PORTLAND (AP) — The message Gov. Ted Kulongoski delivered to a room full of educators on Friday was mixed — education is his top priority but funding likely will be undermined by the sagging economy.

Kulongoski began with the warning that planning for success in schools is essential or “we are determining never to succeed.”

But he ended by saying the whole state will likely suffer from the economic meltdown and there was a good chance it was “going to get worse before it’s going to get better.”

The governor told the Oregon School Board Association convention that he hoped to avoid the across-the-board budget cuts that shortened Oregon’s school year earlier this decade.

But he also said some cuts may be necessary and stuck by his decision to ask the state schools superintendent to hold up on distributing $130 million in school improvement funds.

Kulongoski said he knows that many schools have included those funds in their budgets but they may be needed to balance the current state budget. He said he hoped that wouldn’t be the case.

At the end of the 2007 legislative session, Kulongoski signed landmark education budgets into law which allocated $6 billion for K-12 schools.

At the time, Kulongoski and other lawmakers had called the increased funding a turning point that would continue well into the next session.

But that all came before the national economic meltdown that has spread to Oregon.

“We are here today, once again caught in the downdraft of the national economy,” Kulongoski told the convention before launching into a detailed description of just how much state revenue projections have fallen and how many jobs nationally have been lost.

The governor reassured them that, “in tough economic times, children go to the front of the lines,” but he warned that funding would be an “uphill climb” that the state may have to make without its education reserve or the state rainy-day fund.

Kulongoski said he hopes to hold on to those reserve funds because he is not sure how much further the budget will shrink with every new forecast showing increased reductions.

Under the circumstances, the governor said he would wait on mandating tougher graduation requirements, something he’s called for before. “I am opposed to new mandates that are not funded by new resources,” he said.

Kulongoski did, however, ask school officials to continue to plan for the tougher education requirements. Once the economy is back on track, he said he wants to be able to institute the requirements right away.

“The next two years will not be easy,” Kulongoski said. But, he promised, he would not ask children to wait.

Rinda Montgomery Conwell, assistant superintendent of the North Central Educational Service District, said after the speech that the possibility of losing $130 million in funding could leave many school districts without money they have already budgeted.

“If it’s as bad as he’s saying, it may well be we don’t get any,” she said.