What are we going to do about our public school buildings?

This is the biggest single infrastructure problem on our plate — the elephant in the room, so to speak. The sad shape of our streets, our sidewalks and even our Coliseum pales in comparison.

Yes, we have built four new schools since 2012 and have closed five old ones.

Yes, the Richmond School Board could close four to six more buildings and fill empty seats in other buildings with students, a new report on the state of our school facilities has acknowledged.

The board has closed 17 buildings in the past 10 years, but could go further, the report indicates.

However, closing a few more buildings will not solve the real problem, the problem our mayor and our City Council have yet to address and wish would go away.

The problem: Most of our school buildings are worn out, but must be kept open to provide space to educate our children.

Do the math.

Currently, we have 47 school buildings — 25 elementary schools, seven middle schools, five comprehensive high schools and 10 specialty schools, ranging from pre-K centers to Franklin Military Academy, Open High and the Richmond Technical Center.

Close six and we still have 41. Subtract our four newest schools as well as the four that were built 15 years ago, and that still leaves 33 buildings that need serious work.

Most of those buildings are more than 50 years old. Most have outdated heating and cooling systems, outdated lighting and plumbing and inadequate wiring for computers and other technology, just to name a few problems.

The new report on facilities suggests that the bill to bring all of our school buildings up to modern standards could top $600 million.

Call that a Cadillac plan and cut it by $400 million or two-thirds. That still leaves $200 million needed to upgrade old schoolhouses.

Ask Mayor Dwight C. Jones and he will tell you the city can’t afford to spend that kind of money on school buildings. It would require the city to increase its debt limit too much and ruin any chance of earning a Triple A bond rating.

Ask Richmond City Council members, and they just shrug. This year, they are thinking about investing $13 million into buildings to take care of the most urgent needs and allowing the school system to try using energy savings to fund the cost of repairing some buildings.

But such small bites mean it could take 15 to 20 years to get all the buildings in better shape. And by that time, it would be time to start over.

That also does not factor in any new buildings that may be needed to address growing student enrollment, particularly on South Side.

We are not financial gurus. We don’t have a magic answer.

What is evident is that it is time for a serious discussion on ameliorating the situation.

Wishing that this problem would solve itself, wishing that buildings would repair themselves, will not make it happen.