Are you pleased with the education that your children are receiving in our public schools?

As you read the news of our administrators, test scores and dropout rates, are you satisfied with the status of our district?

Are you concerned about the track that our public education is taking?

Then get involved in your child’s school. Make an appointment to see your child’s teacher, join the PTA and then attend its functions. Go to a school board meeting. Thank a teacher for his or her efforts. Join the PTA and then attend its functions. Go to a school board meeting.

Regardless of your assessment, schools are no better than the families who attend them and become involved in them. The school board is not the school district. The superintendent is not the school district. The families who make up the school population are the school district and it is up to those families whether our schools wither or flourish.

As someone once said, “Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.” What does our societal soul look like?

You work long hours, you reason, and don’t have time for a trip to the school. Teachers work hard, too. They invest themselves whole-heartedly and emotionally in their students, but they are no match for the child’s environment and the influence, positively or negatively, of the parent and home. Teachers should not be surrogate parents. Although currently the schools are attempting parenting, they are failing miserably and those in the trenches will say it’s not their job; and it’s not. Parents hold the key to the quality of our school district.

Are industries avoiding our area because of the quality of our educational system? Perhaps if we had a thriving business climate we could all have better jobs, more income and more time to invest in the school district, in our children’s daily assignments. If you don’t like what is happening with our schools, do something.

Educator Robert H. Hutchins said, “The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy and indifference and undernourishment.” And might I add indifference toward the education of our children.

The success or failure of our school lies with you. Make it count.

Carol Duncan

Retired VWSD educator