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Minnesota House of Representatives

State Representative Bob Dettmer

279 State Office BuildingState Office Building
100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
651-296-4124

For more information contact: Jodi Boyne 651-296-0640

Posted: 2012-03-30 00:00:00
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NEWS COLUMN

March 30 Legislative Update

Neighbors,

This week, I spend most of each day on the House floor. I am looking forward to getting bills passed off of the House floor and presented to Governor Dayton and wrapping up the 2012 legislative session. Today, we passed SF1528 off of the House floor on a 96-31 vote. This bill encourages online learning, and embraces new technology as an important tool to use in educating our students. It’s important to provide 21st century tools for teachers, which this bill does. It also creates additional requirements of the online learning advisory council relating to digital learning, allows basic skills revenue for digital
learning, and encourages all Minnesota students to take at least one online learning course before graduating.

A conference committee met this week to discuss repayment of the K12 school shift. The bill (HF2083) uses the state’s $1 billion of cash reserves to pay back the entire K-12 shift from 2011, and makes the first repayment of the $2 billion education shift from the legislature in 2010. This plan does what is right for our children, for our schools, and keeps our state in good financial health.

The Heath and Human Services Omnibus bill (HF2294) passed the House floor this week. The bill builds on reforms we made last session to the HHS budget – which was perhaps the most challenging portion of reforms to make. Our final HHS legislation from last session built a foundation of spending reductions and reforms, and we were able to take a look at what is working, what can be improved, and continuing the effort to work to further improve our system.

I also would like to mention that we had two students from District 52 - Anna Burke and Rachel Frey, who spent the week at the Capitol as student pages in the House of Representatives. The student page program provides high school juniors with a first hand experience of the legislative process.

Please contact my office with any state legislative questions or concerns you may have at (651) 296-4124.

Have a great weekend.

Bob

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