Daily Herald Editorial

The trepidation with which school officials from Austin and other area communities will watch the Legislature this year is understandable: Education is a huge chunk of the state’s budget, and lawmakers are going to be looking for places to cut. The obvious target is not, however, always the best one. In the case of education, in fact, it’s one of the worst places for the state to make cuts, and a rational and logical budget process should recognize that.

Education is one of the handful of absolutely core services for which every state must provide, particularly at the K-12 level. The logic of making education a spending priority is unassailable. Both literally and figuratively, everything starts with education. Well-educated people make better decisions, they more readily solve problems for themselves and they are less likely to be a drain on state and charitable resources in the future. Unfortunately, education’s support is sometimes thin. Strong schools are a concern for many voters only while their own children in school; before and after that time, its urgency tends to fade in voters’ minds, even though the need does not. This puts education in a special category, one which requires wise state investment over the long term.

A logical budget process, which Minnesota has not always followed, would include making a serious ranking of priorities and then providing funding first to those priorities. A logical budget process would also eliminate unfunded mandates — requirements that schools provide services without funding to do so.

Minnesota lawmakers have in recent years seldom succeeded in the task of producing a useful and well-thought-out budget. This year, with the stakes higher than ever, would be a good time for them to agree on priorities and ensure that those priorities — particularly education — receive adequate funding.