On Thursday, the Colquitt County Board of Education plans to approve a property tax increase. Board members and staff have made it clear they do not want to raise your taxes. They say the state is making them do it, and that is basically true. The state has created a situation where raising your taxes a little bit is vastly preferable to losing a state grant and having to raise your taxes a lot to make up for it.

In a nutshell:

— The school system is funded by property taxes, the Local Option Sales Tax, state basic funding and a state equalization grant for less affluent counties.

— The state legislature has defined less affluent as unable to operate a school system while taxing the community less than 14 mills.

— Rising real estate values have pushed Colquitt County’s tax digest higher and higher. As the tax digest increases, the property tax rate needed to fund the school system’s budget has gone down.

This year, the Colquitt County School System could fund its budget with a tax rate of slightly less than 14 mills — but only if it receives the equalization grant. If the state cuts off the grant when the school system levies a tax of less than 14 mills, the school system would then have to levy a tax of much more than 14 mills to make up for the lost state funding.

Or to put it a harsher way: For years the Colquitt County School System was considered a poor system that needed help from wealthier parts of the state, and as property values have risen it’s in danger of no longer being a poor system and will have to pull its own weight.

Shouldn’t that be a “by the bootstraps” success story?

But it isn’t. Look at the recent Georgia Milestones test results. Almost 4 out of 10 of Colquitt County’s third graders are reading below grade level. Almost half of fourth and sixth graders are too. While it varies by grade level, only about one-fourth to one-third of the county’s students are rated proficient or better in English/language arts. Mathematics scores haven’t been released yet, but previous years give us no reason to think they’ll be much better.

School board members have taken very seriously their responsibility to keep taxes as low as possible, and that is laudable. They’ve spoken with state Rep. Chas Cannon about changing the state law that bases equalization grants on the 14-mill tax rate. Last session, he proposed changing that to 10 mills. His bill passed the House but failed in the Senate.

But maybe that’s the wrong way to look at this.

The increase in millage rate will bring more money into the school system. What if the system can use that money to address its shortcomings. Would it allow for smaller classes? Would it allow the schools to hire instructors specifically to teach reading to younger children? Maybe it would let them hire more bus drivers — which wouldn’t necessarily change the Milestones results but it would fix a problem that the system has struggled with for years.

The school board has told us how much they don’t want to raise taxes. They’re going to have to do it anyway. Now, can they tell us what the community will get for the extra cost?

Because it might be worth it.