School facility funding varies across state

Lawmakers greeted a Schools Facilities Financing Working Group report by stressing the need for fairness across Minnesota.

A 16-member working group was created last session to explore ways of making financing school more equitable while keeping funding formulas and administrative procedures simple. A joint hearing of the Senate E-12 Division and House Education Finance Committee was held Wednesday to review its report and recommendations.

Superintendent Bob Indihar of the Moose Lake School District, working group co-chair, said the state’s school facilities finance structure “makes it nearly impossible for some districts, like Moose Lake, to pass a bond (for infrastructure improvements).”

Programs like alternative facilities funding and the capital project referendum levy rather than ease disparities serve to sharpen them, the working group concluded.

The group proposed eight recommendations to make the system fairer:

• Establish a new long-term facilities maintenance revenue program beginning in 2017;
• improve the debt service equalization;
• equalize the capital projects referendum levy;
• establish a new school facilities improvement revenue program;
• increase the operating capital revenue allowances and index operating capital funding for inflation;
• provide enhanced debt service equalization to address unique situations or needs;
• streamline the review and comment process; and
• address the facility needs of other educational entities, such as charter schools.

“I will tell you they’re excited in rural Minnesota about these recommendations,” Indihar said.