Schools across Whatcom County will be starting in the next two weeks.

Students at Lynden Christian schools will lead the back-to-school movement, with classes starting Tuesday, Aug. 26. They will be followed Wednesday, Aug. 27 by students in Blaine, Lynden and Nooksack Valley schools.

Bellingham, Meridian and Mount Baker school students start the following Tuesday, Sept. 2. And Ferndale students start Wednesday, Sept. 3.

We wish all students well in the upcoming year.

Their return to school comes at an interesting time for education in our state. While the students are hitting the books and working hard to learn, their parents and voters are engaged in important arguments over the future of education.

In this November's general election, voters will make decisions about how students will be taught in the future.

The key to that decision will come in election races for the state Legislature and for the statewide positions of governor and Superintendent of Public Instruction.

We live in a state where many of our school districts have joined in lawsuits against the state saying the Legislature and government in Olympia is not meeting their Constitutional requirement to properly fund education.

In one lawsuit, districts allege that the state does not provide enough funding for special education students, students the state requires schools educate to the same standards as students without special needs.

In another lawsuit, districts argue that the state is not meeting the requirement of the state Constitution to fully fund education for all students.

Meanwhile, the long battle over standardized testing and the Washington Assessment of Student Learning may be coming to a head in the race for state superintendent, where incumbent Terry Bergeson is a strong supporter of the test and challenger Randy Dorn is talking of getting rid of it.

Our editorial board has not met with Bergeson or Dorn yet this election season, though we hope to do so soon.

We have had a chance to meet with several candidates for the Legislature, though, and almost all of them put WASL and state education funding at the top of their priority list.

That's why it's important that voters push the candidates this fall to clearly outline their plans for the future. Do the candidates support the contention that the state does not fund education enough? If so, would they propose spending more money on education? Are they in favor of higher taxes? Are there other parts of the state budget that can be cut, with that money moving to education?

We have heard a few innovative, cost-saving ideas so far, including talk of saving millions on teacher's health care by moving them onto the system used by other state employees. But we are not sure we have heard a full answer to the question about spending and funding. We're looking for leaders who will make the hard choices to cut elsewhere to make good on the promises to education. We urge candidates to outline clear and complete plans for education as they meet with voters over the next two months.

We also want to hear clear plans for the future of the WASL test. Few of the candidates we have met so far have supported the test. Yet we have heard few definitive statements about whether it should be discontinued completely or just revised. And no one has clearly answered the question of what do we use to judge if schools are teaching our children if we abandon the test altogether.

With our students now headed back to class, we will be looking for candidates with real answers to the toughest test of all.