There are always good reasons to increase funding for schools.

And in Lewiston, especially, the city has done a good job over the last several years of holding the line on tax increases. But when we heard that the city’s school committee is requesting a 6.4 percent budget increase, it stopped us in our tracks.

The school committee believes the spending is necessary, and its members might be right. One of the biggest new items in the budget is to hire six new teachers to help 150 new Bantu students learn English. Other spending includes adding women’s hockey and bowling teams and three high school teachers.

Superintendent Leon Levesque told the Sun Journal the budget isn’t controversial and it won’t affect the city’s tax rate because state funding for education is increasing.

We think he’s wrong.

First of all, laying much of the budget increase at the feet of an immigrant community – whose children the city has a legal obligation to educate – sets up a replay of the divisions sparked when large numbers of Somalis moved to the city during the tenure of former Mayor Larry Raymond.

Secondly, no tax increase is a long way from reduced taxes.

The intent of L.D. 1, which was enacted last year, was to increase the state’s share of education funding so that localities could lower property taxes. Recognizing that the state’s property tax rates are out of whack, Gov. Baldacci and the Legislature created a plan that will put more of the responsibility for school funding on the state government, which raises revenue primarily with sales and income taxes.

According to reports from the Maine Municipal Association, the state Chamber of Commerce and the Baldacci administration, the law is working, but there’s a great deal of variance between communities.

The original proposal that became L.D. 1 required that municipalities pass onto property taxpayers 90 percent of all new education funding. That provision was removed, allowing some communities to rationalize that the increased state money provided relief by eliminating the need to raise taxes.

The Lewiston School Committee’s budget, which passed unanimously, will be presented to the City Council in April. At that point, the council can approve it or send it back to the committee for reconsideration.

Every business and every household in the state, just like school systems, is feeling the pinch of higher health insurance costs, higher energy costs and the need to give workers raises.

Levesque told the Sun Journal that while the overall budget is growing, the burden on city taxpayers has shrunk. In 2001-02, Lewiston taxpayers spent $15.1 million on education. Five years later, the proposed budget is asking for $13.9 million.

Lewiston is expecting about $2.6 million in new state funding for education for this school budget. Little or none of it will be passed on to taxpayers.

For a budget described as not controversial – at least for School Committee members – we have to wonder just how the City Council and voters will react. We think they’ll see it differently.