'There's a better way than bankruptcy,' says schools expert  The
San Jose, Calif., school bankruptcy announced in June is not
likely to be the first of many, in the view of a national expert
on education financing. Joseph M. Cronin, president of the
Massachusetts Higher Education Assistance Corporation, puts it
this way:  ''When people really understand what it means in
terms of a governmental structure serving little children, they
realize that it does not serve the state well to have any of the
other schools even considering bankruptcy. A function of
government is stability.''  Mr. Cronin was formerly Illinois
state superintendent of education and Massachusetts secretary of
educational affairs.  Cronin says a school district is not like
a corporation, which, under free-enterprise economics, ''goes
under'' if it is inefficient.  ''In a school system,'' he says,
''the urgency is the constant stream of children who present
themselves for educational services. There is no option to go
out of business.''  As he