Yes, yes, yes, but …

GOSH, it’s hard to be against new school buildings. It’d be like being against apple pie.

Kids have to learn-and they have to have decent heating in the winter and cooling in the summer to keep their minds on the math and spelling. Who could argue against that? Isn’t that just common sense?

Yes, yes, yes.

A teacher would have a hard time teaching a class if she were constantly moving buckets around to catch water from a leaky roof. Or patching a tarp on a broken window. Besides, a leaky roof or a broken window tells kids that education in their community isn’t really valued. Isn’t that the wrong message to send them?

Yes, yes, yes.

When kids are put in a safe environment and made comfortable, and the adults and taxpayers in the community show the respect for education that they ask of the kids, doesn’t that make for what the educantists call a Proper Learning Environment?

Yes, yes, yes.

Yes, but . . . .

The story on the front page of Arkansas’ newspaper Thursday didn’t just seem innocuous, it was innocuous: The state handed out $130 million to 92 school districts around the state to help them improve school buildings. You know, a new air-conditioning system here, a new roof there, a whole school campus over yonder. Surely all these buildings, like most older buildings, could stand an upgrade. Since the state got into the business of funding school improvements after the Lake View decision in 2002, taxpayers have paid out hundreds of millions of dollars to local school districts. One estimate shows that by 2015 the state will have paid out more than $800 million this way. All for schools. Wonderful, right? Yes, but.

But then one remembers that the state came up with only $7 million this past session to fund programs that reward Arkansas’ best schools.

Hundreds of millions for buildings. Including $130 million just this year. And $800 million in about a dozen years.

Against $7 million for the best of the state’s schools.

Do you see something wrong here? Like priorities gone askew?

Too many of us in Arkansas, including our lawmakers, seem to feel that better facilities automatically equal a better education. They don’t. Not according to research from around the country that shows again and again that what results in a better education is . . . better teachers. The way to get and retain the best teachers is to identify those who are doing the best jobs and reward them and their schools. The state has a program to do just that. With all of $7 million to spend.

As much as that new roof may be needed, it’ll never connect with a student and improve his life the way a great teacher does.

AH, THIS idea and great experiment called America. Where governments can give other governments money. (Obamacare, anybody?) Now all these millions of “free” dollars will flow from Little Rock to local school boards. Notice the scare quotes around the word free. If you pay taxes, you’ll understand why they’re needed.

What’s most confusing, though, about this distorted picture is why the state is giving so much money to so many districts where the tax base is so high. It’s easy to understand-and applaud-the state’s helping to help fix up campuses in poor districts, but some of the districts identified in the story Thursday can scarcely be considered poor.

No doubt the Lake View ruling was well-intentioned. The state’s Supreme Court said the state’s schools should be equitable and adequate. But the ruling seems to be used these days to justify spending on buildings. And mainly buildings.

Why not strive for more than adequate? As long as Arkansas puts its top priority on adequacy instead of excellence, there’ll be too much mediocrity in the schools. So how do you go about draining mediocrity out of schools? By finding, rewarding, keeping and following the example set by the best of them.

The $800 million for buildings is fine.

But.

Only $7 million set aside to reward the best schools is not. It’s more like woefully inadequate. Our upside-down educational priorities ignore the secret to a great education.

To quote James Garfield, who would have been a great president if he hadn’t been shot down before he had a chance to fulfill all his promise as a leader: “The best college,” he once said, “is Mark Hopkins at one end of a log and a student at the other.” A general, scholar, war hero (Chickamauga) and president of the United States for a painfully short time, James A. Garfield could recognize a great teacher when he saw him-and value him.