Properly funding schools

Imagine how surprised Gov. Angus King would have been if, when he told President Clinton this week that the state needs full funding for special education from the federal government, the president turned around and said, “Yeah, and Maine municipalities need you to fully fund the state’s General Purpose Aid to Education.”

However right the governor might be about the feds’ lousy effort to deliver special education money promised for years, he is in a poor position to demand it. Because while the president might have been too busy to look into Maine’s GPA, property taxpayers haven’t been. And they know this: Until the King administration makes an honest accounting of school funding and provides the state share ordered by statute, the property tax will bear an unfair portion of the cost.

King supporters say the governor is getting there and deserves credit for the increases that have occurred in the last few years. If credit will pay the bills, the governor can have it, although that will be a hard sell to legislators and municipal leaders who have fought him for increases in each year of his term. The latest tactic by Gov. King to change the subject shows why he exasperates so many education advocates.

Twice in the last two years the governor has tried to get school districts to pay a share of teacher retirement, a cost shared by teachers and the state for more than half a century. Twice the idea has been rejected. Not that there’s anything wrong with looking at an overhaul of the state’s retirement system and considering what would happen if districts contributed to the program. But that’s not what the governor has done. He has simply shifted some of the cost to the locals in his budget and tried to tell them to pay for it. Naturally, this has not gone over well at town hall.

Now the governor is trying to count the state’s share of the retirement funding along with GPA, pointing out how close the state comes to the statutory 55 percent of required funding when the retirement money is thrown in. There are several things wrong with this thought. First, the School Finance Act, which sets the 55 percent funding level, has nothing to do with teacher retirement, so his comparison is besides the point. Second, one of the reasons the retirement cost is high is that the state created an unfunded liability in the account during the last recession. School districts aren’t responsible for that. Third, GPA is designed to let each school adequately fund education costs — tossing in the retirement numbers contributes nothing to buying textbooks, paying teachers or heating school buildings.

Talk about the retirement fund at this time is an unneeded distraction. The question of school funding remains straightforward: When is the governor going to fund local schools at the level that statute requires, giving property taxpayers a break?

If Gov. King wants credit for school funding, let him be known as the leader who returned the school funding formula to its proper state and local balance.