Dear Du Quoin Community,

Every fall, our doors open and children come in from the parking lot with their backpacks and their questions and their whole undetermined futures. And every fall, the teachers, coaches, principals, aides, cooks, and parents are there to meet them.

That exchange has been happening in Du Quoin for generations. This publication is, in many ways, a portrait of what it produces.

If you want to understand what makes this community what it is, I'd encourage you to do what we did for this issue: ask the children.

Ask the kindergarteners. They'll tell you about chicken strips on Fridays, and the friend they sit next to on the rug, and the principal who gives out candy but also watches the cameras — because she has to keep them safe. One of them told us his younger brother is starting kindergarten next fall. His response: "I'm just right across the hallway, so he can come." That sense of belonging — that someone who knows you is always nearby — may be the truest thing any of them said.

Ask the fourth graders. At nine years old, they already know that if someone is being mean to you, the right response is to be kind to them anyway — because it's the right thing to do. They know that failure is going to happen no matter what, and that you cannot dodge it, but you can learn from it. One of them told us to always keep your head up and your eyes open for anyone who needs help. These are not things we put on a poster. These are things they said unprompted, in their own words.

Ask the eighth graders, who are preparing to become the youngest people in a new building — not with dread, but with the quiet confidence of people who have been well-prepared. They are thinking carefully about who they want to become. They are already advocating for things they believe in. They know it is their turn to offer their shoulders to those coming behind them.

The adults in these pages are no different. Jennifer Harsy watched a final sunrise over a Tennessee boulevard and thought: I'm going home. Alex Zimmerman commuted back from college ball every chance he got. Joshua Heape weighed his options and came back because he knew where his work would matter most. Sophie Miller drove to and from Carbondale every day for four years rather than live anywhere else.

These are not accidents. They are the output of a place that gave people something worth returning to.

Du Quoin is not a perfect school district. No district is. But it is a community that has developed, across generations, a set of values transmitted not through policy but through proximity — through shared spaces, common traditions, and adults who decided, again and again, that these children were worth everything.

I am proud to serve this community. And I am grateful, every fall, to be one of the people standing at the door when they come in.

Diana Rea

Superintendent, Du Quoin Community Unit School District #300