The Cambridge public schools will continue to be the entry point for the children of many first-generation immigrants for some time to come and the pressure on the Cambridge school system to meet this challenge is not going to decrease any time soon. At least, this is one of the conclusions I draw from the recent study released by the Boston-based Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC).

Here's a little background: MAPC is trying to understand what our region is going to look like in the next 25 years as part of their plan, MetroFuture, which is trying to develop regional solutions to regional problems. They started by asking: what happens if the current trends in housing, in population, in jobs, holds steady over the next quarter century? And this is what they found:

**Overall, people are moving out of Massachusetts to other states. However, Massachusetts is seeing strong international immigration into the state.

** The skill levels of international immigrants vary considerably, from the highly educated to people with little formal education.

** International immigrants, especially those who arrived more recently, tend to cluster in cities, In 2000, over half of the 600,000 people born in another country were found in one of eight cities: Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Lynn, Lowell, Lawrence, Quincy and Brockton.

** The job trends show that Cambridge will continue to grow as a place for work in one of the following areas: education and health services or professional and business services.

What does all this mean for Cambridge? It means that Cambridge will continue to grow as a white-collar town, with fewer opportunities for those who are not tapping into that part of the economy.

At the same time, Cambridge will continue to be a new home to international immigrants ... and while some of them will come here specifically for the high skilled, high wage jobs that exist here, many of them will come with the hope of a new life but with few skills and limited command of English. The responsibility for educating the children of these immigrants with will fall largely to our public schools.

Given than MAPC also predicts that state aid to localities will decrease over the next twenty five years, the challenges are real, and the Cambridge community is going to have to accept that some of the frustrations about the schools expressed during the most recent City Council elections are going to be with us for a while.

These numbers, of course, really talk about individual lives and people. I had the opportunity to meet just such a person during my own campaign for City Council. "Richard" (not his real name) was born in Haiti, moved to Cambridge as a young child, went through the Cambridge Public Schools (including Rindge and Latin) and off to college. Richard nevertheless found himself back in Cambridge in a dead-end job that paid $7 an hour and offered no real future. His frustration was palpable, in large part because he felt let down by the system. He had met its requirements, but it was not rewarding him with opportunity. At the same time, it was disheartening to see such an intelligent young man unaware of the opportunities that did exist for him, if he just knew where to look for them. It was not the first time that I thought to myself -- what differentiates the middle class is all the small things that adults do for children ... putting them in touch with someone, suggesting opportunities to them, helping them find a job with a friend, challenging them to set their goals higher and giving them ideas on how to reach them. Richard had the smarts and the heart, he just didn't know where to look.

On the other hand, there are many parents in Cambridge who despair at the quality of the school system, and express disappointment at the amount of money spent per pupil in our schools with the results that we have. How can we build a system that adequately addresses their needs too, by ensuring that children who are likely to excel in school (and it is reasonable to assume that children of Cambridge's highly educated parents will do very well in school) will be challenged to their full potential? As I heard one mother say to me during the campaign, "I support the equity goals of the public schools. I just don't want my child used for some social experiment."

It's a difficult challenge, and one that is likely to remain with us for a while. I applaud the many wonderful programs happening in Cambridge. Many of them are funded in part or in whole by the taxpayers of Cambridge, and they are making a real difference in the lives of young children in this city. They are being run by caring adults who are committed to their mission. I worry that even with all the strong work of many people, we won't even approximate a level playing field amongst the many parts of Cambridge's diverse demographics -- a diversity that is going to increase over the next generation. But our commitment to that goal must hold firm. A strong commitment to our schools is a good starting point. Accountability, transparency and effective budgeting must be components of this. A strong commitment to integrating and developing skills for those on the margins must continue to be part of our goals. The public school system has always been the meeting point for the crosscurrents in society in any day or age. Today's schools, and today's challenges, are no different.