As the older brother of three kids volunteering at my siblings' school, I have had the privilege of working with the curious, brilliant, and bilingual minds of third-graders in our community. As a volunteer, I have witnessed the stoking and fanning of their intellectual sparks and wit at the hands of a capable and thoroughly invested teacher. In the walls of that Bent Elementary School classroom, I felt assured that the minds of that next generation were in good hands.

But education is a living thing, measured for just as long and fostered beyond the confines of one class or one school. After all, a student never stays in one place for long.

In today’s political climate everything is at issue; history, math, science even language. America First, Not-In-Our-Schools, the polarization is real.

But what is also real is that America is last in education; what is also real is that our kids are hardly in-our-schools.

We are in an education crisis.

No amount of spending alone will ameliorate the problem, as the causes are not limited to a question of funding. The truth of the matter is that our education system, itself a microcosm of society, is reflecting the darkness and degradation of our own society at large.

At issue we have: a lack of parental investment, a lack of community involvement, a preponderance of absenteeism, a prevalence of violence, widespread drug abuse, increasing cases of depression and suicide, incidents of mass shootings, stories of intergenerational issues, problems with standardized testing, shortages of teachers, and skyrocketing tuition prices, to name a few.

It is a daunting reality and an even more daunting task to fix these problems, but what greater a cause can there be than our nation’s children? For this reason we will tackle the education dilemma head on and propose solutions that build upon the promise of the American Dream.