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State Representative Tim Faust
100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
651-296-0518
For more information contact: Michael Howard 651-296-8873
NEWS COLUMN
State Needs to Make a Sustainable Investment in Education
With the 2008 legislative session only a few months away, I want to discuss my top priority – Education.
Minnesota has always been a national leader in K-12 education. However, for many school districts, especially in rural Minnesota, a more equitable and sustainable funding approach is needed if we want that trend to continue.
Just last Tuesday nearly 100 school districts asked their local voters to support school levies to provide further funding. Most of these school districts, like Hinckley-Finlayson, needed these levies in order to avoid cuts in their basic services. This is supremely disappointing because property taxes have already skyrocketed, and it’s simply not a sustainable method to fund our schools, yet these school districts and others facing school levies have no other choice given the current funding climate. These school districts are still struggling to recover from the 2003 legislature decision to make the first real education budget cuts in 20 years.
I would have liked to accomplish more for our schools last session, and avoided the need for all the referendums. Unfortunately the Governor did not support our first House education bill. Due to the power of his veto, the education bill we compromised on totaled roughly half the investment in K-12 education of our original bill. I respectfully disagree with the Governors priorities on this matter for there is no question our first bill would have meant a reduced burden on school districts to turn to local voters for a levy referendum.
The situation and the demand for referendums would have been much worse if not for the $800 million in new state education funding we approved this past session. We could not, without the Governor's help, in one year, reverse the pattern of destructive budget decisions over the last four years, which caused massive teacher layoffs, program cuts, and skyrocketing fees across the state.
The current state funding formula, adopted in the 1970's, simply does not deliver an equitable funding source for Minnesota schools in the 21st century. Over the past 30 years, Minnesota has modified this formula to address various factors like poverty, special education, and geographic isolation into the per pupil funding equation. What is known as categorical aid, these funds go toward things like lunches for poor students. Another, less justifiable reason for pupil inequity exists because local spending, fueled by property taxes, has gradually increased in its percentage of total school spending. The state school funding formula has not adequately responded to these changes, and as a result, property tax rich districts, like Edina, receive significantly higher per pupil funding than rural districts that don’t have the same property tax base.
Regardless of where a student lives, they deserve to have access to the high quality education for which Minnesota has earned a sterling reputation. That is why last session I authored a bill creating a legislative task force designed to examine the equity and sustainability of our current school funding formula. This task force, which met for the first time this past month, will establish and define new criteria to fund schools, creating standards which more accurately consider students needs, based on both academic expectations and meaningful accountability. The goal then is to determine how the state can provide that funding in a sustainable way, empowering school districts with genuine capabilities to improve accountability and long-range planning.
I'm optimistic this legislative task force can help devise a practical funding approach that effectively supports all Minnesota schools. The task force is due to make its initial recommendations next January, and I plan to report back to you on their findings.
Delivering a more stable, common sense school funding system will reap enduring benefits for the schools in our area. The quality of education a child receives in Minnesota, shouldn't be dependent on how good a job a school board does in getting a referendum passed or how wealthy that district is. We took a step in the right direction last year, but I am committed and will continue to work for better education for all of Minnesota's children.
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