The new school year has started.

And that truly is a cause for celebration.

To students, we say open your books, open your minds and enjoy. Learning is your passport. Do your best. Be your best. Be the active hero of your own life.

To selfless parents who encourage their children daily, committed teachers who see an outstanding student in each child and everyone devoted to improving our struggling school system: Remember that the education of our youths is the key to improving our own lives and community.

Our elected school board members urgently need to fulfill their pledges and responsibility to improve the quality of education for our children.

No matter where we start, a good education paves the road to personal achievement and success and ensures the future of our city.

Success for our children does not have to present itself solely as financial success, but as a chance for self-actualization and self-determination.

Sadly, too many of our schoolchildren are not mastering the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. Too many of our schoolchildren lack access to critical opportunities to learn world history, foreign languages, art and music. Too many of our children are being left behind.

What is to be done?

In our view, more needs to be done to rally our community to take action to support the education of our children, who, in a few years will become the leaders, executives and workers who run things.

That means volunteering as tutors and mentors and speaking up to ensure that our schools have the funding they need to get the job done.

It means participating in PTAs. It means making donations of time and money. And it means encouraging students at every chance to keep going, to keep learning, to keep dreaming.

If we are going to succeed as a city, we need our children to be highly educated.

So let us cheer the start of classes, but let us also vow to make sure that our city’s students are learning and achieving so that they can build the foundation for a better life.

In the words of poet Claude McKay, “Nations, like plants and human beings, grow. And if the development is thwarted, they are dwarfed and overshadowed.”

Have a great school year.