Just in time for what looks like the political battle of the winter, the Baldacci administration this week released the results of spending limits on state, county, local and school spending. Guess which one didn’t make the grade?

Those same school districts Gov. John Baldacci would like to dramatically reduce, cutting 152 sets of administrators down to 26, exceeded their spending goal by 7.5 percent, or $132.4 million, for FY 2006-’07, with 81 percent of the districts over the cap set by Essential Programs and Services.

That money, according to the State Planning Office report, came in part at the expense of tax reductions: For ’06-’07, the state added $141 million in appropriations under LD 1 to move its share of K-12 education toward 55 percent. In response, local taxes dropped, but only by $98 million. Even if districts passed along 90 percent of the additional state funding, as many had proposed, that leaves $38.7 million in additional funds unmatched by local reductions.

None of that added spending occurred, however, without public approval, and as lawmakers debate the governor’s new regional districts, they should probe whether the EPS model accurately reflects spending for the kinds of educational outcomes Maine demands, how much flexibility districts would have to exceed state levels if the public supported higher spending and when local is local enough.

That last question is becoming the central argument for opponents of the governor’s plan. They do not want to give up local control, which a regional district could demand. It is understandable that parents would want influence over the educational programs and related activities at their children’s schools. But local-control advocates also have a responsibility to show that the current amount of control – which varies by district – is the right amount.

What is the evidence that 290 school administrative units with 152 district administrations meet the demands of local representation, and double those numbers or half of them is not better? What is the dollar value of an increment of added local control?

Currently, the state doesn’t have answers to these questions, and while the governor was making a point by pushing this major reform through his budget, he also should encourage legislators to give the public plenty of time to review the idea and its alternatives. For instance, a legitimate issue raised by opponents of the governor’s plan is that, under the proposed regional school boards, many communities would not have any direct representation.

The governor has suggested local advisory boards for individual schools, though they would not have voting power. But what about a simplified house and senate model, where every town got house representation based on school population and the regional school board served as a senate?

That may not be the best answer, but it is one that would provide more local access without more cost. There are others, as school districts around the state have demonstrated. The key is for lawmakers to let those ideas come forward, to test them against desired levels of academic excellence, local control and cost and then decide what the districts should look like.

That will take a couple of months of hard work by lawmakers, but the alternative is more arguing about the current system vs. the governor’s proposal without more progress. That shouldn’t be acceptable to any side.