Our community has many needs, but none is greater than improving the education level of our community.

A lack of education goes hand-in-hand with multi-generational poverty and increases in crime, too.

Bolstering our community’s education system is not a simple fix. In fact, in many ways it’s quite difficult.

But our community has a few good models from which to look for systems and structures that can help in the process.

A few years ago, communities in and around Tupelo began a guaranteed tuition program for high school graduates who did not qualify for other financial aid.

In their program, the tuition is only guaranteed if students meet certain requirements, enroll full-time at their local community college and maintain a certain grade point average.

Our community’s leaders briefly talked about this program some time back, but quickly dropped the discussion. Almost without exception, each and every elected official in Adams County ran on the platform of helping to create jobs and reduce crime.

Yet few seem to realize that the secret to solving both may be in simple programs such as the community college tuition guarantee program.

Only when our workforce — our entire workforce — becomes better educated across the board, will we attract more jobs and, perhaps, more entrepreneurship.

Rather than focusing solely on how much such a program will cost, wouldn’t it be refreshing if our elected officials stood up and said, “How can we afford NOT to do this?” and then subsequently made the program a reality?

That would be an amazing, forward-looking statement on our community’s future.