Providing a public education is indisputably one of the core functions of government. However, other elements of the "social safety net" — public safety, housing and health and welfare services — place their focus on the here and now, helping citizens secure their most essential needs for the present.

Education represents government's investment in the future. Despite the fears about the miserable economic prospects in the next year or more, the fact remains that children now in school will grow up, the future will arrive and they have to be ready.

The quality of that future — will the next generation be equal to the task of being productive and successful? — depends on Hawai'i's commitment to the investment.

Buttressing public schools against the erosion of a sagging economy must be one of the key concerns of the Legislature during a challenging session. The question is: How should that investment be protected when budgets are being slashed to fit within diminishing revenue boundaries?

State Sen. Norman Sakamoto, education chairman, has long felt that public schools — burdened with the court-ordered costs of special education under the Felix decree, as well as the federal mandates of No Child Left Behind — are underfunded.

Each student is allotted effectively half the resources that are paid in tuition at the top private schools. While acknowledging public schools can't hope to equal that, Sakamoto rightly believes the gap should be narrower.

But his idea of raising the general excise tax as a strategy for raising more funds is ill-timed, to say the least. Sakamoto has paired the increase (the amount is not specified) with tax reforms aimed at easing the pain, especially for the lower-income groups — earned income tax credits, doubled standard deductions, exemptions from the tax for food and some other basic needs.

The money for education would go to a special fund for prescribed classroom purposes, including facilities, supplies and the per-student allotment prescribed by the state's weighted student formula. That fund would be governed by a new commission, whose members would be unpaid.

Unfortunately, the tax increase comes at the worst time possible for businesses already struggling in a worsening economic climate.

And it's counterproductive in dire economic times to enlarge government, even with an unpaid commission. There's already a Department of Education, with oversight by the Board of Education, that should be doing this.

Is there another option to soften the budgetary blow for public schools? Some lawmakers, including House Education Chairman Roy Takumi, are holding out reasonable hope that funds from the federal stimulus package will help advance improvements to school facilities and some early-education initiatives.

Takumi is waiting to see how the stimulus legislation plays out in the Capitol and plans to introduce spending bills to direct available funds to education projects here, including the critically important early-education component.

Granted, stimulus grants are one-time allotments, which don't fulfill Sakamoto's quest for a more sustained revenue source. However, state lawmakers have to take in the big picture in setting budgetary policy, and a tax hike doesn't seem to fit in the frame.

Instead, the lawmakers, partnered with the DOE and school board, need to find ways to consolidate operations to increase efficiencies and preserve classroom resources.

Leveraging federal funds and deploying public-private partnerships to stretch a lean budget offers a better policy for austere times, one that can still keep the needs of public school children top of mind.