School funding, part 2

By ignoring critics who said Maine’s school funding formula was too complicated and too driven by politics to be improved, the Legislature’s Education Committee delivered last week half an overhaul of the formula for Maine’s school-funding system. To complete the other half, lawmakers must set the same level of aspirations and substantially increase the amount of money that goes into that formula.

The funding level for the next two years is crucial. How the Legislature funds General Purpose Aid to Education this session will establish a model that future legislators will look to in making their own decisions about GPA. If current legislators fund less than the amount recommended by the Education Committee, they will set in motion funding shifts that will increase animosity between rich and poor districts and invite tampering with the newly revised funding formula.

Think politicians wouldn’t wipe out months and months good work on an issue an important as school funding? Look no farther than New Hampshire, where a lawsuit filed Monday threatens that state’s hard-won plan, which is barely a week old.

The Legislature has within its grasp the opportunity to not only avoid that kind of destructive behavior but improve the lives of Maine children. After its many public hearings and work sessions, after the debates and deals, the compromises and concessions, the Education Committee, by unanimous vote, achieved its remarkable feat of pulling together the whole state, East, West, North and South, on a method for funding schools. The full Legislature and, more specifically, the Appropriations Committee, must decide whether to support this rare agreement or risk destroying it.

The immediate question before lawmakers is how much more to spend on GPA. The current proposal for the next biennium is approximately $600 million in the first year and $620 million in the second. The Education Committee would increase that to $630 million and $645 million. There is widespread agreement that the increase in the first year to $630 million is possible, but real doubt about the finding the money for the second year. That isn’t to say Maine lacks the money; it’s the will of lawmakers that is suspect.

It is indeed amazing that some legislators could give up so quickly on an issue that everyone is eager to say is important, but only a few are eager to fund as if they meant it. And the money, of course, is not merely for schools. For the last decade, local property taxpayers have carried part of the state’s share of school funding. They carried it though communities had recessions of their own, though some could never give enough to match wealthier towns, though jobs and people have left so that resources are scarcer than ever. When, if not in this time of state budget surpluses, are they going to have this burden lifted?

Any increase in funding would help, of course, and legislators can pass a small increase, declare victory and go home. Or they can do something extraordinary. They can complete the work begun by the Education Committee by supporting its funding proposal for the full two years and rightly say that this was the year education funding in Maine was returned to its proper path.

The reform is there and the money is there. It’s up to lawmakers to put them together.