Guidelines Key for Facilities Funding (Editorial)

Gov. Mike Huckabee has to be happy with recent news that the school facilities study calling for $2.3 billion in improvements was not only hurried but overly thorough.

Anecdotes abound of overpriced doors or unnecessary air conditioning. And because no one wants to have his signature on the bill for a $25,000 toilet seat, legislators are positioning themselves for a more piecemeal approach to making sure the state’s students have equal and ample brick and mortar.

That’s what the governor wants to do.

The term-limited Huckabee, working with his last Legislature, figures he can wipe his hands clean of pesky lower education issues with $87 million from the General Improvement Fund to take care of things the study deemed dangerous.

That will leave more money for his alliterative highways, health and higher education agenda.

And the governor has already eaten crow once when this time last year he had to settle for a minimum district size of 350 students rather than the completely rational, reasonable consolidation goal of 1,500. It’s easy to understand why he is less than enthusiastic about paying to fix buildings that he believes shouldn’t even be in use, although we all have job requirements that we aren’t enthusiastic about.

The $2.3 billion estimate for court-ordered improvements is based on the cost of bringing all buildings to existing building codes, which is not necessary.

The problem is some of the schools’ facilities do need fixing, though maybe not $2 billion worth. And legislators are holding back on other matters because they are not yet sure how much will have to go toward improvements in this budget.

The state task force assigned to assess the school facilities said a revised report with a new cost estimate could be ready in a couple of weeks. It will only take a couple of overpriced bathroom stall doors to poke holes in that estimate and give the naysayers and foot-draggers another reason to do the bare minimum to fix the state’s schools.

Now that the state has a detailed report of every chalkboard and classroom window in Arkansas — one that cost taxpayers $8.8 million — it’s up to the Legislature to work with school districts to come up with five- or 10-year plans for improvements. Before that, however, the Legislature needs to establish specific minimum guidelines for schools that are geared toward meeting these standards.

It’s going to be easy for legislators to switch a piecemeal approach with a do-little approach to facilities repairs. But with guidelines in place, they will be able to know where to allocate money to fix doors and where to leave a barn without air conditioning.