How Small, Consistent Investments in Public Education Benefit Your Child and Future Generations
Last Saturday, I was folding sweatpants in the living room when my 10-year-old son crumpled his apiary field trip permission slip and threw it at the coffee table. Goldfish crumbs scattered across the scuffed wood. “Canceled,” he said. “No money for buses, so no trip.”
I sat down next to him, and he explained every kid in his 5th grade class wanted to go—it was the first off-campus trip planned all year. But the school’s activity budget got cut to pay for new hallway security cameras. I’d already seen the note in the weekly newsletter, and I knew the district was already asking parents to donate hand sanitizer and copy paper that semester, on top of the back-to-school supply drive in August. I didn’t have a neat speech to give him. Instead I pulled out my phone, found the contact for the local beekeepers association, and emailed. I explained three 5th graders working on bee science projects wanted to visit their hives, if we could come on a weekday afternoon.
They wrote back an hour later: sure, we’ve got a hive out at the community garden, just show up. I asked what we could bring to say thanks, they said they needed a new cold smoker, the old one rusted through. That was $42 on Amazon, scheduled it for delivery the next week.
We went the following Wednesday. The boys got to pull frames out of the hive, only one got stung, and they came home with sticky honey sticks and pages of scribbled notes. On the drive back, they talked about how they wanted to plant wildflowers in the empty lot next to the school, so bees would have more food nearby. That’s when I started thinking about what “investing in education” actually means, for my son and for the kids that come after him.
A lot of people I know talk about investing in education as something you do just for your own kid. It’s saving for college, paying for a tutor for the SAT, buying the best laptop for homework. That makes sense— I do that too, I have a college savings account open for my son. But what I saw as a substitute teacher for three years, and what I see now as a parent, is that every kid’s education depends on the whole system around them. If a quarter of the kids in your kid’s class don’t have the right supplies to finish their work, the whole class slows down. If the library can’t afford new books, or the science department can’t buy new lab equipment, every kid loses out, not just the ones whose families can’t afford to chip in for extras.
This doesn’t mean you have to write a huge check or run for the school board to make a difference. I can’t do that— I work 40 hours a week, I have soccer practice three nights a week, I barely have time to fold all the laundry. I just do one small thing a month, that’s it. For example, when I buy school supplies in August, I add one extra pack of pencils, one pack of loose leaf paper, and one box of crayons to my order, and drop them off at the classroom’s shared supply bin. That adds less than $10 to my total order, and it means no kid has to borrow a pencil for the whole semester because their family couldn’t afford the supply list. Most teachers have a public Amazon wishlist now, I check it once a quarter and buy one thing that’s been sitting there unclaimed— last quarter it was a set of plastic rulers for 3rd grade, this quarter it’s graphic novels for the library. That’s easy, I don’t even have to leave my house.
If you have time instead of extra money, you can lead one short workshop a semester. I know a dad who fixes bikes, he does a 1 hour after-school class once a semester on how to fix a flat tire. My neighbor who bakes teaches kids how to measure ingredients for cookies, which is just math practice in a fun, low-pressure way. You don’t have to be a certified teacher to do it, just have a skill you can share. And even if you only have an hour a year to spare, go to one school board meeting and say you support increasing the school budget. Most meetings only have a handful of people show up, so one voice makes a lot more difference than you think.
Last week, my son’s science fair project got third place. But the principal gave the boys permission to turn that empty lot into a wildflower patch, and the local garden center donated half the plants. I helped them dig on Saturday, and my son told me he wants to do a project next year on how the patch brings more butterflies to the school. Some kids from 2nd grade heard about it and asked if they could help plant this weekend.
I don’t know what that patch will look like in five years, when my son is in middle school, or in 15 years, when the current 2nd graders are bringing their own kids to this school. I know some months I forget to do that one extra thing, I get busy and overwhelmed and just focus on getting through the week. I don’t solve the budget gaps, or fix every broken system that holds kids back. But when I can, I do something small. It doesn’t need to be perfect, or big, or make the local news. It just needs to add up.
I do it for my son, so he grows up knowing education is something you build together, not something you just get for yourself. And I do it for all the kids that come after him, the ones I’ll never meet, who get to walk past that wildflower patch after school and stop to look at the bees.
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