What's Happening at the Capitol
The 2008 legislative session begins on February 12, less than two weeks away. In light of the current economic times, legislators from both sides of the aisle seem unified in working together to lower everyone's expectations for this session. During last session, the legislature used most of the new education dollars to pay some of the shortfall in state funding for the special education mandate. Thus they were only able to provide a 2% increase to the general education formula for this year and a 1% increase for next year. Many legislators made it clear that they were hoping to provide more education dollars during this session so schools will not be forced to make inflationary cuts. However, in face of the state deficit, additional funding is very uncertain.
Unfortunately, the needs of our schools are constant and do not go away just because the state has less revenue. Public schools need a stable funding source. Without understanding the true cost to educate our children, the Governor and Legislature vary the amount of state funding from year to year based on what is available and not what is truly needed. |
School Finance Reform Task Force
The newly established Legislative School Finance Reform Task Force is forging ahead with their work to develop a education funding system that is rationally linked to learning outcomes. The state must define the true cost to provide the resources that will assure that ALL children meet state and federal mandated graduation standards and proficiency requirements. Rep. Mindy Greiling and the House members of the task force are sitting down with education experts to start putting actual numbers to the funding framework developed by PS Minnesota. The work commissioned by PS Minnesota shows Minnesota is currently under-funding education by over $1 billion dollars.
Once the actual costs are defined and, if as expected, the state is seriously under-funding education, then it time to engage in the real conversation of what is the future for our public schools in Minnesota. Will the state work to provide the resources so that our schools and our children can succeed? Or do we lower the standards to what the state is willing to pay? It borders on ridiculous to hold our schools accountable for results when the governor and the legislature are not holding themselves accountable to funding the very results they are mandating. |
