It was with a tired sort of déjà vu last week that Montanans heard that more than 170 school districts in the state are facing financial shortfalls when their next fiscal year begins July 1.

That was the testimony from educators before the Legislature's interim Education and Local Government Committee Friday, despite an increase in state support of nearly 8 percent for this year and nearly 2 percent for the next.

Jim Standaert, a legislative fiscal analyst, told the committee that 40 percent of Montana's school districts would need mill levy increases in order to maintain current budgets. The trouble is that many of them already are at their spending caps, and so they could not increase their levies even if voters wanted to approve them.

Declining enrollments are part of the problem, because the state's support is based on the number of students a district has. Fewer students mean less money. Another problem involves rising costs for energy and gasoline. In addition, school boards are increasingly forced to give teachers solid pay raises in order to keep them. "Lots of states are eager to gobble up our teachers," said Darrell Rud of the School Administrators of Montana.

Unless you are willing to assume that school districts across the state are recklessly blowing money -- an assumption readily made by some -- you have to believe the problem has to do with Montana's school-funding system. We had hoped that substantial changes would result from the recent lawsuit by the Montana Quality Education Coalition, but no luck there.

We can only hope a future Legislature will choose to revamp the system, including untying state funding from student enrollment.

In the meantime, the committee was told that a number of large school districts are facing big deficits. The shortfall next year for Helena schools was estimated at $1.6 million. Here we go again.