PIERRE — Four of South Dakota’s gubernatorial candidates declared their support for K-12 education and more local control by school districts in a Friday night forum at the Ramkota.

Speaking at a forum sponsored by the Associated School Boards of South Dakota, Democrat Scott Heidepriem and Republicans Dave Knudson, Ken Knuppe and Scott Munsterman addressed K-12 education policy in speeches and answers to questions from ASBSD members.

The event saw only a few points of disagreement among the candidates, all of whom said education has not gotten its fair share of state resources in recent years. All promised less state interference with school districts.

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“Education represents the most important function of a state and local government,” said Knudson, the state Senate Majority Leader. “The system is under great stress and definitely needs leadership and vision to continually move forward and improve.”

Republican Dennis Daugaard, the lieutenant governor, declined an invitation due to a scheduling conflict. Democrat Ron Volesky, an ex-legislator, was not invited because he had not declared his candidacy by the time the event was organized, ASBSD communications director Brian Aust said.

School board members in the audience applauded several times when candidates pledged to give them more autonomy.

 “It makes no sense at all to me that the governor of South Dakota thinks he knows better than the Centerville School Board what their reserves should be,” said Heidepriem, the state Seante Minority Leader, in response to a question about limits on school district reserves. “If the governor wants to run your school board, he should run for your school board.”

“I believe in local control. I believe in local input,” said Knuppe, the former president of the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association. “That’s one of the things I’m going to be pushing for as we go through our race here.”

The four candidates also agreed K-12 education issues in South Dakota are closely tied to budgetary and economic issues. The state is currently facing a structural deficit in excess of $100 million due to falling revenues and higher costs caused by the recession.

“Education is economic development,” said Munsterman, the former mayor of Brookings. “We have to integrate our economic plan with our education plan.”

The candidates did differ on some points.

Knudson was alone in advocating a change to the state’s education funding formula from an annual increase of 3 percent or the rate of inflation, whichever is less. Knudson advocates an annual increase of 4 percent or inflation, whichever was more, as long as that number was less than the growth in state revenues.

“We’ve been constantly shrinking the size of our state support to K-12 education as a percentage of our total budget,” Knudson said. “That needs to stop.”

Heidepriem said he likes the current 3 percent cap — and wants to apply it to the rest of state government to stop education from being crowded out.

“Not funding education adequately is a choice,” Heidepriem said. “It’s a choice we make commonly in South Dakota.”

Knuppe said schools should try to recapture some of the habits of previous decades.

“Kids used to be tested to see what they learned. Now it seems as if our teachers are the ones being tested to see what they teach. That seems wrong to me,” Knuppe said. “We don’t need to go back to where it used to be, but we need to bring it down a bit and give some local control back to school boards.”

Knuppe also emphasized providing options for students who aren’t college-bound.

Munsterman had a different emphasis.

“We’re watering down the core subjects,” Munsterman said. “Post-secondary educators tell me again and again, the kids are not prepared. They have to put them through remedial classes.”

Despite some disagreements, all four candidates agreed education would be a top priority.

Heidepriem compared the annual per-student cost for education — around $6,500 including special education and retirement benefits — to the annual cost of incarcerating a prisoner, $33,000.

“The fact is, a legislature unwilling to invest in education is bound to invest in prisons,” he said. “We can either educate children when they’re 6, 7 or 8, or arrest them when they’re 16, 17 or 18.”