Our children deserve to be safe.
Our children deserve to be healthy.
Our children deserve to be educated.

Whose responsibility is it to meet these important needs of our children? Certainly parents provide a major portion of the effort to make sure their children grow up safe, well and educated. Families are the first educators, and home should be a safe place where children learn morals, ethics and right from wrong.

Increasingly schools are being asked to widen their areas of responsibility. Already, schools are working harder to keep students in school and to assure a high quality education even without, sometimes, the involvement and commitment of parents, which all studies have found is the key ingredient for student success. Report Cards issued on schools and districts require all students to show adequate improvement and proficiency.

What about safety? Schools take a lead in this concern, too. Just adopted by the Ohio Board of Education is the State Prevention and Protective Policy designed to encourage school districts to create safer, more caring learning environments with the necessary supportive policies, programs and practices in place to prevent students from engaging in alcohol and other drug use, violence and other destructive behaviors that might lead to or include suicide. It calls for districts to collect data in order to understand the scope and nature of local problems and how current practices are addressing needs in fair, consistent ways in each school building. New policies should be added that include professional development, family and community engagement, and student education, involvement, support and encouragement.

Federal law requires all school districts to establish a wellness policy by the next school year (2006-07). The State Board is working with representatives of industries, Ohio PTA, Ohio School Boards Association, Ohio Departments of Health and Parks & Recreation and School Nutrition Association as well as the Children's Hunger Alliance to help districts as they work to develop and implement this new mandated policy to ensure good eating choices and healthful activity for our children.

The School Prevention and Protective Policy was developed as the schools' responsibility within Ohio 's Shared State Agency Prevention Framework, a collaboration of the state agencies representing all the social service departments as well as Criminal Justice, Attorney General's office and the Governor. Why are all these departments interested in working together? The failure to help children feel safe and grow up with self understanding and self control creates a terrible cost to our state and society.

So, there you have it. School districts are considered essential players in not only educating, but also keeping our children safe and well. Should we, the general society, also be involved? What's in it for us? Many reports have been published recently showing the cost to Ohio and the nation of school dropouts and uneducated future adults. Ohio 's future economy requires a well educated workforce - today's students. Families and schools need community support, financial and physical, if our economy is to be strong enough to support all of us, young and old.

All children are Our children. Their education, safety, wellness and health contribute to the strength of our communities and our economy. We all need to care about and support our children and the families and schools that take care of their needs.