In the U.S., how many social services do we have that truly try to reach all of us — to hold all of us in care, no matter who we are, through the most vulnerable years of our lives?
Certainly not many, and maybe only one: public schooling, the service that guided many of us as we made our first friends, learned to read, and started to make sense of the world we live in.
Public education in the U.S. as we know it was born in New England, a vision of the Puritans. The first taxpayer-funded school in the nation was established by unanimous vote in the town of Dedham, Mass., in 1644.
Three hundred and eighty-one years later, the institution remains central to our childhoods and to the functioning of our society. In 2021, more than 87% of K-12 students in the U.S. were enrolled in public schools. That’s about 47,209,000 children, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Yet nationally and locally, education, both public and private, faces growing hurdles. These range from philosophical challenges to the values underpinning the system to disrupted funding streams and issues tied to the changing demographics of our nation, which is home to both an aging tax base and a population of young people with increasingly complicated lives, behaviors, and needs that our publicly funded, over-worked educators struggle to understand and meet.
These challenges are coming to a head these days in Lincoln County, as elsewhere. This spring, in Wiscasset and in Jefferson, taxpayers approved, then failed to validate at the polls, their school committees’ proposed education budgets, which constituted respective 3.06% and 13.85% increases.
In Jefferson, some townspeople were further rankled when the school committee returned after their initial defeat with a new proposed budget of over $10 million, 2.9% higher than what had been proposed previously. In a two-hour-long meeting, residents and pained-looking school committee members hashed out the factors they said led to this shock, including Jefferson’s anomalously high and growing population of special education students and difficulty attracting and retaining the staff needed to serve them.
Ultimately, residents approved the budget as presented, sending it to the polls for validation later this summer. For Christina Wallace’s reporting on the meeting, see “Jefferson voters approve education budget after long deliberation” on the front page.
Jefferson and Wiscasset – which will also host a second open meeting soon — aren’t unique in this debate. Even in our towns that passed their education budgets as proposed, steep increases, staffing struggles, aging facilities, and complex student needs are ubiquitous.
Educators continue to tackle these challenges every day for the same reason public education exists in America: because we, as citizens, agree children are worth investing in, and that all of them – no matter where they come from or what makes them unique – deserve an equal shot at success.
The goal of public education is a compelling one, as are the trials of our neighbors on fixed incomes, who may be kept awake at night fearing that they will lose their homes as taxes rise. Can we fund a social service for our youth when safety nets for others are few, and farther between than ever?
It’s clear from this year’s budget discussions in Jefferson and Wiscasset that not everybody in Lincoln County is sure about how to answer that question. But is it better to have only one institution attempting to universally feed, support, and improve outcomes for us, at least during one time in our lives – or to have none?
Wrestling this issue is a painful process. But it’s also, as pioneering educator Paolo Friere argued, the whole point, both of education and of participatory government: empowering people to take these issues on, and to listen wholeheartedly to one another and engage in true dialogue as we attempt to solve them.
It’s clear in the long run that education in the U.S. must evolve. Everything from how schools are funded to how we care for those students with greatest needs is soon to be interrogated. And in the immediate future, we will watch expectantly as Jefferson and Wiscasset decide how to proceed.
Can we dream of a better world for the youngest among us? Can we believe in it enough to invest in them even when things feel dire? If education is our last safety net, can we put in the work required to mend it – or will we see what happens if we all fall through?
