One day years ago, your editor covered the meeting at which the officials of Calhoun County, Alabama, decided to stop fighting federal efforts to integrate the races and instead build a unified, modern school that both blacks and whites would attend. One of the officials was also a peace officer, though our memory of which branch is dim, and as the meeting began, he took off the belt and holster that carried his gun and placed them and the weapon in the center of the table. Then he gave a speech, as affecting as it was brief, about how it would be wrong to turn down the kind of money the Civil Rights Act was making available to cooperating school boards. “If they’re willing to give us money to build this school,” he said, “I’m going to vote to take it.”

So we had a bit of deju vu when we read the first sentence of the Monday’s press release from the Democratic Majority in the New York State. “As part of its efforts to enhance New York’s ability to receive federal funding in Phase II of the Race to the Top competition, the State Senate passed legislation to increase the charter school cap and strengthen educational reforms through greater transparency, accountability and educational opportunities for special needs students.” It seems the some facts of life endure, such as the ability of federal funding to overcome even the most entrenched resistance to change at the state level. But in a way it’s somewhat sad that charter schools have become — at least for our Democratic majority in the Senate — not about giving parents a way to get their children out of failing public schools, but a way for the state to get more money.

This was the point made yesterday by our Andrew Wolf, who believes that while the number of charters should be expanded, such expansion needs to be designed adhering to the key principles of competition, common sense and fiscal responsibility that are at the heart of the charter school concept. When we do expand charters, the logic would be to do it at our own initiative, using models that work for New York, not necessarily those dictated from Washington. It took us 11 years to exhaust the current allocation of 200 charters. We see no rush, as the senators suggest, to more than double the cap if the purpose is just to get a teaspoonful full of extra cash. The cash, after all, would be only about 1/3 of one percent of state school expenditures — if New York win the “competition,” no sure bet in any event.

In the haste to put out a bill, the senators excluded some common sense reforms that will, in the long run, strengthen the charter movement, such as allowing the state comptroller to audit the books of charters. We see no justification for not making the financial records of charters – which are receiving taxpayer funds after all – subject to the same fiscal oversight as P.S. 24, down the block. There certainly have been enough well-publicized incidents recently of mis-management and political interference to warrant such oversight. As while we admire Chancellor Klein, we’re not sure that the principles of competition are served when those responsible for the success or failure of conventional public schools are also granting charters.

One local alternative would be to grant the City University of New York, rather than the Chancellor of the public schools, the authority to grant local charters. One thing we have learned in the Empire State, where more tax dollars go to education per child than in any other state, is that more money doesn’t bring better results. That is a lesson that surely applies here. If advocates of charters want to avoid all the kind of oversight that is being debated in Albany, the best course of action would be to take a strategic look at vouchers, where the money would follow the decision of parents on where to send their children and the parents would become the principle enforcers of quality in education. Which, however promising some charters might be as an interim measure. is what this newspaper thinks is the most logical strategic course.