This week, kids across the city and state got back to school. For many, the start was earlier than it had ever been, coming a full week before Labor Day, a holiday that for many years has marked a sort of official end to summer.

The Philadelphia School District immediately faced a challenge from the early start, announcing half way through its first day on Monday, that all students would be dismissed early because of excessive heat warnings for Tuesday and Wednesday this week. The weather clearly wasn’t going along with the early-start program.

Despite the minor setback, the School District has some reason to maintain a sunny disposition. In an interview with WHYY’s Avi Wolfman-Arent, Philadelphia Superintendent Dr. William Hite pointed to an increase in third-grade reading scores on state tests. Progress, he said, he was certain would continue.

The district is also operating without a deficit as a city spending plan is projected to have it fully funded for at least the next two years. The city is also beginning the school year for the first time in a generation with a local school board instead of the state-overseen School Reform Commission, which decommissioned itself in a vote last year.

The position of the school district is as good as it has been in a long time, but other non-weather related challenges remain. The most significant challenge is addressing decades of neglect, or, to be nice, ‘deferred maintenance.’ Last year, a report on the school district’s infrastructure found $4.5 billion in outstanding repair and maintenance work.

The school district put $69 million towards cleaning up lead and asbestos, a program that’s currently underway, but there is much more to do. In a series on environmental hazards in the school by the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, the district’s facilities are still in dire shape. The papers tested 14 schools and found unsafe conditions in 10 of them. At that time, school officials said it would take another $10 billion over the next 10 years to make schools safe.

I’m not pointing out the challenges of the district as evidence to abandon the school district. Instead, city residents and businesses should rally around the districts and commit remediating these buildings with whatever effort it takes. If rehabbing schools is the best way, let’s rehab them. If new buildings work best, let’s do that.

This week, our front-page story details the kind of investment we need more of. It’s not lead remediation, but the donation of computers and service time by the Philadelphia Children’s Foundation at Houston Elementary. We need more investments like that.

No investment is more important than public schools. The city is currently responsible for educating 130,000 children. We need to make sure they continue to receive the best education they can get in buildings that are safe.

Pete Mazzaccaro