The time has come to address the most serious problem facing our communities. It has nothing to do with zoning and developers, nothing to do with the design of a highway intersection, it has nothing to do with the craziness that passes for politics.

It has nothing to do with cabbages and kings, although the national and state political scene would do justice to Lewis Carroll’s characters.

It is a problem we can’t solve by hosting church suppers, pie sales or car washes. It can’t be solved by asking our well-heeled friends to open up their checkbooks. We have a problem with our schools that has lurked in the shadows for years.

In last week’s Boothbay Register, Bruce MacDonald posed the problem in these terms. First: We have two school buildings designed to serve 850 to 900 students, and we have about 450 students enrolled in this year's classes. The current birth rate in our combined communities indicates our school population will stay at approximately that level for the next decade or so. Second: We have two school buildings that need $10 million in repairs.

We can’t pretend this situation will go away. Buildings must be repaired and updated if we are going to put our precious children and grandchildren in them. MacDonald, who used to represent us in the state legislature, suggests we have four possible solutions. There are others, but here are his suggestions. We can carry on as usual and spend the money. We can invest in the elementary school and close the high school. We can invest in the elementary school and create a magnet high school. We can lose both schools and send our kids to schools off the peninsula.

He considers options two and four as non-starters, and he is right. Do we really want to lock the schoolhouse doors? MacDonald suggests we create a magnet high school that would attract students to its classrooms and their parents to live in our community. Might this support community-wide development? It is an excellent idea, but it needs further discussion, and we have to make that decision – together.

It is time to put on what my sainted mother called her “thinking cap.” Do we want our community to be more than a sweet vacation spot for folks who want to get away in the summer? For that is much of what we have been since the 1800s when coastal steamboats brought hundreds of people to stay in the big old hotels. Later, the trains brought families from the big cities to stay in seaside cottages. Today, smiling tourists arrive in caravans of shiny new SUVs, as they exercise their Gold Cards in our shops, restaurants, and hotels. They love our geography, our lobster, our lighthouses and the afternoon sea breeze that makes an evening on the deck a chance to escape the beeps of the internet.

They tell us they just love it up here, but they go home.

We know there is another side to Boothbay, Boothbay Harbor, Edgecomb, and Southport Island. We live and work here. Frankly, for many, it is a tough slog. Here is a dose of reality, as provided by the Maine Center for Economic Policy. Almost one out of four of our children live in poverty. Nearly one out of 10 residents receive federally funded food assistance. There is a reason many of our families outfit their children at the thrift shops. There is a reason the “Set for Success” program, providing school supplies for all children, is a home run.

Food assistance and clothing pantries help, but they are a band-aid stuck on an open wound. The policy center says our local economy is stagnant. From 2007 to 2017, our taxable retail sales decreased by 0.9 percent in real terms. We need to grow our economy. There are lots of ways to do this, including obtaining broadband access which might allow folks to live on Southport or Barters Island and work, via computer, at jobs in New York or even London.

Will MacDonald’s magnet high school idea help attract new families? Maybe. Or should we just ignore the problem and assign blame to teachers and administrators, and continue to argue over the design of a proposed hotel or the need for a new highway intersection? Or should we just stick our heads in the sand and dream of the good old days of wood stoves, outside plumbing, waters filled with fish and the perfume downwind of the pogie factories?

Our community conversation begins Wednesday, Sept. 19 when the select boards and the school district will hold a joint workshop at 6 p.m. in the elementary school gym. I’ll be there, will you?