State leaders enter new session indicating they may stand pat on big K-12, child care investments

Star Tribune - 2/14/2024

Minnesota schools won $2.2 billion in new funding the last time the Legislature met, but as lawmakers reconvened this week, the 2024 legislative session thus far carries little hope of a splashy education encore.

Restraint, instead, is the message, and it's been heard by education advocates, who nonetheless plan to continue to push for additional revenue as district budgets are squeezed.

"We educate the children and we won't quiet our voices," said St. Paul Public Schools Superintendent Joe Gothard, who serves as board president of the Minnesota Association of School Administrators.

The voices are welcome, and the needs will be heard, but much of the help to be offered may have to wait until next year, said state Rep. Cheryl Youakim, DFL-Hopkins, who chairs the House Education Finance Committee.

Gothard and others, while thankful for a boost in per-pupil aid and funds to help cover special education and English language learner costs, say the new money did not make up for years of underfunding and, in many cases, left districts like St. Paul still having to dip into rainy-day funds to balance 2023-24 budgets.

They would like an additional 2% on the basic per-pupil aid formula — the funding stream they deem most flexible and that is used to pay staff salaries, transportation and other general operations. The cost: $160 million, according to the Minnesota School Boards Association.

"We understand that's probably going to be an uphill battle," Scott Croonquist, executive director of the Association of Metropolitan School Districts (AMSD), said Monday.

Looming over this year's legislative funding requests is a potential shortfall in the state's next two-year budget. That forecast, which was released in November, is to be updated at the end of February, giving hope to some groups — early-education and child-care advocates among them — that prospects may brighten and new investments still might be possible.

But the consistent message from lawmakers has been: "There's no money," said Matt Shaver, policy director for the education advocacy group EdAllies.

For that reason, he touted last week the potential value of a modest $1 million increase in a fund that pays prospective educators to student teach. Most are not paid during those 12-week programs — a significant barrier to people who are looking to change careers or come from diverse backgrounds.

"We don't have enough teachers of color in the pipeline," Shaver said.

On Wednesday, the House Education Finance Committee heard about the launch of a program to bolster the ranks of special education teachers — work made possible by last year's sweeping education bill. On Thursday, the panel is expected to be updated on the new universal free meals program and the Read Act, which is changing the way children learn to read.

Bob Indihar, executive director of the Minnesota Rural Education Association, said that the Read Act, and its requirements to train teachers in the new instructional methods, has been a major point of discussion during the past year, and will need some fine-tuning this session.

"We're looking at how it can get paid for long term, how to fulfill timelines and finding time to train the personnel," he said via email Monday.

On Wednesday, Youakim singled out the Read Act as a potential beneficiary of one-time funding.

Croonquist said AMSD is pursuing permanent funding for a new program allowing hourly workers to tap into unemployment insurance during the summer. It has been credited with helping districts retain bus drivers and other employees, but is limited to one-time funding through 2025. Last summer, districts paid out about $40.5 million in benefits, leaving about $95 million to spend this year and next.

The 2023 session provided a major lift to early childhood advocates by enabling more low-income families to access quality child care or preschool programs. Early learning scholarships that for years stood at $70 million were raised to about $196 million a year in 2023-24 and 2024-25.

Efforts ensued to expand the scholarships to middle-income families this session at a potential cost of about $500 million. Then came the November budget forecast.

Ericca Maas, director of policy and advocacy for Think Small, which administers the scholarships in Hennepin and Ramsey counties, said this week the group will continue to promote a middle-income expansion, even with legislators preaching austerity.

"That tension is how the system works," she said.