Schools face increasing challenges

As the school year winds down and thoughts turn toward the future, our school leadership across the county faces a Herculean task that just seems to grow more challenging.

Over the past decade, school funding has become even more tumultuous amid an ever-increasing landscape of state and national mandates and regulations and a local and state economy that remains shaky.

Juggling teacher-pupil ratios, teacher pay, aging buildings and infrastructure, transportation and classroom needs, beefing up safety measures for greater security within the school and at entrances and exits, and providing up-to-date technology to our students and teachers, along with high public expectations, presents a challenging environment.

Children, teachers and administrators are again facing the prospects that the state budget situation and its impact on education funding will get worse, depending on the impact of legislation already passed this year and other bills pending.

For those school districts that have seen dwindling enrollment, the problem then becomes exacerbated.

All these issues have an impact, even as our school leadership often changes.

Yet, educators and administrators have responded admirably, stepping up to the challenge, putting these concerns aside year after year as they work to teach, nurture and motivate our youth and strive to do the most with less, while encouraging us, the public, to focus on the needs of our youth and work toward finding ways to best serve our future generations.

Yet, further cuts and reductions always seem to loom as our state legislature and our federal government try to come to grips with declining revenues and decidedly different political ideologies.

The closing of school buildings and larger class sizes have resulted nationally, while systems struggle to fill open positions and maintain current programs.

Larger classrooms have proven to be one of the biggest detriments to a quality education.

Few disagree that in today's competitive and continually evolving technological and digitized social world, more personal attention is needed for students to adequately grasp learning concepts and excel along the educational path.

Closing school buildings has proven to be one of the most contentious issues for communities and neighborhoods, especially in smaller towns where the school really is the historical hub.

Going this route sparks a period of adjustment for all involved.

At a time when public education has come under increasing stress over heightened safety concerns and competitive and quality needs in a global economy, business and industry is demanding better-trained and more knowledgeable workers.

The biggest single issue that most firms face is having a qualified labor pool.

Business leaders point out it's dangerous to put our country further behind in producing a quality workforce.

Still others would argue that there's a direct correlation between public spending on schools and public spending on prisons.

A number of law enforcement officials across the country have noted for years "if you don't spend it on the front end, educating students, you spend it on the back end, building prison beds."

Their belief is that a sound education system provides well-rounded opportunities for students by keeping them busy and keeping them challenged while educating them in academics and social skills.

Such a system will have a direct impact on those individuals who, without such supervision, guidance, encouragement, and teaching, drift into poor choices and eventual illegal behavior.

Most would also agree that simply throwing more money at the problem is not the sole answer.

But there comes a time when any system reaches a point where a set of standards must be agreed on and the funding for those standards be put in place.

Just getting by, going with the minimum, shouldn't be acceptable.

We short change our youth and ultimately, we short change ourselves, through inadequate technology, a learning environment hampered by safety and structural worries, to less qualified labor.

It's a vicious circle that tightens further. The net result is that we all lose.

It's time for we as a community and as a state to determine our priorities. And that must include a quality education.