Gov. Angus King offered a 5 percent increase in General Purpose Aid to Education, a reasonable start for a debate on funding, but not the end of it. Some lawmakers are trying to agree early to that figure as a minimum funding level. But any legislators who think this amount is adequate should check with their local school superintendents before voting.

Before GPA sends money to the actual operating expenses of a school, it removes funding for grants, programs, such as special education, and debt service, all of which are considerably higher this year than previously. In the proposed budget, this leaves a mere 2.3 percent increase for operating money in the first year and, in the second in which Gov. King proposed a 3 percent GPA increase, virtually nothing for operating. The 2.3 percent represents the lowest percentage of funding since the middle of the last recession. The operating subsidy was double that figure last year and nearly three times it in 1998-99.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that any increases in total GPA beyond the current proposal flow heavily into the operating subsidy because the other costs will have been met. Each added percent to GPA raises the total by about $6.7 million. A boost just from 5 percent to 7 percent would produce a major difference to the ability of schools to operate.

Making this financial commitment now is particularly important because schools statewide are expanding their use of the Learning Results, the ambitious state guidelines for raising the standards of education. T

The Department of Education is currently working on ways to measure progress in achieving these standards, but would surely have to delay doing so if the schools were not properly funded for these state-mandated reforms. The department’s intention of identifying and funding essential programs and services at schools would similarly be set back by the administration’s funding proposal.

The immediate difficulty for lawmakers is finding additional funds to support education, and those funds must be ongoing, so that they do not recreate the current shortfall in future years. In his recent State of the State speech, Gov. King celebrated the $450 million reduction in Maine taxes over the last few years. No doubt Maine consumers and countless tourists are reveling in the saved half penny from the sales tax, but that single decision cut $33 million in revenue, or the equivalent of an added 2 percentage points to GPA plus the money raised by the governor’s proposal to push back the payments on the state retirement fund debt service.

Next year, it would whack property taxes as municipalities try to make up the lack of state education funding; and the long-term cost to taxpayers on the retirement-fund proposal is $780 million. That saved half penny looks like the most expensive in Maine history.

Lawmakers may be waiting until the new revenue forecast in February before deciding how to apportion the budget, an understandable strategy. But if they think they can put merely an additional 5 percent in GPA and consider themselves finished, they need to call those superintendents.