Education Commissioner Duke Albanese’s proposal to increase school funding for next year keeps a minimum promise his department and the Legislature made to the Maine public last year when they changed the state’s funding formula to improve equity statewide. It deserves support and expansion in both the governor’s office and the State House.

Lawmakers last spring laid out a schedule to raise general purpose aid to education so that by 2003 the state recognized in its formula the actual cost of educating a student. The $14.6 million increase proposed Wednesday by the commissioner keeps Maine on track to meet that target, while including $2 million to help school districts that were hurt financially under the formula change. The added funding would push the increase for 2001 to approximately 5 percent above the 2000 budget.

While lawmakers have a couple of ways to meet the per-pupil guarantee of funding under the formula, the practical way to keep all ends of the state in agreement is to continue to increase funding. The reasons are not merely political. The state’s overreliance on the local property tax to pay for education is not only unfair to students who make the mistake of growing up in towns that do not include a lot of commercial property, it places a large burden on taxpayers and discourages businesses from relocating to the Maine communities most in need of revitalization.

It is not the job of the commissioner to set tax policy — his goal should be to move Maine to a more equitable and fully funded education system. Lawmakers, however, do have a responsibility to ensure that a local tax does not become the convenient revenue source for the state’s obligations. Or when it does happen, as in Maine’s case, to return the tax balance as soon as possible. That means going beyond a 5-percent increase.

Maine currently is somewhat like the person who got into credit-card debt years ago and has found that paying the minimum doesn’t erase the debt — in this case, to property taxpayers — nor does paying a bit above the minimum. Instead, it requires an extraordinary effort, in budget after budget, of consistently funding general-purpose aid at levels well above what would otherwise be expected. It is a difficult process that, fortunately, is happening in a time of budget surpluses, giving Maine an opportunity it should not miss.

This opportunity also arrives as the state embarks on what Commissioner Albanese calls “arguably the most ambitious and comprehensive reform in Maine’s recent history” — Learning Results. Without a serious funding increase, according to the commissioner, “important Learning Results work will undoubtedly continue, but not at the pace that is needed to satisfy statutory deadlines.” The commissioner is gently reminding the Legislature and the governor that they were happy to impose these standards on Maine’s schools, and they should be equally happy to pay the bill that comes with them.

He’s right.