Charles Martone lives in Concord.

New Hampshire’s public schools are at a breaking point. So are many homeowners, who pay local property taxes to support those schools. There are several and varied reasons for this sad state of affairs, but everything comes down to one indisputable fact: the state has shirked its constitutional responsibility to pay for an adequate education and continues to make things worse.

In recent months and for many years before that, in article after article, the Monitor has documented the state’s failure to meet its obligation and the attendant consequences for local school districts. How has all of this happened?

Simply put, the courts ordered the state to fix the school funding problem decades ago. The legislature responded by deliberately low-balling school adequacy grants, then made the problem worse by continually downshifting educational costs onto cities and towns. There were no enforcement mechanisms in place while the courts looked the other way.

Now, new cases before the state supreme court resemble the lawsuits we saw thirty years ago. Not much has changed except to say that the we seem to be rather worse off than we were back then.

Throughout this period, no governor has supported a funding plan that would provide meaningful relief to stressed-out school districts and taxpayers. Blame the voters. In nearly every election, the voting public has chosen governors and legislators who have, in the majority, refused to consider funding solutions (“no new taxes”) that would eliminate the education funding shortfall.

So, it all boils down to the current situation wherein public schools are squeezed for dollars, property owners can’t pay their taxes, and voters choose elected officials who won’t fix the problem. We seem to be at an impasse.

In my imagination, there will come a widespread recognition that our state’s tax structure is antiquated, unfair, and unsustainable – that our excessive dependency on property taxes is not the New Hampshire advantage that some politicians would have us believe.

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Whether we are near that moment of understanding I cannot say, but I hope that most would agree: our state’s tax system needs a major overhaul because a patch job will not suffice. There can be no way out of this conundrum unless major players are willing to be open-minded.

I recall that more than twenty years ago, candidate for governor Mark Fernald offered a hybrid tax plan that included the dreaded I-word, an income tax, as well as a statewide property tax. This plan was fairer than the current system and would have provided real tax relief for most homeowners.

Remarkably, a similar plan had previously made it through both chambers of the legislature but was vetoed by Gov.Jeanne Shaheen. An important feature of the property-tax portion of the rejected plan was a homestead exemption for a property owner’s first home. Perhaps the time has come to dust off this plan or consider something similar.

Given the leanings of our incoming governor and legislature, there is no expectation that a major tax restructuring or equitable solution will magically appear. But it is possible, even probable, that public school funding will be in dire straits two years from now, at which point the electorate should be ready to toss out anyone not willing to undertake a tax overhaul. And by then, the court may have issued a new set of directives to fix the problem.