Gov. John Kitzhaber will resign effective at 10 a.m. Feb. 18.

SALEM — When Gov. John Kitzhaber unveils his state budget for the next two years, he will recommend millions in spending to improve reading skills, boost high school and college graduation rates, and link education to careers.

His budget presentation is scheduled Monday morning at the capitol.

The Democratic chief executive will start his fourth nonconsecutive term as governor. He was governor from 1995 to 2003, and then was elected again in 2010 and on Nov. 4.

Although details will have to await Monday’s presentation, Kitzhaber laid out the choices three weeks ago at a meeting of the Oregon Education Investment Board, which he leads and which oversees education spending.

In the 2013 Oregon Values & Beliefs Project survey, conducted by DHM Research of Portland for a coalition of public and nonprofit institutions, 81 percent of those sampled ranked spending on public schools as very or somewhat important — first among 20 services — and 68 percent ranked community colleges fifth.

The total for the list of education choices presented to the board Nov. 10 adds up to $842 million.

“It’s unlikely we are going to be able to do all of them, given our budget constraints,” Kitzhaber said. “But we want to know that our resources are actually linked to the outcomes we are seeking to achieve.”

Chief among them, he said, are children’s readiness to learn as they enter preschool, their ability to read at a third-grade level, their completion of high school and college — and mentoring for their less-experienced teachers — and their transition from school to work.

The most expensive options are aid for third-grade reading skills, $400 million; college aid, $137 million, and readiness for preschool and full-day kindergarten, $130 million.

At Kitzhaber’s urging, lawmakers created the new superboard in 2011. The 13-member board not only oversees all education spending — which accounts for more than half of the tax-supported general fund and lottery proceeds — but also enters into agreements with school districts, community colleges and state universities for academic progress of students. These are known as “achievement compacts.”

Most board members have been awaiting an analysis of how much their education policy choices would cost, and what effects their choices would have on student achievement.

While most board members praised the menu of choices — particularly for third-grade reading — there still were disagreements at the Nov. 10 meeting.

“I agree that this is taking a step in moving us toward the kind of transformation we need and is an improvement over the status quo,” said Ron Saxton of Portland, a business executive, former school board chairman and the 2006 Republican nominee for governor.

“Attendance to me is the worst measurement of what we fund, yet that’s how we still hand out most of the money.”

But Johanna “Hanna” Vaandering, an elementary-school physical education teacher and president of the Oregon Education Association, said she is suspicious of shifting various state formulas to come up with more money to achieve some of the goals.

Though she acknowledged budget limits, the leader of Oregon’s largest teachers’ union said schools simply need more teachers and more money.

“’Incentives’ are a slap in the face of the educators who work in this state,” she said. “To think you are going to ‘incentivize’ us out of this (funding) hole is not correct.”

Nichole June Maher, president of the Northwest Health Foundation, said the board has spent three years laying the groundwork for a new structure to link spending with student results.

“I signed up to be part of this board to make real change and develop strategies to meet the needs of students who we have historically left out,” she said.

“Just more money without transformation (of the system) won’t get us the outcomes we want.”

Though more money is available for state education spending because of better economic projections, Kitzhaber said he is also using savings from restraining the growth of health-care costs for low-income people and state employees.

He wants to extend the coordinated-care model to thousands more employees covered by the Oregon Educators Benefit Board, and redirect those savings to education programs.

Although education spending has gone up in the state budget for 25 years, much of that resulted from a statewide limit on local property taxes that voters approved in 1990 — and a resulting shift of state money to offset those losses.

But Kitzhaber says that “structural deficit” is on track to being eliminated in another four to five years, barring unforeseen income-tax refunds that are triggered by Oregon’s “kicker” if collections exceed projections.

“For 20 years, we have been behind the curve,” he said. “This gets us into a position where economic growth results in significant investment.”

Education spending is the biggest chunk of the overall budget that will go to lawmakers, who open their 2015 session Jan. 12. They will approve separate funding measures for agencies ahead of the start of the next two-year cycle, which starts July 1.

Although current state spending from all sources is projected at $62.6 billion, the focus will be on the portion that lawmakers have the most control over in the tax-supported general fund and lottery proceeds. That current total is $16.8 billion, and it is projected to increase to $18.8 billion in the 2015-17 cycle.

The bulk of the state budget consists of federal grants and other funds, which are usually restricted.

Kitzhaber, in a Nov. 6 interview, said he would recommend additional state spending on child care to complement a renewal of the child-care tax credit, which will expire at the end of 2015 unless lawmakers re-enact it for six more years.