Highland Park and its public schools need our sympathy and support.

Highland Park is severely disadvantaged, even more than Detroit in terms of having an unsustainable portion of its population being poor or disabled. With that comes added expenses for their care and increased crime which leads to high insurance rates, lower valuations, lower revenues, decreasing services and a resultant middle class flight. Pile on to that broken camel's back the burden of millions in pension fund outlays generously granted to a large workforce, back when the population was three times larger and three times wealthier, none of whom live in HP.

This spills over into the school system where the children of the disadvantaged comprise the student bodies. Many children need, through no fault of their own, things beyond education, like food and secure passage to school and home. Thing that never cross the radar in some districts.

There's a saying that good schools are derived from involved parents and a quality principal. But what about those school districts where the involved parents have gone elsewhere?

There is a small middle class citizenry in Highland Park primarily in its two historic homes districts. I was one of them. We placed our child in the Barber School Head Start program. It was outstanding, required on-site alternating parental involvement and had a teacher and an assistant for 15 kids.

The next step would be Kindergarten with one teacher for 30 kids in a windowless room, almost entirely non-Head Start-ed kids. One peek in there and it off to St. Benedict's School in Highland Park to pay the tuition for an orderly and quality education by liberation nuns and lay staff.

Almost no one in HP who had enough income sent their kids to the public schools. Many with even lower incomes scuffled and figured out how to get alternate educations for their kids. Today, the charter schools have to have bled off even more involved parentage.

My solution? Head Start forever. Carry over the Head Start model of one teacher and one assistant for 15 kids for all grades. Provide Highland Park with the public safety proportionate not to its population, but its needs. Don't scold the parents who remain or are stuck there. Help them out.

We can pay a little more now or a lot more later.