Education bill shorts Minnesota students, schools

Gov. Mark Dayton signed an education bill into law on July 20 that delays an additional $780 million in aid to public schools and imposes significant policy changes affecting students and educators.

Once again, lawmakers turned to schools to help close the state’s budget deficit without the new revenue that the governor and Democrats had asked for, and that Republicans repeatedly rejected. The state had already delayed $1.4 billion in E-12 aid; the new shift brings the state’s debt to school districts to $2.2 billion. The additional loss of revenue will force most school districts to borrow and pay interest.

“School children should not be forced to pay for adult problems,” Education Minnesota President Tom Dooher said. “But that is exactly what happened in the deal to end Minnesota’s state government shutdown. Every public school student, in every public school district in Minnesota, is worse off today.”

Republicans also insisted on inserting policy language into the compromise legislation, although the worst of this year’s attacks on educators and unions did not make it into the bill. There is no educator salary freeze, no vouchers, no elimination of tenure/continuing contract and none of the “reforms” promoted by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

The bill does include a statewide teacher evaluation proposal that appears more constructive than the Republican proposal offered during the regular session. However, Education Minnesota is still evaluating this and other provisions in the bill.

Details of the bill were worked out privately between Republican legislative leaders and the Dayton administration. The measure, special session HF 26, passed 71-57 in the House and 36-28 in the Senate, with no Democrats voting for it. It was part of a huge package of budget bills negotiated over five days of intense talks.

The E-12 bill calls for $13.6 billion in spending over the next two years – on paper, a $195 million increase after accounting for shifts. These are some of the spending changes:

School districts will receive only 60 percent of the money the state owes them in the current year, with 40 percent shifted to the following year. The current shift is 70/30. The money is not only delayed, but amounts to a real cut of about 10 percent in state aid for all schools. Two years ago, when the Legislature enacted the 70/30 shift, schools lost 20 percent that has yet to be repaid.
The per-pupil general education formula will increase $50 in each of the next two years to help districts cover the cost of borrowing to make up for the delayed aid payments.
Integration aid – a key point of dispute between the governor and the GOP – will be eliminated in its current form after 2013 and replaced with a new program yet to be determined. An appointed task force will make recommendations.
A new “literacy incentive aid” program championed by Republicans will reward schools where students are already doing well in reading with at least $29 million in new funding.
New “scholarship” programs will help low-income families pay for public or private preschool and reward students who graduate early from high school. (No quality rating system for early childhood providers was included.)
$10 million will be recouped from unused alternative teacher compensation revenue, meaning it is likely that no new alternative compensation plans will be funded.

Policy changes in the bill include these:

The Jan. 15 teacher contract deadline and penalty were repealed.
The $3 set-aside for licensed student support personnel was eliminated.
The 2 percent set-aside for professional development was suspended for two years.
Teachers must be evaluated annually, with evaluations based 35 percent on student “growth” on tests or other state or local measures of student growth. Local districts and unions may negotiate an evaluation system according to guidelines; if they don’t, the district must adopt a statewide evaluation system to be developed by a task force.
Districts must adopt literacy plans, undertake interventions and provide staff development to ensure all children read at or above grade level by the end of third grade. Students are not required to be retained, however.

July 20, 2011