School superintendents in low property wealth districts lobby for disparity aid

Madelyn Jesser gets it done in the classroom. The high school senior has taken several Advanced Placement classes during her time at St. Michael-Albertville High School.

She would have liked to have taken more and recently learned that a neighboring school district offers three times as many AP classes to its high school students as does her home district. She also learned that such limited opportunities in AP and other courses like the fine arts and music exist because the school district she attends has a significantly smaller property tax base to draw from than neighboring districts.

“We simply have inadequate funding to provide our students with these valuable opportunities that our peers in neighboring school districts have,” Jesser told the House Education Finance Committee Friday in support of HF983. The bill would provide districts like St. Michael-Albertville that have low general education revenue and property wealth per pupil with general education disparity aid allowance based on their adjusted net tax capacity per adjusted pupil unit.

The committee laid the bill over for possible omnibus bill inclusion. Its companion, SF604, sponsored by Sen. Mary Kiffmeyer (R-Big Lake), awaits action by the Senate Finance Committee.

Rep. Eric Lucero (R-Dayton), who sponsors HF983, said school districts that do not qualify for categorical aid would be helped by creation of the disparity aid formula.

“Increasingly, we are seeing a growing disparity gap for those districts that are largely in bedroom communities and have a lot of agricultural land. They don’t have a lot of industrial base, which creates a disproportionate tax base,” Lucero said.

School districts would qualify for such disparity aid in one of two ways:

• if the district's adjusted net tax capacity per adjusted pupil unit is less than the value of the district at or immediately below the 20th percentile of districts, or
• if the district's referendum market value per resident pupil unit is less than the value of the district at or immediately below the 20th percentile of districts.

Under the proposed funding formula, a school district like St. Michael-Albertville would receive about $216 more per pupil in funding.

The additional dollars would allow St. Michael-Albertville schools to stretch their classroom dollars further and expand curricular opportunities that allow it to get closer on par with its neighboring districts, said Superintendent James Behle.

“It’s challenging for school districts like ours that do not have tax base to levy for larger amounts of revenue needed to provide the opportunities to our students that neighboring districts have,” he said.

Superintendents from the Elk River and Farmington school districts also testified in support of the bill.