Minnesota Coalition Pushes for a “21st Century” Schools and Funding

The Minnesota state legislature needs to “bring [the] education funding formula into the 21st century,” says a coalition of statewide education organizations, school districts, and parents. The coalition, named P.S. Minnesota, is dedicated to providing to all students “the resources they need for a world-class education” and is engaged in an advocacy campaign directed at pushing the state legislature to update what they say is an outdated and inadequate funding formula.

More Demands, Less Money

Minnesota, like many states, has faced major budget shortfalls and cutbacks in recent years, and as a result the state has not fulfilled its promises for funding its public schools. Between only 1999 and 2003, the state dropped from 11th in the nation in per pupil spending to 19th. Furthermore, according to the Grand Forks Herald in 2005, Minnesota school districts reallocated $416 million in funds meant for regular education instruction in order to adequately cover special education needs. State and federal requirements are getting more stringent each year, P.S. Minnesota argues, and Minnesota schools are being forced to do more and more with less and less money.

While the 2001 property tax reform law signed by former Governor Jesse Ventura in 2001 shifted the responsibility of funding “core programming” at public schools entirely to the state, major budget shortfalls in the years since then have caused state funding to fall behind the needs of schools. As a result, parents and communities have been shouldering a substantial burden of the costs of education. Ninety percent of Minnesota districts rely of “operating referenda” – local referenda approved by voters – to meet district needs that the state had said it would meet. According to the state Department of Education, these referenda are responsible for almost ten percent of school revenues.

Schools are even turning directly to families to raise money. Fees paid by students and families for coursework and extracurricular activities increased 45 percent between 2002 and 2005, to over $60 million per year.

Much More Needed to Get the Job Done

Frustrated with a lack of initiative on the part of the state, P.S. Minnesota commissioned a costing out study to determine the amount of additional funding necessary to provide all Minnesota students an adequate education. The result was, as Jay Haugen, a school district superintendent wrote to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, “astonishing.” The study identified a target spending amount over one billion dollars higher than schools are currently spending. In addition, P.S. Minnesota is pushing the state to cover the full costs of core programming, as was intended in the 2001 law. To meet this goal would require an additional effort from the state of over $500 million.

Strong Public Support

Minnesota citizens appear to agree with the study’s conclusions. In a poll conducted in February, nearly sixty percent of likely voters – and 64 percent of likely voters in households with children in public schools – said schools do not have enough money to “get the job done right.” Respondents, when asked, said that schools needed smaller class sizes, quality preschool, and more technology. Two-thirds of those polled believed the state should invest more in education, even if it means raising taxes. Fully 92 percent of voters agreed with the statement that more money for schools improves education.

Public schools in Minnesota, according to P.S. Minnesota, are being required to meet more mandates each year, and they are being given less money with which to reach their goals each year. As Jay Haugen said in the Pioneer Press, it is as though an employee, after telling her boss that her budget will not pay for a list of needed supplies, has her budget cut further and is given a longer list of supplies to buy. This situation, Minnesota residents agree, is unacceptable. “Our future economic success depends on the continued development of our students as the creative, innovative and motivated workforce of tomorrow,” P.S. Minnesota says. “All Minnesotans benefit from great public schools.”


Prepared by Matthew Samberg, March 15, 2007