The fact of the matter is that Charlotte County’s elementary schools — Phenix, Eureka and Bacon District — have some age on them and are in need of, in some cases, major capital improvements.

Supervisors recently agreed to move forward with HVAC repairs at Eureka Elementary School which will cost an estimated $3 million — a situation that Drakes Branch Supervisor Garland H. Hamlett Jr. called “pretty serious.”

“If it doesn’t get fixed, then we’re gonna have somebody get hurt,” he added during supervisors’ recent meeting.

School leaders and supervisors are doing something about Eureka Elementary. That’s a fact.

Another fact is that the youth in our public schools deserve nothing but the best in terms of facilities, transportation and instruction.

That’s why we think the board of supervisors and school leaders need to sit down together — soon — to begin the discussion of how to handle the outstanding and needed improvements at Eureka and Bacon District and Phenix.

“The school board has not been advised as to which option the board of supervisors will fund to address the facilities concerns at Bacon and Phenix,” Division Superintendent Dr. Nancy Leonard told The Gazette regarding the repairs.

There’s no better time than now to take care of these problems.

And if the discussions include a consolidated elementary school for the county, which was first discussed in 2015, then so be it, but what is most important is the two boards sitting down together to talk this plan through.