Oregon lawmakers have agreed to spend some $7.3 billion on secondary education in the next two years, an amount teachers and school officials say is not enough. They may be right, but the Democrats’ latest “solution” to the problem is worse than the problem itself.

Democrats have been talking about voting to keep the income tax kicker state residents are likely to receive next year. That amount, now projected at about $350 million, would bring education spending to nearly $8 billion, likely enough to get required all-day kindergarten off the ground without forcing cuts elsewhere in school district budgets.

Despite the talk, a grab for the kicker likely would fail. It takes a two-thirds majority of each house of the Legislature to keep the kicker for emergency spending, meaning at least two Republicans in the Senate and five in the House of Representatives would have to vote with Democrats to do so.

Don’t hold your breath.

Oregon’s constitution requires that the state project how much it will receive in tax revenues each biennium. If revenues exceed that projection by more than 2 percent, everything over the projection must be sent back to taxpayers.

It’s a system with flaws, to be sure, but it has had the desired effect of holding government spending at least marginally in check.

Meanwhile, it’s difficult to find an emergency in the amount lawmakers have agreed to spend on schools. True, Republicans had lobbied hard for more money, funds that would come by recalculating spending priorities across the board. Democrats proposed the amount lawmakers approved.

If lawmakers genuinely believe the current amount earmarked for education is too low and that every cent being spent elsewhere is where it should be, they should do what they did in 2012, when Oregonians voted to repeal the corporate kicker and send the money to schools.

They should ask voters to change the way the personal income tax kicker works.

A better system for the kicker would allow the state to keep the overage up to 2 percent even if the total revenue is greater than that. Everything greater than the 2 percent overage would go back to taxpayers.

Pass that change, not a kicker grab.