There’s a lot to say — and we’ve said a lot — about the goings-on in South Butler School District over the course of the past several years.

But we found ourselves almost speechless after learning Wednesday that state officials plan to fine the district $60,000 because of a school year that will, apparently, last only 179 days instead of the state-required 180.

Board members in the district said Wednesday that they plan to fight the fine, which they believe will be handed down after a miscalculation by state officials and contractual requirements regarding teachers’ yearly workload conspired to reduce the district’s days of student instruction for the 2017-18 school year by one day.

South Butler Board members say state officials — who ordered teachers back to work on April 3, after a two week strike — failed to account for Act 80 days that usually are counted as student instruction days when determining how many instruction days the district would have by its last day of school on June 15.

Another complicating factor is the teachers’ contractual obligations, which require them to work 187 days.

District officials say they based their school scheduling around these factors, but have still been deemed one day short.

The punishment, apparently, is the withholding of state education subsidies — state tax dollars — from the district, which come in at the end of every year.

We know what you’re thinking: doesn’t this punishment hit taxpayers in the district rather than school officials? After all, that’s their money being withheld from the district. They paid into the pot just like every other Pennsylvanian, and now their school district gets less back as part of some strange system of reprisal, which is meant to ... do what, exactly?

Which brings us to our next point: this system of penalization is just stupid. It makes no sense.

State officials want to incentivize districts to abide by minimum instruction requirements every year. That’s understandable — even necessary. But the punishment for not complying is less money for student instruction?

How does that make any sense?

It might be time for the state Department of Education to develop a more effective and reasonable punishment for districts that run afoul of the 180-day rule — which, again, is something we’re going to take issue with here.

Not the rule itself, but the fact that it was state officials who apparently could not get the math correct. The department, not the district, made the calculations that determined when teachers had to return to the classroom to meet the 180-day requirement. South Butler officials were simply following orders, and teachers their contractual obligations.

Who’s really at fault here, and what’s the most effective punishment for the crime? Has anyone deigned to ask that question yet?