Gov. Tom Corbett is focusing on the good stuff: Though his budget proposal slashes higher-education funding by hundreds of millions of dollars, he stressed in today’s address that he held the line on support for basic education.

“There are no cuts. In fact, you will find a slight increase,” he said, according to a prepared copy of his speech.

That’s true, technically — but it leaves out some important details.

The vast majority of that boost is going to pay for school employee pension obligations, which the Corbett administration expects will increase. In Corbett’s budget proposal, employee retirement funding will go up 52.6 percent, from $600 million last fiscal year to more than $916 million now.

There’s not too much Corbett can do about those rising pension costs, even if he wanted to, because the state constitution prohibits cutting pension benefits for existing or retired teachers and state employees.

So, yes, Corbett proposed a major increase to one part of basic education funding. But to pay for it, he’s also asking for a number of cuts.

In his proposal, pre-K funding goes down more than $4 million. Funding for job training goes down $4.8 million. The Mobile Science Education program loses all of its funding. So does the School Nutrition Incentive program. There are cuts to youth development centers, adult and family literacy, and safety initiatives.

Plus, this is all on top of last year’s education cuts totaling $1 billion.

Bottom line: For many schools, this probably won’t feel like much of a funding increase.

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