Oregon’s education service districts were established with the best of intentions years ago, a means of providing services to several school districts at a time for less money than they could purchase those services individually.

And, while the agencies have been successful in many ways, ESDs have had enough problems in recent years to warrant serious attention from the Legislature.

That body will have the chance to reform the system again when it meets in 2007; it must, this time, be successful.

The ESD system was created in 1993, when every school district in Oregon was required to join one of the 29 new bodies. ESDs offered specialized services, from special education to counseling to purchasing, that school districts could not afford on their own. In that respect they’ve been a success. The state’s smallest school districts, as an example, now have counseling and testing services available that they could only dream of in the past.

But all has not been rosy with ESDs. Last year reporters for the Baker City Herald discovered leaders of the Union-Baker ESD were planning to purchase an airplane and that they’d billed the state for students they did not serve. In Beaverton, meanwhile, an $8 million headquarters has been dubbed the “Taj Mahal” for its lavishness. And, most recently in Salem, the superintendent of the Willamette ESD signed a secret settlement with an unsatisfactory administrator that gave the latter a nearly $8,000 per month consulting contract plus $11,000 in attorney fees. Superintendent Maureen Casey signed the agreement without consulting her board of directors after the fired administrator filed a civil rights suit against Casey alleging age and sex discrimination.

Now lawmakers have gotten into the act, asking the state’s Teacher Standards and Practices Commission, the Government Standards and Practices Commission, the Secretary of State’s and Attorney General’s offices to attend a meeting next month with an eye to investigating the situation. Lawmakers this year attempted to bring some order to this unruly system, largely by requiring consolidation of the current 20 ESDs into a more manageable number.

Their efforts were foiled, however, when they buckled in the face of heavy pressure from ESD supporters, and the consolidation plan was left voluntary. They’ll have another shot at the problem in 2007, and this time they must find the strength to overhaul the system to provide necessary services accompanied by the sort of oversight that has clearly been lacking in the past.

With school money so tight in Oregon these days, anything less is nearly as shameful as the problems the ESDs themselves have exhibited.