In its coverage of the city budget review process, the Sun Journal accurately reported (April 15) City Councilor Ron Jean’s argument that the cost of education should be lower, although it passed over his solution to the issue, which was that fewer administrators should supervise less well-paid teachers working longer hours.

The reporter did not mention, however, the response I made as a member of the School Committee, to the effect that Lewiston is already all too successful in spending relatively little money on its schools.

A comparison with the other major cities in Maine suggests that we are saving our education dollars right into the poorhouse, with catastrophic long-term implications for our children and grandchildren.

As Gov. Baldacci said in opening the Blaine House Conference on Maine’s Creative Economy here in Lewiston just a year ago, “The Creative Economy is really about social capital … Social capital comes from recognizing that the arts and education are integrally linked to jobs and economic growth.”

Or, as almost any economist would agree, it is difficult to imagine a strategy for long-term economic growth that does not rely on investing in human capital. As the National Governors Association stated in reporting on its 2005 National Education Summit, that investment has to occur in America’s high schools.

Our justifiable pride in our colleges and universities, which draw eager students from all over the world, should not blind us to the need to prepare our own children and grandchildren for the economy of the future before they attempt higher education. The report lists three reasons why this is a crisis we must face.

Demographics. As the baby-boom generation retires, the smaller American work force of the future must become much more productive for America to survive.

Globalization. That labor force must also be much more productive because it will be competing against the low bidder worldwide. Even low-end service jobs are now being sent overseas, as a call to many telemarketing centers or help lines will reveal.

Technology. This is changing not only what we produce, but how we produce it. “A generation ago, insurance claims adjusting, truck dispatching, steel foundry process management and machine lathing were all dramatically different in every respect. Today, they are all fundamentally similar – each requires manipulating data on a computer screen and using them to solve problems. … Insurance adjusters, truck dispatchers, lathers, machinists and foundry workers were the middle class of a generation ago. But the middle class of the next generation will be the people who work at terminals controlling those processes and the people who create the technology – the ideas, machines, software and services – that allow those jobs to change.

Thus, America is faced with a stark choice – we can either climb the productivity ladder and re-create the American middle class, or we can watch our nation’s middle class fade away as other countries’ teenagers continue to outperform our children.” (“America’s High Schools: The Front Line in the Battle for Our Economic Future,” pp. 15-16.)

Lewiston’s educational institutions do a remarkable job.

Susan Gendron, state commissioner of education, has congratulated the Lewiston Regional Technical Center for implementing the first “focused pre-engineering program … at the secondary level in Maine.” But programs like it, designed to prepare our children and grandchildren for rewarding lives in a vibrant economy, are not free.

With all due respect to Councilor Jean and his praiseworthy concern for spending the dollars of Lewiston’s taxpayers wisely, if we aren’t prepared to put more, rather than less, money into our schools, we are condemning our descendants to living in a Third World economy, observing with envy the lives of people whose governments took their long-term responsibilities more seriously.

Lewiston’s schools are underfunded, in the current budget, relative to the real dimensions of the challenges we face, because the School Committee and the administration of the Lewiston School Department are realists. But there will be no brighter future for Lewiston or Lewiston’s children unless we find the courage to imagine one and to invest in support of our dreams.

Dennis Grafflin is the School Committee member for Ward 3.