State Sen. Scott Richardson, R-Hilton Head Island, deserves credit for swimming against the tide in the Senate this week to try to get more state funding for public school students.

His efforts drew the ire of his fellow Republicans, and they were voted down. But Richardson was right.

Richardson's amendment that would fund K-12 education at about $2,092 per student was tabled on a narrow 24-22 vote. That would have offered about $400 more per student than the budgets proposed by the House and the Senate.

That move hardly deserves the rebuke Richardson took from Senate Finance Committee Chairman Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence.

To put it in perspective, the state portion of per-pupil expenditures in North Carolina exceeds $4,000. In Georgia, it exceeds $5,000.

And the $2,092 suggested by Richardson would represent only a small increase from the $2,033 per-pupil allocation written into last year's state budget. That amount was reduced during mid-year budget cuts, and the state needs to restore the money. The $1,643 figure proposed by the Senate takes South Carolina school funding back to a level of the mid-1990s, before the legislature and Congress placed higher demands on school accountability.

The state Board of Economic Advisers has recommended base student funding of $2,201.

Richardson is right to argue that disbursements from the state's Property Tax Relief Fund need to be examined. State Superintendent of Education Inez Tenenbaum insists that the 1995 tax-relief law requires the legislature to fully fund the "minimum defined program" for schools before doling out property tax relief. Richardson's amendment sought to strengthen the trigger mechanism of this law to the benefit of school children.

State Sen. Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston, countered that the state legislature, not the Board of Economic Advisers, determines the level of funding needed for the state's "minimum defined program."

That defies the spirit of the law, if not the letter. A safety valve was built into the tax-relief law for a purpose, and the legislature is abusing it. Regardless of what the tax-relief law says, the legislature should have sense enough to abandon it when it faces massive budget deficits in education, Medicaid, corrections, etc.

Richardson was also shot down on a separate attempt to help the public schools. He proposed $15 million to improve English for Speakers of Other Languages programs in the schools.

Give him credit for trying.