This is an opinion column.

If I was lazy, doing the bare minimum, or didn’t care about the words I wrote or those among you who might read, ponder, and digest them, you wouldn’t be reading this right now.

Because I would not have this job.

If you were lazy, doing the bare minimum on your job, or didn’t care about your performance, you wouldn’t have yours either.

If you were a lazy entrepreneur, doing the bare minimum, or didn’t care about your products or the potential customers who walk through your door (or click on your website), your business would fail.

If you were lazy about working out, doing the bare minimum, or didn’t care about your health or your body, you might as well go to McDonald’s instead of the gym.

If you were lazy about what you eat, doing the bare minimum about nutrition, or didn’t care what you feed your body, I pray your health and life insurance policies are up to date.

If were a lazy contractor, doing the bare minimum on repair, renovation, or construction gigs, or didn’t care about the quality of your work, word of mouth will shout you into oblivion.

If your doctor was lazy, doing the bare minimum, or didn’t care about your wellness, you’d find another doctor faster than you could say, ah.

If your sitter was lazy, doing the bare minimum when you left your children in their care or didn’t care about them, you’d, at minimum, delete their number.

So…

If someone entrusted to help educate your child, keep them safe from 8 am until 3 pm (often beyond), and pour life into them was lazy, doing the bare minimum, or didn’t care about them, you’d march right down to their school and be in somebody’s face before the end of the first period.

At minimum.

If you were shocked or enraged at Mayor Randall Woodfin’s remarks regarding Birmingham City Schools’ latest report card grade – calling for teachers who are lazy, doing the bare minimum, or don’t care to “Please resign… We don’t want you.” – I hope you are equally shocked and enraged at the grade: C, a one-letter improvement from the prior year’s grade, but far from celebration-worthy.

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Our children simply cannot afford to be average. We never could. We had to be better than – and Cs just didn’t cut it. Not in my childhood home, nor in a village where the message was reinforced by adults at church, at the barber shop, and throughout our neighborhood.

Reinforced before and after school.

You can be better than. You must.

Sadly, and for myriad reasons, better than hasn’t been as profoundly and pervasively poured into and reinforced for our children. Not for all our children.

Yet it must.

Ensuring they continue to rise—that our schools are merely passing through this C enroute to better than—begins by challenging all who share in the vital and formidable task of educating our children.

All. Administrators, principals, counselors, coaches, custodians, school nurses, parents, citizens. And teachers.

Challenging any among them who is lazy, doing the bare minimum, or doesn’t care. Challenging them to be better. Or, yes, be gone.

If we don’t model for our children standards of achievement, effort, and excellence befitting the dreams we have for them (or should have), if we don’t exemplify better than, they simply won’t become the models of achievement, effort, and excellence we pray for them to be.

That they must be.

If we don’t read to our children, we can’t expect them to read.

If I come home with Cs … never mind. You wouldn’t be reading this right now.

Over the holiday break, during a lively family discussion about the mayor’s remarks, a passionate, young, yet frustrated education administrator (in another school system) who supported the challenge to be better or be gone, said: “You can’t bottle giveadamn.”

The vast, vast, vast majority of those empowered to educate our children—including parents and the rest of us—certainly giveadamn.

Demand all do. Demand it while continuing to address the challenges they confront, the obstacles they strive each day to overcome.

Demand that all strive to be better than—or our children never will.

I’m a member of the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame and a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary. My column appears on AL.com, as well as the Lede. Tell me what you think at [email protected], and follow me at twitter.com/roysj, or on Instagram @roysj