K-12 pupils begin another school year this week with politics swirling over their heads.
Most students arent aware of that. What they know is that the lazy days of summer are over and the regimentation of the school year has begun. Theyve made the shopping trip for school supplies and a few new clothes, and they may have heard their parents grumble that the supply list grows longer, and more expensive every year.
Thats true enough; the days of going to school with a Big Chief Tablet, a box of 24 crayons and a fat #2 pencil are long past. Some school districts in the news even have added toilet tissue to the list of materials that parents must provide because the school district cannot. In other districts, including Montezuma-Cortez Re-1, volunteer groups are appealing to businesses to purchase supplies. Many businesses do, because a well-educated population benefits everyone.
Activity fees also are going up, as are the costs families are expected to cover on their own. More parents are having to tell their children they cant afford to play all the sports they want, attend the field trips, experience education in the same way their more affluent peers will.
Students may not notice when class sizes grow, but high-schoolers do notice when the elective classes they want to take are no longer available, or when theyre offered in fewer time slots and cant be fit into a students schedule. Younger students notice long bus rides and canceled recesses. They hear the grumbling about standardized tests.
Generally, though, K-12 children dont pay much attention to the politics of education. They dont and shouldnt have to understand the complexities of Colorado school finance. The Gallagher Amendment, Amendment 23, TABOR, the economic downturn and the inequities between wealthy districts and all the rest are not problems for students to solve.
Nor should students need to be aware that the buildings in which they learn arent adequate for that purpose. Because adults do understand financial constraints, few parents and few educators would demand state-of-the-art facilities, but they know theres a lower limit beyond which conditions are neither safe nor acceptable.
How to stay above that line is one of the puzzles a communitys adults must solve for its children, and, on a larger scale, that a states voters must tackle. The constitutional morass in which Colorados education system now finds itself is unacceptable.
Although a few citizens, on the far fringes of mainline political thought, believe that education lies beyond the province of the government, its the system in place now. It has deep roots: Pioneers made arrangements for schooling their children just as soon as they had roofs over their heads. It also offers the best future not only for students but for society in general. A state with poorly educated adults is a state with little opportunity for anyone.
Those are ideas to ponder as the 2011-2012 school year gets underway. By all means, watch for young pedestrians, encumbered with stiff new backpacks crammed full of supplies. Stop for school buses. Cheer the scholars as well as the athletes. Buy the wrapping paper and the candybars.
But thats not enough. Adults must apply themselves to creating a sustainable system of education that prepares students well for an uncertain future. Requests for toilet paper are only a symptom of a systemic illness that must be treated.