TAUNTON, Mass. – The debate over K-12 spending has reached ridiculous proportions in one Massachusetts city.

Taunton city leaders are considering ramping up school spending by some $678,000 in a forthcoming supplementary budget in order to avoid being hit with penalties from the state for underfunding its local school system, TauntonGazette.com reports.

The news site does not specify whether city leaders want to spend the money to hire more teachers, to hand out raises to unionized employees, to purchase digital tablets for students, or on something else entirely.

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The truth is it probably doesn’t matter how city leaders spend the money, as long it gets spent.

If city leaders fail to jack up school spending, Taunton school Superintendent Julie Hackett said the district would be hit with a $700,000 penalty by the state.

That’s because Massachusetts officials have a formula they use to determine the minimum amount of money each school district must spend every year on education. (This policy sounds like something straight out of Randi Weingarten’s dreams.)

TauntonGazette.com explains:

Districts are allowed to fund as little as 95 percent of their net school spending requirement in a year, but the unfunded balance carries over to the next year. Districts in that situation often need to spend more the next year to offset the previous shortfall.

If a school district’s cumulative net school spending level falls below the 95 percent threshold, the state could impose penalties, including non-approval of the local tax rate or a loss of state aid.

Taunton has reportedly failed to reach the 95 percent mark for several years. There’s some confusion about how this happened, though officials note the failure to reach the minimum threshold one year has a snowball effect which makes satisfying the state’s requirement a serious challenge – especially during hard economic times.

The apparent idea behind the 95 percent rule is to prevent city and town leaders from shirking their “fair share” of K-12 contributions. The unintended consequences of this policy, of course, are that school districts are discouraged from saving money through hardball negotiations with their labor unions and from being good stewards of the taxpayers’ resources.

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Case in point: Massachusetts school districts, on average, “spent 116.6 percent more than the net school spending law required in fiscal 2014,” according to TauntonGazette.com.

The news site also notes the Edgartown district “budgeted 302.6 percent more than was required for net school spending in fiscal 2014, a higher percentage than any other community in the state.”

But state officials aren’t worried about the gross overspending of those districts – only the below-the-minimum spending of Taunton and three other districts.

Still, it’s not as if Taunton schools are tight-fisted with their students. Reports indicate the district spends just under $11,000 per student. (The national average is $12,608 per student.)

“Taken as a whole, Taunton’s MCAS (state standardized test) scores are slightly below the state average, but generally compare favorably with many other urban districts of a similar demographic makeup,” TauntonGazette.com reported last September. “While Taunton’s 2013 MCAS scores were lower than those from a number of surrounding school systems, the city’s performance compares favorably among other urban districts.”

“I guess it’s efficient use of resources,” School Committee Chairman Joseph Martin said at the time. “We don’t have a lot of money per pupil, but what we have we spend wisely.”

Instead of being taken to the woodshed, it sounds like Taunton schools should be held up to the rest of the state as an example of what smart school spending looks like.

Unfortunately for taxpayers, efficiency and stewardship are not high on Massachusetts’ officials list of priorities.