Everybody talks a good game when it comes to public education. But in Minnesota, the public school systems that keep pace with today’s educational challenges are those that contain a majority of residents who vote to raise their own local taxes.

Instead of allowing legitimate complaints about the shortcomings of state funding to become an excuse for letting educational opportunities slip, they approve their local referendums.

It is tiresome, to be sure, when elected state officials claim education is Minnesota’s No. 1 priority but fail to adjust a funding mechanism that forces too many school districts to resort to passing operating referendums just to maintain existing programs. But what is happening today in Park Rapids is a good example of what can occur when the desire to maintain strong educational offerings collides with agonizing choices local communities must make.

Last week, Park Rapids school officials dropped a bombshell, saying that if voters reject a referendum for a fifth consecutive year, all extracurricular activities would have to be eliminated. This isn’t about trimming travel plans for the golf team, or cutting the assistant debate coach. It would mean no sports at all. No National Honor Society, etc., etc.

Park Rapids is the first Minnesota school to, out of a perceived necessity, base its future in such stark terms. But many other Minnesota districts have cut programs as well as teacher positions because money wasn’t found to maintain them. In many cases, they’d been unable to pass referendums to meet funding shortfalls based on declining enrollments.

Here in southern Minnesota, communities are responding to their educational situations individually. New Ulm, seeing an average declining enrollment of 100 students for the last five years, in June proposed an operating referendum — one it needs to pass to stay out of debt. In 2004, the tiny district of Nicollet approved a referendum providing a $9.2 million school expansion — but today the district faces deficit spending even if it passes a new proposed operating referendum.

Every district is its own example of ebb and flow, some meeting their challenges, others treading water and hoping the Legislature comes to the rescue.

Last year, the future of Mankato schools was addressed with the passage of two referendums providing building upgrades and new technology.

Communities that pass referendums obviously value education, because they’ve taken it upon themselves to see that students continue to have what they need to thrive. When Mankato residents passed bond referendums last November, for instance, it was pointed out by grateful Mankato Area Public Schools Supt. Ed Waltman that only 20 percent of voters had children in the district.

But not all referendums in every Minnesota community pass. Sometimes the financial pain is deemed too great by the local voters. And communities are forced to rely so heavily on local referendums to keep up, the disparity between healthy and unhealthy districts grows.

Park Rapids knows this all too well.

Now, fewer than two months before another election, would be a good time to publicly address the disparity. The issue of public education funding ought to be central to the gubernatorial campaigns being waged in this state. Gov. Tim Pawlenty is engaged in a spirited debate with DFL opponent Mike Hatch over a variety of educational proposals, most recently linked to tuition at colleges and universities. While that issue certainly needs to be responsibly addressed, the candidates should also take a moment to declare exactly how they would improve state funding of K-12 education.

Yes, they’ve spent a good portion of their time arguing about the state of Minnesota public education today — with Pawlenty saying our kids continue to be among the best in the nation and Hatch blaming Pawlenty for slippage — but now let them provide more details on what they will do to get more funds into local districts, so the burden doesn’t continue to rest so painfully at the local level.