PORTLAND - The gap between the haves and the have-nots among Oregon schools got a whole lot wider this week with the failure of the Measure 30 tax increase.

While the most immediate consequence of the vote is the loss of about $300 million in funding for next year, the Measure 30 results have far broader, long-term implications for Oregon's 13-year-long effort to ensure that rich or poor, schools have the same amount of money to spend on their students.

Analysts have linked Measure 30's failure in precisely the places it would historically have been expected to succeed - most notably Multnomah and Lane counties - to the fact that voters there had already passed local measures to help fund schools.

"It is hard for me to see what incentive they (Multnomah County voters) would have to vote for the statewide measure," said David Conley, an education professor at the University of Oregon. "Why should they pay more if they have already passed a local levy?"

The result, Conley and others said, is that a handful of wealthy, liberal-leaning communities will be able to cushion themselves against the worst of the pending state cuts, while many other districts will have to chop school days and lay off teachers. That's the exact opposite of what the funding equalization movement was trying to achieve.

Besides Multnomah County, home to the state's largest school district, voters in Eugene, Ashland and Beaverton have successfully passed local funding for schools in the past few years. A few other communities have indicated that they may follow suit, including Bend, and possibly Hillsboro.

For the vast majority of Oregon districts, though, a local funding levy is out of reach, thanks to a bad economy and a tax-averse population. Harney and Benton counties have found that out the hard way, after trying and failing to pass local levies in the past year.

"We don't have a very good chance in our district, or in districts similar to ours, of raising money through a levy system," said Dennis Carter, superintendent of the Ontario school district. "I think there is an inclination where people can do a local levy to say, well, we can solve our problems, we are not worried about everyone else's problems."

Officials in districts that have managed to pass local levies say they still believe in equal statewide funding, but also defend the right of their local communities to support their own schools.

"Unfortunately, we don't seem to be getting statewide solutions, so we are forced to be entrepreneurial and seek local solutions," said Juli Di Chiro, superintendent in Ashland, where local residents pay a city tax that supports extracurricular activities.

Once, school funding in Oregon was largely a local responsibility, drawn primarily from property taxes, which benefited property-rich districts like Portland. But Oregonians passed a property tax cap in 1991, known as Measure 5, that shifted the bulk of school funding responsibility to the state.

Now, the state funds schools using a complicated formula that adds up state money and local property taxes, then distributes the money to schools based on enrollment levels. The hope was to bring all schools up to the level of the state's best-funded; 13 years later, with state money for schools shrinking, the reality is different.

For Gov. Ted Kulongoski, who said after Measure 30's failure that he wants to focus on job creation, the equalization problem remains a real and thorny one.

"It is a real Catch 22," said James Sager, an education adviser to the governor. "Our concern is that, for the short term, while there are communities that feel like their schools are protected, that has not moved us closed to a longterm solution statewide. It puts additional pressure on the state legislature and the judicial system to step in and take action to get us back to equalization."