Dear Friends,
It was quite a busy week at the legislature. Earlier this week, the House overwhelmingly passed legislation known as the Women's Economic Security Act aimed at helping women by providing extended pregnancy leave, boosting funding to assist female-owned small businesses and grants to encourage and assist women to enter high-wage non-traditional occupations.
Though I don't support every measure contained within this bill, I voted yes because it contained provisions aimed at helping moms, mothers, and daughters across Minnesota succeed in today's economy.
On Tuesday, the House debated and eventually passed a bill commonly referred to as the bullying bill. I want to be very clear: bullying is a horrible, horrible thing, and no child should feel unsafe or unwelcome in school.
This bill unfortunately is an unfunded mandate on our school districts that will do little to address the root causes of bullying. This bill pushes an additional $20-25 million in costs on to our school districts at a time when schools are already crunched for funding.
I voted against this bill because I trust our school districts, world-class teachers and principals, and parents to deal with bullying at the local level.
The Department of Education and politicians in St. Paul shouldn't be pushing a one-size-fits-all approach when schools are already developing local policies that are working. Anoka-Hennepin has one of the strongest and most-effective bullying policies in the state, if not the nation. This bill says to schools "we know better than you," and is the wrong approach to addressing bullying.
I also am concerned about the unintended consequences of this bill. Under this new law, students are able to anonymously file bullying complaints against other students. This could result in the very intent of the bill -- reducing bullying -- to backfire, allowing students to abuse the anonymous reporting process to harass other students.
Teachers, principals, and parents know how best to address bullying problems in our schools. We need policies that empower them to craft policies that work for their school district, and not have the State Department of Education dictating requirements to them. Anoka-Hennepin is a great example of great work that happens when school districts are trusted to develop their own policies.
If you can believe it, there's just a few weeks left in the 2014 legislative session. If you have any questions as we approach the end of session, please don't hesitate to contact my office by calling
651-296-5513 or by email at
rep.mark.uglem@house.mn.
Have a great weekend, and enjoy the sunny weather.
Mark Uglem
State Representative, District 36A