Gov. Sonny Perdue's task force on education finance is recommending that Georgia's public school systems be allowed to use state funds with fewer restrictions.

After more than three years of meetings, though, the panel still hasn't decided what to do about the outdated state funding formula, which was supposed to be the focus of its inquiry.

Task force members were scheduled to finalize multiple recommendations for the governor Monday, a week before the start of the legislative session.

Instead, they're expected to provide a single suggestion to create more flexible spending rules for school systems, which state lawmakers may consider during the next few months.

Some observers of the long-running process are incredulous about the lack of progress on changing the formula, created in 1985 to determine how much state money schools should receive to educate every student.

"After 3 1/2 years, that's what we get?" asked Sally FitzGerald, who follows education policy for the Georgia PTA.

Dean Alford, a former State Board of Education member who has been leading the panel, said creating a new system of "performance contracts" that the state will enter into with each school system must come before any changes can be made to the decades-old funding formula.

Under the proposal, which Alford has been discussing publicly since September, school systems would agree to meet more rigorous academic standards in exchange for freedom from mandates — such as strict class-size rules — and flexibility to spend state dollars where they choose.

If that plan is accepted by the governor and legislators, Alford said it would alter the cost to educate Georgia's 1.6 million public schoolchildren and the funding formula.

"One of the things that we're really trying to get our hands around is all the unique cost components, and we've made a big stride," Alford said. "We're working as hard as we possibly can. But we're working on things that haven't been worked on [before]."

When the governor convened the group of about two dozen educators, policy experts, politicians and business leaders in August 2004, he told them he wanted a simpler, more equitable system of funding public schools that would allow the state to achieve educational excellence.

"I want recommenda-tions on what is the best possible formula," Perdue said then.

The following year, the task force hired a consultant to help develop a "cost model," which was supposed to provide the price of an excellent education.

Late last week, panelists still were holding telephone conferences to flesh out ideas.

Contacted Friday, the governor's office declined to comment on the anticipated recommendation, although his spokesman acknowledged that Perdue was aware of the plan.

The task force has been criticized for its slow pace and lack of progress.

At one point, insiders thought they would be finished by the end of 2006. More recently, Alford said the group would have final recommendations to the governor last month.

"There was some anticipation that we would bring this to close at a meeting before the holidays, but there were more questions and suggestions," said Steve Dolinger, a member of the task force who is president of the Georgia Partner-

ship for Excellence in Education, a business-affiliated group.

"It's been a long process, and probably longer than many people expected, but you can't rush something like this," Dolinger said.

Superintendents and school board members frequently complain that state leaders have been shorting education for kindergartners through 12th-graders.

Since the 2003 fiscal year, the governor has subtracted hundreds of millions of dollars from the funding formula every year. Initially, Perdue said the "austerity reductions" were necessary because of a budget deficit, but the yearly cuts continued even after state revenues improved.

Regardless of what the governor's task force does, a civil trial set for next fall could determine whether state officials have shirked their duty to provide an adequate education for Georgia's students.

Rural school systems have made that allegation, and it's the question raised in a lawsuit filed by the Consortium for Adequate School Funding in Georgia weeks after the task force was formed.

"There is a minimum level of funding that a system must have to offer its students the kind of instructional program they need in today's world," said Joe Martin, the consortium's executive director. "Performance contracts may be a good step, but they don't address the fundamental issue."