak cannot be replaced in a human lifetime.
If, as seems probable, this tree was lost because of herbicide applications intended to control seedlings beneath it, this should prompt serious questions about management practices and decision-making. The presence of seedlings beneath a mature oak is neither unusual nor inherently problematic. Moreover, there are non-chemical methods available to control them. When dealing with a state champion tree and a historically significant landscape, extraordinary caution should be the rule, not the exception.
What troubles me most is what this incident may suggest about stewardship priorities. If a specimen tree of such significance, located in a highly visible area of one of Illinois’ most important historic cemeteries, could be destroyed through apparent carelessness, we have every right to ask how other state-owned natural resources are being managed.
The public deserves a full accounting of what occurred and what steps will be taken to ensure that comparable trees receive the protection their significance warrants. Once a heritage oak is gone, it simply cannot be replaced. Its contribution is lost forever.
Steve Green
master arborist, Greenview
This article appears in September 17-23, 2026.
