Letter: Society needs what NOC offers

Your recent reporting about the Cordillo Courts POA and nonprofit Neighborhood Outreach Connection (NOC) that operates there didn’t include important, related societal effects on our broader community that deserve consideration.

Our country’s increasing inequality problems have largely been driven by the inability of our educational system to consistently provide quality education to students from families that are unable to provide sufficient early educational support for their children. These children more frequently fall behind and need more quality instructional time to meet the requirements of today’s society. Usually, our public school system and its teachers do not have the time and resources to provide this. Fortunately, NOC has proven throughout Beaufort County to have the answer for many children.

Our resident immigrant group is indispensable in filling many jobs in our tourist-based community, with salaries sometimes at or below the minimum wage with little assurance of a full-time job future. Most of us “haves” have little comprehension of the difficulty these families have raising their children.

Amazingly, by families helping each other and the response of many other charities and churches, more of their children have been able to graduate from our high schools and sometimes more advanced education. Increasingly, they move into the middle class and fill better jobs in various industries.

Let’s all make our voices heard, and agree that a potential court verdict should favor the children instead of any individual’s property values and the viewpoint that NOC is violating the residential-restriction bylaws at Cordillo Courts apartments.

This story was originally published March 24, 2017 at 1:10 PM with the headline "Letter: Society needs what NOC offers."