There is not enough money in the world to satisfy the vultures circling President Obama’s stimulus package.

And the very worst thing we could do with such a windfall is merely to plug our huge budget holes.

“We can not create increases [to our per-pupil expenditure] that we can’t afford two years from now. Even if the economy rebounds, we’ll still be in a worse position than we are now. We won’t be back to where we were last year or even two years ago.”

This according to John Simmons, director of the business-backed Rhode Island Expenditures Council, crusaders for rescuing Rhode Island’s sad finances.

Even so, I hereby join the vultures.

It might be that only the stimulus could help Rhode Island find its way to a predictable, equitable financing formula for public school students.

We are the only state in the nation that does not have one, the only state with no rationale for how much the state should contribute to educating each public-school child, equitably and with consideration for special needs like poverty. Without such a rationale, each year the state actually increases the inequities between financing for children in one zip code and those in another.

Now the range runs between Cumberland’s per-pupil expenditure (ppe) of $10,392 to Newport’s $18,044. (Data from Information Works.) Maddeningly, the high-spending districts aren’t necessarily investing in kids, but often in expensive, educationally-useless perks for grown-ups, like free health care and give-away sick-leave policies. Stimulus money would allow the state and districts to buy back, renegotiate, refinance and reshape their budgets so that two years from now we are no longer the obviously-mismanaged lunkheads depicted in last month’s New York Times piece about Rhode Island — “Smallest State Grapples with Oversized Problems.”

Happily, state Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Paiva Weed says, “A fair funding formula is a priority for the Senate this year.”

And the Board of Regents has approved a straightforward list of principles for creating a new formula that provides predictable financing, equitably applied, “with a money-follows-the-student methodology,” which means the financing is attached to the child, who might choose a charter or vocational school, and not the home district.

Then why is getting to a formula so hard here?

Ten years ago, the General Assembly stopped using the formula they had. The state was struggling financially, so legislators squabbled about how to distribute school aid. They all believed their own districts deserved more money, for a variety of reasons.

Their solution was to give all districts a percentage increase over whatever they’d spent the prior year, typically 3 percent, though last year it was zero. That base, set 10 years ago, was never adjusted for changes in student enrollment.

Since 1999, Rhode Island’s student enrollment dropped by 6.8 percent.

Three districts have had increases, if you include the two additional students in Block Island, who expanded their system by 1.4 percent. The other gains were in Barrington, with 2.4 percent (79 students more than in 1999) and Burrillville, with 1.6 (41 students).

As Barrington grew, its tiny allocation from the state did not. Their per-pupil share from the state, already quite small, effectively got smaller.

Barrington illustrates how little money correlates to the quality of education. As the fifth lowest-spending district, it has arguably the best schools. Yes, the community is well-heeled, but so are others that spend more for weaker student achievement and less parent satisfaction. Barrington’s secret has been to negotiate “thin” labor contracts that only cover the basics. The staff makes decisions for students, instead of cementing educationally dubious practices in fat, legally-binding contracts. Labor peace was not purchased with perks that drained money from the core mission of the schools.

Conversely, where student population declined, the state’s share per pupil effectively got larger. Five districts had double-digit declines. Newport lost almost a quarter of its students. Newport, and other districts, built the accidental bonus into their budget, mainly with raises and perks for the adults.

Surely their most galling expense is the just-under $1,500 of each per-pupil expenditure that goes to lifetime health benefits for Newport’s retirees, something other districts never dreamed of. Newport curtailed this practice in 2005 and is trying to get new retirees to accept larger co-pays. But even if the benefit dropped to zero tomorrow, they will be paying for this decision for many years to come. Bristol-Warren stopped a similar benefit back in mid-1990s, and now they’re down to paying $800 out of each student’s per-pupil expenditure to cover that cost.

But you can’t just take the money away from Newport, or any other district on the grounds that it was naughty of them to hand out irresponsible perks in the first place. To do so would kill the district. The students would take it in the neck, not the miscreants who signed away their money. In otherwise rich Newport, the majority of public school students are low-income.

Paiva Weed, who represents Newport, says, “What we don’t want to see happen is a leveling down, pitting suburban against urban districts. We’ve seen too many floor fights of urban versus suburban.”

“Leveling down” means taking money away from some districts and redistributing it to others through the formula. She’d like the state to leave the share of the overspending districts where it is until the lowerspending districts catch up. Very expensive. I give Paiva Weed a ton of credit for having the guts to sponsor the often-hated tax cap bill called 3050, which finally forced some spending restraints on schools and towns. But politically she’s caught between a real financing formula and her town’s bad financial decisions.

The state could use the stimulus money to, for example, buy off those retirees so the district can start fresh. Newport’s retiree benefit shows why the state should get involved with standardizing and financing benefits — to bring about public accountability, large, cost-effective insurance pools, and equity among the adults. Almost every district suffers from budget-busting decisions, like Newport’s, that contribute nothing to education. They’ll need help digging themselves out of their self-made holes. In two years they’ll need lower, more manageable costs.

Paiva Weed says, “The most important thing about the stimulus is that we can not create a cliff to fall off of in two years.”

Well yes. And simultaneously, we need to shift the focus of school financing to the needs of the kids, via a financing formula, and away from grown-ups’ political power.

Julia Steiny, a former member of the Providence School Board, consults for government agencies and schools; she is co-director of Information Works!, Rhode Island’s school-accountability project. She can be reached at juliasteiny@cox.net , or c/o EdWatch, The Providence Journal, 75 Fountain St., Providence, R.I. 02902.