WHY DOES STATE NEVER LEARN FROM A CRISIS?

Is Missouri approaching a future revenue crisis in public education that will make the current cash crunch look like child's play? We'll leave it to readers to decide.

This is not a question we take pleasure in asking, and since it is seldom mentioned, it is not a question we are even comfortable raising. But we ask it not because Missouri always seems to be waking up in a new world, facing problems that were not even anticipated a few months prior. Missourians may recall the federal-pension-refund crisis as only one of numerous crises that fit this why-didn't-anyone-tell-us genre.

We submit that an impending disaster in finding enough general revenue money to meet current state needs is rather elusive at the moment. Jefferson City will ostensibly collect sufficient billions in taxes, fees and licenses to limp through the fiscal year beginning July 1. For those of us who can still remember when budgets came in under $1 billion, a $9 billion state budget seems almost unreal, so large in fact that it should cover every conceivable kind of program devised by man and politician. But one need only study Gov. Ashcroft's proposed Fiscal 1992 recommendations to recognize how finely tuned they really are. There is, literally, almost no breathing room, with few dollars available for essential services.

As we have noted previously, the governor actually recommended $6.49 million less for the school foundation program in the next fiscal period than he did for the current year. It is important to recognize that the $1.134 billion earmarked for the foundation program in FY 1992 represents the most important figure in the entire budget for the state's 543 school districts. It is this program that determines the quality of education to be provided to the 800,000 children enrolled in Missouri's elementary and secondary classrooms.

When the foundation distribution is reduced, most districts must reduce their classroom spending; when funds remain at the same level, most schools must also cut their classroom spending because of inflation, which in 1990 reached the high rate 6.1 percent growth. Since inflation increases the cost of supplies, schools need to have the same increase in new funds just to stay even. If districts are to carry out their task, they need not only increases matching the rate of inflation but additional money to buy improved services, raise teachers' salaries so they, too, can stay even with inflation and buy equipment and capital improvements that will enhance curricula.

The threat of fiscal crisis begins to make itself visible when the state, as in the case of the planned FY 1992 budget, cannot find adequate revenue to keep pace with inflation. Just to stay even, the FY 1992 expenditure should be 6 percent higher than the present $1.140 billion allotment for the foundation program. Instead, it will be lower.

In an effort to correct inequities in the school aid distribution formula, several concerned lawmakers have been pushing to revise the plan to help districts where enrollments have increased. In the Columbia area, for example, it has been necessary for the district to build at least one new school every year just to keep up with enrollment increase. Despite rapid growth, schools such as Columbia have not received commensurate increases in foundation payments. Thus these areas not only need new buildings, they must also find other revenue just to provide minimum services. Correcting these pejorative results of increased population is a matter of equity, and if the issue is raised in a federal court, the governor and the General Assembly could find themselves facing still another crisis that must be solved by still another special session. Which will, in turn, mean higher costs for the taxpayer, without a single penny going to correct this long-standing problem that so few in the state Capitol seem willing to address. Taxpayers will get a double dose of taxes because of this neglect.

To address this problem, lawmakers such as state Rep. Annette Morgan, chairman of the House Education Committee, have agreed to a so-called "hold harmless" plan that will maintain foundation payments at existing levels for districts with a reduced school census. Without such a provision, the City of St. Louis district would lose $13 million in the first year of a revised, more equitable formula; other districts would suffer proportionately. The cost of this revision, alone, will call for additional millions above current appropriations, which as noted above, will be reduced for foundation payments.

If Missouri is to gain and not lose standing in how well it supports each public school student, it will have to find additional millions of dollars; even if the state chooses just to remain at its present level of funding, it must find more revenue or Missouri will face an educational calamity that will make us the unenviable example of the nation. Those who see no problem ahead are either blind or dumb, or both. The truth is that within a couple of years, or less, Missouri will be scrambling wildly for additional millions in revenue, all the while wondering why we were so calm and complacent back in 1991. Why do we never learn?