Our two public school systems received less than stellar report cards this week, but before the community begins sounding the alarm bell, criticizing teachers and scoffing at the education our students are receiving, we need to assess from whence these results actually came.

Last week, both the city and county boards of education were brought up to be speed on the latest testing data released from the state Department of Public Instruction, results from the 2023-24 school year that showed, among other things, that nine schools — eight in the county and one in the city — were designated as low-performing, while another nine didn’t meet expected growth.

The results are alarming, there’s no doubt, and, as county superintendent Dr. Jamie King said, they are not acceptable.

To both school systems’ credit, work has already started to right the academic ships. In many cases, that work started long before the test results arrived, showing, we believe, that educators are not unfamiliar with the problems facing their schools and their students and are, at every turn, doing their best to find results-oriented solutions that will turn the tide.

From more emphasis on academic coaches to critical analysis of programs, school administrators are trying to provide teachers the assistance they need to educate students in this changing world we live in.

The tools they are being given will help, but there are a plethora of problems educators face every day that we need to be aware of before we bring the hammer of criticism down too hard on those doing what we believe to be their best every day to meet student needs, needs, we might add, that go far deeper than just math or English skills.

We could start with the ever-lingering Covid syndrome, which set schools and their students back years. Remote learning was never going to work, though there was hardly any other solution to the situation we found ourselves in back in 2020 and some parts of 2021. And the results of the attempts to teach students from their homes are being felt more and more every year, particularly in the schools and with test results.

There’s no getting that genie back in the bottle, no matter how hard teachers and administrators have tried to get beyond those remote learning obstacles.

But Covid is really the least of it, as King pointed out to Board of Education members in a story running on today’s front page.

While educators must find a way to slice through all the things students face before they ever walk into a school so education can happen, we all need to realize the seemingly insurmountable task that is becoming.

Most of us have no clue what teachers must face before the first lessons are taught.

Like most employers these days, schools first of all must deal with staff shortages, which means larger class sizes. And that means less time to help students individually.

Then there are the outside elements that seep into day-to-day learning. Hunger is one. Food insecurity, as we’ve mentioned before, is growing in our county, with more students heading home on the weekends to empty refrigerators and no source of food.

No parental support is another issue. While many of us are blessed to live in homes where we care about our children’s education, there are more and more kids who don’t have that support system. Being raised by grandparents, aunts, uncles or on their own, many children walk into school without someone rooting them on at home, helping with homework, encouraging them to be all they can be.

Health is yet another. Many children come to school with an assortment of mental, emotional and physical issues, far more than ever before in Sampson.

And that just scratches the surface.

These aren’t excuses for why report card scores are less than they should be, they are the realities of what teachers must face before the first lesson is taught, and what children must wade through before they can even begin to think about learning.

We don’t believe the problems are insurmountable — yet. But we do believe it will, as we often say, take us all working together to come up with solutions that can do far more than just produce better test scores.

Our public school systems need our support, legislative muscle and the time to make things right.

Our children and this county’s future depend upon it.