Spend more with less money.

That's the impossible demand Democrats who run the state Capitol seem anxious to make on local school boards across Wisconsin.

Democrats who control the governor's office and the Legislature suggest they're going to repeal a long-standing law that effectively caps annual pay raises for public school teachers. Democrats have been promising to remove the cap for more than a decade and now have the political power to do so.

But allowing higher annual raises for teachers will require more money from somewhere. And state leaders don't have any dollars to spare. They're staring at a record state budget shortfall.

So where will the money come from?

Not from property taxes. Gov. Jim Doyle and other Democrats suggest they'll keep in place a state cap on local school district revenue. Revenue caps limit how much local property tax levies can increase.

That will leave school boards with higher salary expenses but no easy way to pay for them.

School boards will have to lay off teachers to find the money to pay the higher raises for those teachers who remain. Or school boards could gamble by going to referendum and directly asking voters for more money -- a hard sell during such a tough economy.

Doyle suggests savings can be found on health insurance. He's right that teachers unions, under the current system, have been clinging to very costly and generous health benefits at the expense of their salaries.

But there's no guarantee that lifting the limits on teacher pay raises will bring savings on health insurance. Changes to health plans would have to be negotiated.

A better approach for state leaders is to concentrate on closing the gap between what the state requires school boards to spend and the amount the state allows school boards to collect in revenue.

State leaders should strive to narrow or close that gap. They should use the state budget crisis as an opportunity to rethink how Wisconsin pays for its schools.

A lot of hardworking school teachers deserve more money. And there's strong bipartisan and public support for giving merit pay to the best teachers.

But requiring school boards to pay every teacher a lot more with less money isn't the answer.