After slicing $10.8 million annually from its budget last summer, Spokane Public Schools is looking at another $2 million in cuts because of a projected decline in student enrollment. But because it writes budgets in two-year cycles, the district has time to consider what to cut.

“This is a fine-tuning year. … It’s about maintaining tough decisions we already made,” said Mark Anderson, associate superintendent for school support services, in a recent article.

But that won’t be the case if the Washington Legislature makes moves that force school districts to revisit budget decisions. Against the backdrop of this perpetual funding uncertainty, the Legislature is reconsidering its basic education funding formula. The current debate over financing school libraries highlights the urgency of that effort.

Last year, Spokane parent Lisa Layera Brunkan kicked off a grass-roots campaign to protest cuts to library services at Spokane Public Schools. In the course of her efforts, she discovered that other districts were shortchanging their school libraries by cutting staff. Her hard work took center stage last week as she testified at a Senate hearing.

Lawmakers are considering two bills. The Senate version would mandate that districts use a specific formula for spending on libraries. The result would be more money for librarians, but Spokane Public Schools says that would come from current allocations.

That means that the district would have to restore some of funding cut last year and then find reductions elsewhere. Last summer, the district enacted painful cuts that included library services, extracurricular activities and the closing of an elementary school. Only difficult choices remain, and they all have constituencies.

The new cuts could very well spawn new grass-roots efforts to restore funding, and the cycle would continue.

The House version would supply new money to districts for student support services, which would include librarians and counselors. Districts, of course, favor this version. But the new spending raises pertinent questions about whether competing interests have a better claim to the money.

Spokane Public Schools already diverts voter-approved supplemental levy money to cover state-mandated services such as special education, transportation and six-period school days (the state pays for five). That option isn’t available to districts where voters reject levies.

It should be obvious that the state’s funding approach is broken when activists with good causes can only be placated by taking money from other good causes.

The Legislature needs to end its piecemeal approach by adopting a funding formula that meets the needs of communities and fulfills its paramount duty to fund basic education.