Republicans said five. Democrats said six. The governor sided with Republicans: a 5 percent increase for school funding next year, 2 percent higher than what legislators approved before they learned Maine would be swimming in surplus cash.

It’s not enough.

It’s not enough because education got cut especially hard during the lean budget years of the early 1990s. It’s not enough because education continues to fall behind as a percentage of the total budget now that better times are here. It’s not enough because the burden of paying school costs has fallen too heavily on property taxpayers. It’s not enough because school districts cannot pay for proper maintenance of their buildings, hastening more expensive new construction. Finally, it is not enough because Gov. King has approved his ambitious Learning Results program with no money to help poorer districts pay for it.

No one should expect Augusta to make up the entire $500 million it has sliced from General Purpose Aid to Education during the last eight years, but a 2 percent increase — worth about $11 million — is sad. The budget surplus, depending on who is doing the counting, is somewhere between $225 million and $300 million and growing. A lot of that can be attributed to the generosity of property taxpayers, who kept schools running when the state could not.

Rep. Michael Brennan of Portland was the first legislator to point out through legislation that the relative pittance being discussed failed to give back to municipalities what the state willingly took away in previous budgets. He has proposed, through LD 2048, an increase in funding of 10 percent for the 1998-’99 fiscal year. That would boost state funding to 51 percent of the total cost of education and make a serious downpayment on the state’s debt to municipalities.

The bill also contains a $10,000 homestead exemption to help cut property taxes. But Rep. Brennan has a tough enough job to sell his funding increase without this added complication, which would be better as separate legislation. On its own, the 10 percent increase stands as a challenge to all lawmakers who pledged to fight for higher education funding. Maine has plenty of reason to want to boost funding — top rankings on national tests show that its schools do a terrific job with what they have — and now it has the opportunity.

Legislators have talked for years about how they would support more education funding if the state budget would support it. Polls report widespread public support for more funding. Most importantly, schools have shown that they need and deserve more than the comparative crumbs being extended to them. Now is the time for legislators to sign on to a funding increase that matters.