EDITORIAL : IN NEED OF A LESSON PLAN; DAVIS, LEGISLATURE SHOULD NOT LET SCHOOL DISTRICTS TAKE `HOME DEPOT' APPROACH TO BUILDING NEW FACILITIES.

JUST when everyone seemed to agree that education was the No. 1 priority for the state, the Legislature's nonpartisan analysts came along and suggested the state get out of the school construction business.

While new schools traditionally were paid for at the local level, through bond measures within the Los Angeles Unified School District boundaries, for example, it hasn't exactly worked that way in the past two decades.

Since the mid-1970s, the state has taken a more active funding role, acting as a grant giver rather than a low-interest loan provider.

That system has stressed the state's general fund to the point where it is becoming economically difficult to pay for new schools while paying for projects under its control, such as the maintenance of or construction of highways, prisons, universities and other facilities.

During the next five years, the state's annual debt payments for schools will rise from $850 million to $1.2 million, fueled by November's passage of a $9.2 billion statewide education bond measure that set aside $6.7 billion for public schools.

That accounts for 1.6 percent of the entire budget, and according to a Legislative Analyst's Office report released Monday, it's way too much.

But leaving construction up to cash-strapped and poorly managed districts, like the LAUSD, is a notion that flirts with disaster. The first thing local jurisdictions will do when it comes time to build a new school is turn to taxpayers.

While in recent years Los Angeles voters have agreed, by and large, that schools are a priority and have approved such measures as the $2.4 billion Proposition BB, they may not be so generous in the future.

We're in this dilemma that has festered largely because no one in the past three decades in the Governor's Office or in the Legislature was willing to sit down and draft a list of capital projects that needed to be built. Gov. Pete Wilson twice vetoed legislation requiring his administration to do it, and Gov. George Deukmejian nixed at least one similar bill.

With education ranked as the top priority for incoming Gov. Gray Davis, he ought to prepare that list of infrastructure needs, ranging from rebuilding prisons and other state offices to building new roads in preparation for a 40-year population boom.

The costs of constructing new schools are too steep for most districts to absorb. It would be a shame if Davis concentrated so heavily on boosting grades and then failed to provide students a place to learn.

If left up to local jurisdictions, we'll see either boondoggle projects like the Belmont Learning Center near downtown Los Angeles - the costliest school in state history - or parents heading to Home Depot to buy materials to build new classrooms.