Education takes key campaign role.

Byline: David Steves The Register-Guard

SAXTON EDUCATION PROPOSALS: Create a rainy day fund. Retain new teachers through higher pay and mentoring. Reward teachers for performance, not seniority. Pool purchasing power of multiple school districts. Invest more in higher education. Reduce school districts' health care costs.

KULONGOSKI EDUCATION PROPOSALS: Provide access to Head Start for all eligible 3- and 4-year-olds. Fund schools adequately to reduce class sizes, ensure full school years and restore courses that were eliminated because of budget cuts. Attract and keep highly-qualified school employees. Restore the Oregon Mentor Teacher program. Phase in a "shared responsibility" program that increases student aid for college and university students.

From incoming kindergartners to returning college students - not to mention their parents and teachers - many tens of thousands of Oregonians are facing up to a new school year.

The top two candidates for governor are trying to put education on the mind of Oregon's voters as well. Both traveled the state Tuesday to highlight their ideas for improving the way schools, colleges and universities use public money to educate students.

And both left a key question unanswered: Where would the money come from to fund the improvements they say are necessary?

Democratic Gov. Ted Kulongoski made appearances at schools in Eugene, Portland and Salem to tout his plans. They center on spending more money for education, with promised outcomes that include full enrollment in Head Start for all eligible 3- and 4-year-olds and phasing in a "shared responsibility" plan to boost state spending for financial aid so that all Oregon students can afford a post-high-school education.

Meanwhile, Republican challenger Ron Saxton spent Tuesday on his second day of a weeklong "Back To School Bus Tour," with rallies before several GOP groups.

At those events, Saxton is vowing to improve the quality of schools through greater efficiencies and more innovation - without driving up overall spending.

Saxton, formerly an adviser to the nonprofit Chalkboard Project, is championing several of the foundation-funded nonprofit group's initiatives.

Saxton said those and other proposals he supports would employ "common-sense management" to ensure that education dollars are spent efficiently and responsibly.

"It's about recognizing that having schools that work involves more than just funding," he said, describing an array of dollar-stretching steps he'd like schools to pursue. Saxton said he supports pooling purchasing by multiple school districts.

The Chalkboard Project has said savings of $118 million a year could be realized through such efforts.

Another Chalkboard Project initiative to draw Saxton's interest is retaining new teachers with higher pay and mentoring programs.

Saxton said he wants to put more money in the state's rainy day fund for schools. He hasn't said exactly where the money would come from, but recently raised the possibility of using some or all of the projected $238 million in corporate "kicker" tax breaks for such a fund.

Larry Wolf, president of the Oregon Education Association, said his union opposed an element in Saxton's push to pool districts' spending, which calls for the consideration of spinning off some work to private firms.

The union also opposed Saxton's proposal to pay teachers based on performance.

Saxton said that, unlike Kulongoski, he is willing to take on the unions.

"The governor has a loyalty to the unions that got him elected and he's not going to step on their toes," Saxton said.

"I think these are some very common-sense changes that need to be looked at," he said.

Kulongoski's agenda for education in his second term is built around an idea he started to champion late in the last regular session of his current administration. He dubbed the idea the Education Enterprise.

It is intended to unite the prekindergarten-through-postgraduate educational system by focusing the entire system around the goal of preparing today's students for success in the emerging economy.

"I want to give every child in Oregon the chance to succeed in this new, exciting century," Kulongoski said.

He said accountability measures such as regularly scheduled audits of school districts and tracking skill development and college readiness were important parts of his agenda.

But the central idea is to require that 61 percent of state general fund spending go to education.

Kulongoski said he would start with $6 billion for public schools from the state - a 15 percent increase from the current spending level.

From there, he said, all facets of education would get a biennial increase of 10 percent.

But how the state could afford to channel that much more into education is unclear. Would the state need to cut other services? Or would the state need to increase taxes? Kulongoski's plan isn't addressing those questions.

Kulongoski said the biggest difference on education between the two major-party candidates is that he was willing to talk about spending more for it, while his Republican challenger was not.

"Saxton likes to talk about increasing efficiency. I think you have to do both. Find the efficiencies and make the investments," he said.