Local News

 Using makeshift supplies, donated hoops and years worth of his own savings, South Jeffco resident Brian Smith has been spreading his love of basketball throughout small African villages.

The backboards and courts have a distinctly homemade appearance. Children play on compacted dirt, and available timber is cemented into the ground to form a sturdy pole. On the back of each wooden backboard, Smith paints a globe accentuated with lines to make it resemble a basketball.

He calls it a symbol of endless possibilities.

Pornographic images may soon be blocked from computers in Jefferson County public libraries, though the textual content of websites such as those of Playboy and Penthouse may not.

At a library study session Aug. 11, board members weighed several options in regulating Internet content, including doing nothing at all. Other possible choices include blocking only images considered pornographic or blocking pornographic websites in their entirety.

Though library staff and board members seemed to favor filtering images, that process would have several flaws.

Preschool is considered by many to be the first fundamental step in a child’s education. But for some, an early start on learning can’t come early enough.

A new South Jeffco Montessori school is attempting to address that need, offering programs for infants only 6 weeks out of the womb to children as old as 3 — the age at which traditional preschool typically begins.

Ugly, decaying bus-stop benches are an epidemic in South Jeffco, and the county is planning to address the problem by revamping its advertising-vendor policy, officials said at an Aug. 2 meeting with the county commissioners.