“The provision of an adequate public education for the citizens shall be a primary obligation of the State of Georgia.”

— The Georgia Constitution

School bells are once more ringing across the Atlanta region and big yellow buses are again taxing the capacity of our winding roads.

At first glance, it might seem business as usual as the 2009-2010 school year begins. It’s not, thanks to a ravenous recession that’s ripped multimillion-dollar hunks from Georgia’s state budget.

In recent weeks, school districts around the state have been scrambling to respond to a 3 percent cut in education funding announced by Gov. Sonny Perdue to help address stubbornly dropping state revenues.

Districts have scoured budget ledgers for cost savings. As in the business world, the accountants have taken aim at personnel costs — often a big part of budgets. Thus, thousands of Georgia teachers — who, on average, earn $48,300 a year, according to teacherportal.com — are facing the prospect of working several days without pay. That’s a not-insignificant sacrifice for teachers, although such pain has already been felt by thousands of people in other jobs.

Given persistent drops in funding, school districts’ budget-slicing response is understandable, yet reactive. School and state officials must make cuts in this hard-times economic environment, true.

In business, the most-expedient short-term cuts can sometimes have the unintended consequence of damaging an organization’s competitiveness and ability to produce a quality product over the longer-term. We must guard against that happening to our schools.

Balancing budgets demands short-term cuts. We must quickly ask, though, how the state and school districts can best be proactive and strategic in getting ahead of the recession’s budget-wrecking headache ball. How can we provide the best education for Georgia’s children, given a harsh budget environment that may be with us for awhile?

Why should school officials behave like jet-setting management consultants? Well, it’s pretty clear by now that this recession’s a hill-and-dale marathon, not a sprint. The prospect of a long, slow recovery’s looking a lot more likely than a fast ride back to prosperity and growth.

State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox says elsewhere on this page that school districts are embracing innovative thinking as they work to make best use of limited dollars. That work must be encouraged from teacher lounges to the Gold Dome.

School officials must borrow heavily from the reinvention playbook that’s been passed around the private sector more fervently since the economy’s light darkened. Troubled companies, or those facing an increasingly competitive marketplace, have long rebuilt their operations to reflect new realities. U.S. automakers have been forced to do so in spectacular fashion, shedding more than 100,000 jobs, closing plants and rethinking their business model to survive.

Hopefully, our schools won’t have to go through such a dramatic example of what economist Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction.” There’s still plenty of reason, though, to look afresh at public schools from top to bottom. The goal should be to find the most-efficient management structure and teaching methods that will improve our quality of education and give our kids the best shot at thriving in today’s competitive global economy. As the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education wrote, “The future economic vitality and productivity of Georgia and of the nation will depend on the academic preparation and support all students receive in public schools today.”

A look at Georgia’s educational stats gives us ample reason to loudly ring the re-engineering bell. Our high school graduation rate for poor students was 61.5 percent in 2006. For students of at least middle-class means, only three of four graduated. That dismal rate doesn’t make easy the state’s sincere efforts to create a competent work force prepared to handle the jobs of both today and tomorrow.

And, given historic levels of state spending on education, we’ve got to make sure every penny invested in schools buys the best possible result. Georgia was a middling state in school spending even before the economic bust. A U.S. Census report released last month ranked Georgia 25th among states in per-pupil spending for 2006-07. Georgia’s $9,127 per pupil put us ahead of Montana, but behind Nebraska on the list.

And education budget cuts have a history in Georgia. Each fiscal year since 2003, “austerity” reductions have been made in state funding, totaling more than $1.5 billion since 2003.

Given all that, the status quo needs to be closely examined with an eye toward resetting school operations to be as efficient as possible while not shortchanging the critical work done by teachers in classrooms across the state.

This is an exam our schools can’t fail. Our future is at stake if we flunk this test.

Andre Jackson, for the Editorial Board

Atlanta Forward: In coming weeks and months, we will look at major issues Atlanta must address in order to move forward as the economy recovers. Look for the designation “Atlanta Forward,” which will identify these discussions.