Ah, the Wonders of Technology.  A mere one day after the Education Policy conference committee finished its work, the conference committee report is online and available for download.  It's a 160-page conference committee report that covers the waterfront in terms of education policy.  Most of it is clean-up or customizing of existing programs, but there are a couple of provisions that, while not earth-shattering, do bring some new perspectives to the education process.  Perhaps the largest of these is the set of requirements dealing with English Language learners and world language proficiency that comprise Article 1 of the bill.  I will be providing more insight once I fully digest everything in the bill.

Here is the link to the bill:  https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/text.php?number=HF2397&version=0&session=ls88&session_year=2014&session_number=0&type=ccr&format=pdf

"Saturday in the Park" or "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting."  It's hard to tell right now what it's going to look like, but we're all here--"all" meaning a broad range of lobbyists--waiting to see if the Omnibus Supplemental Appropriations bill will be put together today or not.  The larger budget target from which all the differing issue area has been set, but now comes the trickier part of putting together the amounts for each of the different budget areas that comprise the larger bill.  The process used this year is not used very often (I can only think of one or two times there has been an omnibus supplemental appropriations process that combines multiple broad budget areas and that has usually been during special sessions) and it's more labyrinthian than the targets-by-budget area method that it usually used.

The supposed deadline for the work on the conference committee to be finished is Sunday night.  We'll just have to see if that deadline is met.