Gov. Linda Lingle's plan to close a $730 million budget gap by furloughing government workers three days monthly is a recipe for disaster for public schools and the economic health of our state.

Teachers and students would have about 30 fewer days to cover increasingly rigorous lessons while parents would struggle to find child care.

However, to preserve school days, the Education Department would be forced to reach into a budget already down $83 million and slash programs and positions critical to student success.

This would threaten the tutor who meets with struggling students in the afternoon to bring them up to speed, the teacher who spends an extra hour reviewing English lessons with an immigrant child, the theater program that engages students in the arts, the co-curricular activities that keep children on campus and away from the streets long after the bell rings.

The board's duty is to guarantee students have access to a quality education — certainly not the same principle guiding Lingle's careless furlough directive, which would pull students away from classrooms and amount to a whopping 13.8 percent pay cut for education staff already struggling to afford a mortgage, rent or putting food on the table.

Take, for example, Christine Farina, who has more than 15 years of experience yet makes less than $44,000 and has to pay for supplies such as notebooks, posters and books out of her pocket. Farina took a second job, but she is now considering leaving the Islands after 40 years.

The budget crisis has fueled arguments of critics who contend the Education Department is packed with meaningless administrative jobs. But only about 5 percent of the $1.8 billion schools budget is spent on administration.

Most of the money, about $1 billion, flows to schools while another $539 million goes to special education, leaving little to run an educational system of nearly 178,000 children. It includes everything from salaries, curriculum development, testing and collection of data to providing security, meals and bus services.

This is not to say we can't improve operations. Recent audits proved monies can be better managed, prompting the board to launch an investigative committee to modernize department operations and ensure student achievement continues to rise.

The Hawai'i State Assessment shows 62 percent of Isle students scored proficient in reading in 2008 compared with 60 percent a year earlier. In math, 43 percent of children were proficient, up from 39 percent.

Despite gains, our schools have much work to do as the No Child Left Behind law requires all students to be able to read and do math at grade level by 2014. That's a daunting target, one that becomes much steeper when schools lack resources.

With a new school year approaching, the board has been studying ways to minimize cuts to schools. We authorized the Education Department to spend its first semester budget so schools can welcome students July 30.

As labor negotiations and union challenges against Lingle's furloughs linger, the board has offered a solution to preserve the academic year and steer Hawai'i out of the recession.

In contrast to Lingle's actions, the board has urged our elected leaders to tap the Hawai'i hurricane-relief and rainy-day funds or implement a slight, temporary raise in the general excise tax similar to the one funding Honolulu's planned rail system.

Leading economists back this approach, warning that furloughs alone would delay an economic recovery as thousands of state workers scale back on spending, hurting local businesses.

On June 12, the University of Hawai'i Economic Research Organization noted the Legislature may address the budget shortfall in other ways, including by temporarily raising the GET, caution-ing that furloughs would lead to private-sector job losses and could push state workers out of their homes or into bankruptcy.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in a recent analysis found that well-structured tax hikes are better for a state's economy than deep spending cuts.

Hawai'i should adopt this proven roadmap to lessen the burden on families, preserve essential services and rebound from the recession quicker. If we ask our children to pay off our deficit with their education, we would be neglecting and jeopardizing our state's future workforce.

Now more than ever, our educators deserve our undivided support to ensure our graduates are ready to compete in this challenging economy and bring prosperity back to the Islands.

Garrett Toguchi is chairman of the state Board of Education. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.