The Harborfields School District in Suffolk County on Long Island has 3,663 students.

The Queensbury School District has one more than that.

Harborfields School District's budget for 2010-11 was about $69.2 million.

Queensbury's budget for 2010-11 was about $16 million less than that.

Yet when the state aid was cut for that year, Queensbury lost $1.4 million more than Harborfields.

What's wrong with that picture?

According to Rick Timbs, executive director of the Statewide Finance Consortium and one of the featured speakers at last week's community forum at Glens Falls High School, it's the norm across the state that richer downstate school districts are faring far better than local upstate school districts in the distribution of state aid.

The consortium, an organization of 360 New York public school districts, is on a mission to bring equity to the process.

We're on board with that.

With unreasonable state mandates, a pension system that can't be sustained and the use of state aid as a political football, schools are on a course that, sooner or later, will affect the quality of education in all our schools.

We've railed against school spending for oh so many years now.

Our position on that is clear and we believe we have seen some good results in recent years.

u Most schools have become far more frugal with spending.

u The public is paying closer attention to the budgets and often shows up at the polls when tax increases raise their ire.

u And last year, a tax cap was passed in Albany, although maybe a little late, to act as a stopgap for further spending.

Good. Good. Good.

But we also realize that at some point, the slashing of programs and positions is going to impact the core educational mission. At some of the smaller rural schools, that may already be happening.

That means Albany needs to take responsibility for fixing state mandates that hold school boards and their superintendents hostage when it comes to formulating a budget that will be palatable to taxpayers.

This past week, five local school districts - Abraham Wing, Glens Falls, Hudson Falls, South Glens Falls and Queensbury - jointly held a forum to explain the new tax cap law and the difficulties of holding down school spending because of mandates from the state.

Timbs and his consortium are upstate's answer to Robin Hood. They hope to take from the rich school districts and give to the poor.

Their premise is wealthier school districts in New York City and Long Island are far more capable of absorbing significant cuts in state aid and more money should be used for districts that are far more needy upstate.

The Harborfields/Queensbury comparison is a perfect example. Two schools with an equal number of students have budgets that are $16 million apart, yet the school with the smaller budget had more of its aid cut.

"Some (downstate) schools have a fund balance that could last them 40 years," Timbs told the audience. "You are living in a fish bowl; they live in Sea World."

Earlier this month, the Alliance for Quality Education released a report basically saying the same thing. The poorest school districts received cuts in state aid that were often twice as large as the wealthier school districts.

The U.S. Department of Education issued a report last week that concurred. Schools serving low-income students are being shortchanged because school districts across the country are inequitably distributing their state and local funds.

Essentially, the rich get richer.

Timbs pointed out that Long Island, generally consisting of large well-to-do school districts, is still receiving a quarter of all state aid.

Armed with charts and graphs galore, Timbs has taken his case to Albany before, with no results.

That's no surprise. The state Legislature - top heavy with downstate representatives who rarely get voted out of office - would have to agree to cut school aid to their home districts.

The pension system, which Timbs showed to be unsustainable for school districts in years to come, also needs to be addressed.

"This is going to send you to the brink of oblivion," said Timbs.

We're repeating ourselves here, but the solution to this problem is a combination of cutting spending at home and mandates from Albany.

The consortium has recommended several strong steps we believe are reasonable:

u Freezing wages for all public school employees when state aid is frozen or reduced.

u Capping the amount a district can spend on health insurance, and requiring employees to pay a larger share of health care costs.

u Enacting pension reform, which includes making employees contribute more.

u Reducing the costs of special education by having New York follow federal guidelines.

These are the big issues, game-changers that could save the quality of education upstate.

If the Legislature is not willing to take it on, the governor needs to make it his top priority.

Time is running out to get this fixed.

An entire generation of upstate students and taxpayers are dependent upon it.

Local editorials represent the opinion of The Post-Star editorial board, which consists of Publisher Rick Emanuel, Editor Ken Tingley and citizen representative Charlotte Potvin.