School's out. In a blink of the eye, though, it'll be back in session. And for so many New Mexicans, the academic year after that arrives in blur — and the one after that ...

All of which leaves way too little time to address our community's, and our state's, longstanding public-education problems. They can't be solved in seat-of-the-pants, react-to-the-crisis fashion, as our overworked educators have long known. What's needed is an ahead-of-the-game approach to improvement that'll have to be deliberate, goal-oriented and, likely, gradual.

Santa Fe Public Schools has convened various task forces over the years — the most effective of which, we'd say, was one dedicated to strategic planning. Our community being the active one it is, that group wound up achieving tactical successes, including space-management guidelines and some campus consolidation. Long-range strategies, to a great degree, proved elusive.

So, in the wake of Waiting for Superman, that thought-provoking, if contrived and labor-propagandizing, documentary from last year, United Way has become a lead agency nationwide in promoting community conversations about what we want in our schools, what we're not getting — and how to achieve the excellence every conscientious citizen wants.

Santa Fe is one of 10 cities chosen to take part in the first wave of United Way Worldwide's Mobilization for Education movement. With the help of New Mexico First, it's been under way for most of the past school year — until now in relatively low-key mode. A main focus has been improving education in difficult budgetary times.

In a community like ours, where more than half the families make so little money that their schoolkids are eligible for free or reduced-cost lunches, and where so many youngsters are faced with learning in a new language, there's never enough public money to meet educational challenges — so money was an oft-raised topic among the civically involved folks attending the formally moderated forums.

In the next breath, properly enough, came parental involvement; not just caring how the kids did in school that day, but also in such educationally valuable activities as reading to their children. Which invariably bounces back to the issues of working-poor families finding time for such things — and themselves being able to read, in Spanish or English.

Pretty clearly, the people who gathered in conversation identified some of the obstacles to effective education, and to reducing the depressing dropout rate.

Now that the education-mobilizers have gathered the collective thoughts, they're going to be making the most of this school vacation: Monday, June 13, there'll be a Mobilizing for Education Excellence Summit, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., at Santa Fe Community College's main building.

It's precisely what the doctor ordered for an ailing local/state/national education process, and offers local leaders — from the private and public sector — as well as our area's many talented and concerned citizens, a chance to chew on the issues raised thus far, to bring up issues of their own, and to propose action aimed at outcomes.

An education-advisory council of community leaders is ready to follow up what comes of it with a lineup of the most pressing — and promising — recommendations.

Plan now to participate in the summit — and to be part of some solutions sure to follow.