Children need more help

Saturday’s (Oct. 2) editorial recommended that city voters not support the Children’s Investment Fund because it is not well planned.

Actually, the initiative is carefully targeted to four areas, all substantiated by careful research: child abuse prevention, early-childhood mentoring and before- and after-school care.

The strongest science argues for investments at the earliest possible moment in the life of the developing child. In the nursery, we can already identify the one out of three at risk of bad outcomes: school dropout, crime, family violence, addictions (see James J. Heckman, Nobel laureate economist; Grunewald and Solnik, Federal Reserve Bank; Jack Shonkoff, M.D., Harvard; Anda and Felliti, Centers for Disease Control). For the past five years, Our Kids: Our Business has brought speakers of this stature to make the case for prevention and early intervention. Gary Livingston has long argued that we must take a generation and invest at both ends – in remediation and in prevention. With the Children’s Investment Fund, at last we take up the task of prevention.

But my heart broke Sunday upon reading the obituary for Santiago Moreno-Two Hearts, first casualty of the Class of 2026. Ample demonstration that we need to do more. Loss to the community: priceless.

Mary Ann Murphy

Spokane