Back to school

After a long summer vacation, Maine lawmakers have just two weeks to complete their first assignment for the upcoming session, the two-year cycle’s second half, the one (theoretically and constitutionally) devoted to leftovers and emergencies.

As in the past, the Oct. 1 deadline for new legislation will provide the public the often amusing diversion of seeing how loosely some lawmakers define emergency. Beyond that, the contents of the hopper will be a report card on what lawmakers learned last session and will reveal how they spent their summer vacations.

Last session, with its bulging surplus, was the one in which just about everyone wanted to do more for education and keep the 14-year-old promise of majority funding for general-purpose aid. While the increase in GPA and the revisions to the funding formula were commendable, too many legislators saw the 55-percent GPA pledge in the 1985 law as one not worth keeping. They failed to recognize the connection between GPA and local property taxes, a connection every property owner is all too familiar with.

The projected surplus this time is expected to be between $50 million and $80 million. That’s not enough to make the full 55 percent, but it is enough to make another good-sized step from the current upper-40s. Lawmakers who remain opposed to increasing GPA should explain why they don’t trust their constituents to make wise decisions on reducing property taxes and improving their schools.

Beyond GPA, there are other education issues the Legislature must address now, before solvable problems become catastrophes. There is a severe shortage of math and science teachers, here and throughout the nation. Some states are mounting dramatic efforts to attract bright young scientific minds to teaching. Others are merely counting on the projected drop in school-age kids seven or eight years from now to fill the gap. It’s not hard to figure out which states will come out ahead in the race to a high-tech future. This Legislature will have a lot to say about where Maine runs.

Economic-development experts say Maine should be granting 10,000 technology-oriented degrees a year to attract the industries of the new economy. It now grants about 6,000 — short by a third. Maine has an excellent technical-college system. It just needs more of one. The University of Maine System is enjoying growing enrollment and increased stature, but tuition remains too high compared with state income levels.

Sadly, some lawmakers didn’t want to let go of the last session; some carried on a partisan feud all summer about which party loved retirement and business tax breaks more. It’s time now to put the playthings away and get back to work. From kindergarten to post-graduate, this Legislature has more than enough education issues to keep itself out of trouble.