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The single largest item in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recently proposed budget — and arguably its most important — is the $91 billion (plus $60 billion in local and federal funds) it would spend to educate the state's nearly 6 million students, from transitional kindergarten through high school.

How well they are educated, prepared for higher education or the job market, will be a big factor determining whether California’s economy, and thus its socioeconomic whole, succeeds or fails.

Not surprisingly, given the amounts spent on education and its importance, it ranks very high in the Capitol’s annual give-and-take over the budget. That’s certainly true this year, as Newsom’s last budget shorts the state constitution’s mandatory allocation for schools by a few billion dollars, with a promise to make it up later, which drew opposition from school officials throughout the state.

Education perennially ranks very high in surveys of voters’ priorities. The school lobbies, including the very powerful California Teachers Association, will use that as they press the Legislature to raise their share of the revenue stream.

With the high stakes of education financing and its place in Californians’ hopes for a prosperous future, one might think that those who aspire to succeed Newsom would happily volunteer their intentions.

That would be especially helpful given that Newsom, as a parting gesture, wants to all but eliminate the elective office of state superintendent of public instruction and vest nearly all education oversight in the governor’s office.

If that rearrangement of duties is enacted, the next governor would be a virtual czar of the nation’s largest public education system.

However, the silence about this among the leading candidates for governor is deafening. They are more than happy to exchange personal insults during debates and in campaign ads, and to hold forth on such issues as gas prices, housing and homelessness. But they leave a vacuum when it comes to how, or if, they would change the school system.

Only one candidate, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, repeatedly brings up this issue during debates, noting that he is a former teacher. The other candidates’ blackout is compounded by the eagerness of debate mediators to interrogate the candidates on other issues while failing to bring up education.