Tuesday’s editorial spelled out the frustration with an ever-increasing tax burden on property owners in the Butler School District — 26 school tax increases in 27 years.

Many of us hoped the tax hikes would stop after the 2015-16 consolidation closed five of 11 elementary schools. We hoped it would provide some relief. The district’s consultant, Thomas & Williamson, projected annual savings of $3.5 million.

But the increases keep coming, despite Butler School Board’s dogged efforts to cut expenses.

The board will furlough 37 staff positions and demote eight others next year, according to the tentative budge for 2017-18. This follows 44 job eliminations in 2015-16. The board will draw about $1.4 million from a dwindling cash reserve, which already has shrunk to a perilously low level.

Even with these measures in place, the $104.23 million preliminary budget for 2017-18 includes a 3.2 mill increase in the property tax rate. It raises the rate from 97.8 mills to 101 mills. For a property assessed at $20,000, that’s $64 a year more in taxes.

Tuesday’s editorial suggested it’s time to consider state oversight through the School District Financial Recovery Early Warning System. Let’s return to the topic to take a closer look at what it might entail.

Act 141 of 2012 established the early warning system enabling the state Department of Education to identify and provide technical assistance to school districts in financial watch status. “The principal goal of the guidelines is to identify and provide technical assistance to school districts to prevent them from becoming financial recovery status school districts,” according to the act.

Education Department officials analyze the district’s budget and other financial data along with any additional data relevant to the community’s financial condition, including fiscal measures and socioeconomic data of the district’s municipalities. This initial analysis includes fund balance ratio, borrowing base capacity and debt ratio.

Only four of Pennsylvania’s 500 public school districts are in financial recovery status, which essentially means they are under a state-mandated financial recovery plan. Duquesne City School District in suburban Pittsburgh is the only Western Pennsylvania district in financial recovery status.

Five more districts are under financial watch status. Financial watch means the state is working with the district to plan and implement its own recovery.

In Western Pennsylvania, districts under financial watch include Wilkinsburg, Aliquippa and Erie City School District.

Wilkinsburg and Aliquippa were placed on the watch list in 2013. Erie was added in September 2016. All three had gone through the agonizing steps the Butler finds itself now experiencing — furloughs, consolidations, program eliminations and spending of cash reserves — along with tax increases.

Wilkinsburg went on the list after it sought court permission to borrow $3 million to pay its bills. In 2011, Wilkinsburg closed an elementary School and cut 87 jobs.

Aliquippa went on the watch list with outstanding debt at 228 percent of expenditures at the end of the 2011-12 fiscal year and a projected $725,000 shortfall. Much like Butler, Aliquippa is a former mill town experiencing a decline in economic development. Unlike Butler, the town has been in financial distress under Act 47 since 1987.

Erie underwent a consolidation that closed all four high schools. It received an emergency $4 million state grant this school year to help offset a projected 2017-18 deficit of $10 million, blamed on stagnant revenues and spiraling health care, charter school tuition and employee pension costs.

If the symptoms sound familiar, they should.

Here’s the information that perhaps is most important: Financial watch status makes the state help voluntary. Butler can take it or leave it.

Please, take it.

The next step would be financial recovery status, which has mandatory state controls and state oversight. There’s nothing attractive about the financial recovery status option.