To the editor,
Students in our community continue to be deprived educational opportunities because our schools have remained at or near the bottom of the state’s unfair, per-pupil education funding formula for many years.
The root cause of the persistent funding inequity is the current state formula which calculates funding biased in favor of metro and suburban area school districts to the disadvantage of exurban and rural school districts such as ours. Our fantastic schools are filled with dedicated, excellent teachers and staff and our children expect and deserve better than the state is presently delivering.
As a former educator myself, I'm a strong believer of ensuring the highest quality education for our children. This is the reason equity in education funding has been one of the top priorities I've been fighting for my entire time in the Legislature in order to increase education funding to our schools. I’ve chief-authored and co-authored multiple legislative proposals each term seeking to resolve this issue and help our children and schools. House Files 425 and 455 are the two bills I’ve chief authored this term with Sen. Mary Kiffmeyer chief authoring the Senate companion bills. Both Sen. Kiffmeyer and I continue to meet, discuss, and strategize this critically important issue with a multitude of superintendents, school board members, teachers, parents, students, and colleague legislators.
I’m deeply frustrated the metro Democrat Chair of the House K-12 Education Finance Committee once again chose to ignore our community by denying both my equity funding bills HF 425 and 455 bill hearings in his committee. In response, when the Democrat House majority brought their K-12 education finance omnibus bill to the full House floor in May, I had each of my bills HF 425 and HF 455 drafted as amendments that I then offered in my attempt to have each adopted into the omnibus bill. The truth is many school districts across the state are in similar low funding positions as our community but only my Republican colleagues spoke up in favor of my amendments. Even more frustratingly, metro Democrat Chair Davnie voiced his strong opposition to my amendments and the Democrat majority defeated both of my amendments that would have helped our children, teachers, and great staff.
While my bills and amendments were defeated by the metro-centric House Democrat majority, I will not accept defeat and I will never stop fighting for our children’s education!
Sincerely,
State Rep. Eric Lucero