Pensacola is often called paradise.

The idyllic sugary white beaches and jewel-green waters are breathtaking.

But there looms another “P” word that defines Pensacola nearly as much as its picturesque seashores. It’s called poverty.

Its far-reaching adverse effects run as deep as the Gulf and as wide as the white sandy shores.

Pensacola is the poorest metropolitan city in in Florida and among the poorest in the nation.

The inextricable link between our economy and education is critical. We can’t possibly fix one without fixing the other.

If Pensacola is serious about improving its economy, then as a community we all have to work together to improve our educational system. And it must start before children enter kindergarten. In fact, it has to start at birth and continue to high school graduation.

In a recent Orlando Sentinel analysis it was revealing that not nearly enough of Florida’s best teachers are in the classrooms that need them most.

In the article, “Most bonus-winning teachers work at schools in more affluent areas”, reporter Leslie Postal pointed out that most teachers who benefited from the state’s “best and brightest” bonus plan were more than twice as likely to work with students from more affluent families than those living in poverty.

The Sentinel pointed out that only about 27 percent of teachers who got bonuses work in Title I schools, which enroll about 46 percent of the state’s public school students.

If nearly half of the students in Florida attend Title I schools, what about Escambia County?

A whopping 73.6 percent, according to the Escambia County Title I office.

Of more than 40,000 students in the district, 29,928 of them attend a school that gets Title I funding.

Of 31 elementary schools, all but four — Cordova Park, N.B. Cook, Hellen Caro and Pensacola Beach — receive Title I funding.

Started in 1965, Title I is the nation’s oldest and largest federally funded program that provides financial assistance to schools with high numbers or high percentages of children from low-income families.

It was designed to provide extra resources to high-poverty schools to help them meet the greater challenges of educating at-risk students.

The law includes a requirement that districts ensure that Title I schools receive "comparability of services" from state and local funds, so that federal funds can serve their intended purpose of supplementing equitable state and local funding.

But a report from the U.S. Department of Education says that schools serving low-income students are being shortchanged because school districts nationwide don’t equally distribute their state and local funds.

Study after study shows that the single most important factor determining the quality of education a child receives is the quality of his or her teacher.

Common sense — and decency — should dictate that schools with the highest need would get the most funding and the best teachers who are most qualified to tackle the challenges those schools have. In fact, the opposite is true.

The sad reality is that the best teachers rarely end up at schools where they are needed most.

At the Studer Community Institute, our mission is to improve the quality of life for everyone in this community.

As we like to say around here, the single most important thing we can do to improve our community’s quality of life is to ensure that children show up for their first day of school ready to learn.

It’s disheartening that one-third of children in Escambia County are not ready when they enter kindergarten.

Children who enter kindergarten behind their peers rarely catch up. That means many never graduate, they lack skills for today’s job market and they end up taking away instead of adding value to our community and economy.

Improving our economy, our health, our overall quality of life depends on a quality educational system.

If we don’t, the promise of Pensacola becomes a paradise lost.