Every year, board members and superintendents lament not having enough state money to cover teacher raises, services for students and the rising costs of utilities and insurance.

And every year, legislators say they're giving more money to education than ever before. It should be enough, they say.

They might not be able to make that argument when the next session starts this winter. A recent study shows New Mexico schools combined were underfunded by as much as 15 percent during the 2006-07 school year, or about $320 million.

American Institutes for Research was hired to do the poll by a state task force that analyzed New Mexico's funding formula and decided whether schools are receiving the money they need to operate.

Now the task force, made up of lawmakers, school district officials and state education staff, is ready to recommend to legislators a new way to make up for that lost funding — a new funding formula.

New Mexico's current funding system, long lauded as one of the most equitable formulas in the country, has existed for more than 30 years. But after hundreds of complaints from school districts and threats of lawsuits from officials who think they've been shortchanged, state officials decided it was time to rethink school funding.

The new formula, task force members say, would maintain equity across all school districts while pumping more money into schools. It would also make it easier to see how districts are funded because the amount of money they get would be driven by clear factors, something not true of the current formula, critics say.

"This (proposed formula) is very transparent, very simple," said Dennis Roch, a member of the task force and assistant superintendent of Tucumcari schools. "And it leaves very little opportunity to game the system."

New Mexico's funding formula was created in 1974 as part of the Public Schools Finance Act. It was meant to eliminate the inequity among different school districts that resulted when school funding was based on local property taxes. Districts with large tax bases had plenty of money, while those in poor, rural areas had less.

Despite its attempt at equity, critics argue the current funding formula doesn't pay for some basic school needs, such as nurses or counselors. They also say that because the formula is based on prior-year enrollment, it doesn't provide sufficient funds for rapidly growing districts, such as Rio Rancho.

To come up with the new formula, researchers, with the help of six panels of educators, tried to determine how much money it takes to "sufficiently" fund a basic educational program. The number they came up with, $4,871 per student, already is higher than the current funding level, about $3,600.

To that basic program cost, the new formula adds money depending on the unique makeup of individual districts. It takes into account the percentage of poor kids, English Language Learners, special-education students and other factors.

Preliminary estimates show the new formula could result in a lot more money for some districts. The Santa Fe school district should have received more than an additional $8 million for the 2006-07 school year, or 11 percent of its overall operational budget.

The method — defining schools' basic needs and figuring out how much money it will take to fund them — should be common sense, said Mike Griffith, a policy analyst with the Education Commission of the States.

"We do this for everything else, but we never do it for education," Griffith said.

Griffith said states across the country have started to use this model to re-evaluate their school funding. Most have done similar studies and come up with similar results, though the amounts vary depending on the region of the country.

Not everyone, though, is convinced that more money is the solution to problems in education. One critic of such studies said there is little evidence that ties more money to better education.

Eric Hanushek, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, has seen the rash of studies across the country and said they follow a basic formula.

Courts or legislators decide to pre-empt any threat of lawsuits resulting from funding arguments by calling for a study. Those studies inevitably result in a call for more money, Hanushek said.

The problem, Hanushek said, is that most places where these types of studies are done have not been successful in increasing achievement. That's because there's no real way to know how much money it will take, he said.

"They can't accurately or in any scientific way assess how much money will lead to some achievement level," Hanushek said.

So instead of actually improving education, districts get more money but do little to change their operations. "If you just provide more money to these schools, they'll continue what they've been doing, just more of it," Hanushek said.

That possibility is one of state Education Secretary Veronica Garcia's largest concerns. She's glad the task force's work has addressed some funding issues — such as including the state's three-tier salary system and giving more money to districts with large percentages of special education students.

But she has concerns about districts receiving more money without first making sure accountability measures are in place.

"I think it just depends on what winds up being required and what's left to local control," Garcia said. "It's not clear. Is this a blank check?"

Garcia and her staff did not participate in the task force, except to observe. Now, she said, they will work with the task force to hammer out details of accountability.

Griffith, the ECS analyst, cautioned, too, that of all the states that decided schools needed more money, few have found ways to fund the increases.

Convincing legislators to pony up the extra money could end up being the task force's biggest challenge.

"It's going to be my main job during the 30-day session," said Rep. Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, co-chairwoman of the task force.

There already are a few ideas for how to pay for the increase, Stewart said, including a bill to require corporations doing business in New Mexico but with corporate offices elsewhere to pay the same taxes as companies based in the state.

That measure could generate about $60 million a year, Stewart said. That amount, along with other similar actions, could be enough to start to fund the new formula. It could take two or three years before it's fully funded, she said.

Contact John Sena at 986-3079 or jsena@sfnewmexican.com.