No school district can escape it, which means no school district taxpayer, student, parent or employee can escape it, either.

School education budgets will be painful for the 2009-2010 fiscal year because of the state's financial mess. The hefty increases in state aid that districts count on each year could turn into cuts. Gov. David Paterson's proposed budget slashes school aid by 3.3 percent statewide, but in local districts no proposed cut is smaller than 4.24 percent.

With that much money off the table, districts will inevitably be forced to make major spending cuts, major tax increases or some combination of both.

In isolated cases in years past, we've seen what happens when districts face these types of decisions. Communities divide. Morale dips. Dissension develops.

Those problems often developed, though, because school boards and their constituents weren't communicating until the end of the budget process. The public wasn't showing up to meetings or paying attention to news reports, but the board wasn't making an effort to publicize the challenges they were facing and actively seeking the public's input.

As a result, when the final proposed budgets were adopted in early spring, the shouting began.

That must change this year. Each school district should be holding public meetings specifically devoted to the budget crisis, meetings at which they will discuss with the public what priorities should be. And communities' residents who claim to have a strong interest in the school system need to make the effort to participate early and often.

We're pleased to see the Auburn and Jordan-Elbridge school districts have already planned some of these outreach sessions this month. Other districts need to follow suit, and they need to do it soon.