There is far too much gamesmanship going on in the battle over how much the Department of Education should have for school repair and construction.

Gov. Linda Lingle and some Republican legislators have complained that the department's $300 million-plus wish list of new construction and repair projects makes little sense since it is already sitting on around $550 million. Why ask for so much more when you're sitting on a half-billion?

All this makes for good political rhetoric, but it's not quite in sync with reality.

It's true that more than a half-billion dollars have been appropriated by the Legislature over the past three years for various school construction and repair projects. It is also true that not all that money has been spent.

But that's the nature of things, particularly in government contracting. It takes time to conceive a project, put it out to bid, select a contractor get the work done.

That figure of $557 million kicked around by Republicans represented the total appropriated by the Legislature between 2003 and 2006. Until recently, only about $344 million had been released by the Lingle administration, so the DOE couldn't have spent the full amount even if it had wanted to.

Of the $344 million put in DOE hands, all but around $150 million was either spent or tied up for specific projects already under way. The remaining $150 million is earmarked for specific projects that will eventually come online.

A fairer complaint, perhaps, would have been to ask why the DOE wants more money when it still hasn't spent $150 million it has in its bank book. Not as dramatic as a half-billion backlog, perhaps, but still substantial.

The answer is that the construction process is like a pipeline: You have to continually replenish it at the beginning to have continuous action at the end.

Lingle has weakened her own argument about a huge backlog in a couple of ways. First, she has already said she wants to put some $90 million in new projects on the books. That's far short of the DOE's $368 million wish list, but it still recognizes that new money and projects must continually be added to the construction agenda.

And the administration has told the DOE it is now ready to cough up another $100 million appropriated by the Legislature but until now withheld.

In effect, the argument that the DOE really doesn't need a lot more money because it is sitting on a bunch has been made moot.

So where to go from here? For starters, the two sides should get past their arguments about numbers and start working on a common goal of bringing our schools out of the 19th century and into the 21st. Our keiki are in our schools for only a very brief time. We must not allow politics and gamesmanship to shortchange them during their short time with us.