Gov. Mike Dunleavy is nearing the end of eight years leading the state, or, more accurately, masquerading as the state’s leader. He will not be remembered for much other than working to cripple the ferry system, not working with legislators, not caring about vacant state jobs and diminished public services, blaming someone else for all that ails the state, and believing that President Donald Trump is the best thing for Alaska since the Russians sold the land they didn’t own to the U.S. in 1867.

Dunleavy’s term will end in December, and before he leaves the job he will have one more chance to show Alaskans that he cares more about schools than his own political speeches.

Legislators this month approved an assortment of funding mechanisms to provide a one-year boost of about 11% in state aid to K-12 public education. It was a solid effort to help cover the essential services of running public schools, including maintaining productive student-teacher ratios and paying the rising costs of pupil transportation and heating fuel.

A permanent increase in the state funding formula would have been better for school districts that stress every year over state aid, but not enough legislators supported another permanent boost in the funding formula after lawmakers adopted one last year.

Besides, the governor certainly would have vetoed a permanent, upward change in the formula, so why fight a losing battle and have nothing to show for it. Better to go for one-time money, education supporters reasoned, and then hope the governor does not veto the funding.

Which raises the question whether Dunleavy will veto the school money next month in his last budget as governor, or whether he will decide that is not how he wants to be remembered — as the governor who consistently deleted education dollars from the budget, even as schools are closing across Alaska from Ketchikan to Fairbanks.

Certainly, schools are closing for more reasons than insufficient state funding. Enrollment is down as Alaska has lost more residents than it gained in newcomers for 13 years in a row; as Alaskans who do remain are older, with fewer children; and as more parents homeschool their children, which the state will indirectly reimburse.

The governor could sign the budget and proclaim that children deserve as much as the state can afford. Or he could veto the money and claim that he is being fiscally prudent, which is a dishonest way of saying he is more concerned with this political legacy than math, reading, music, art and school libraries.

It’s his choice for how he wants to be remembered.