Finishing Last Week . . . And On To This Week.  The House Education Funding Committee finished off the education action for last week with the initial presentation of the Governor's proposed budget for the coming biennium.  There's only so much that can be explained in an hour-and-a-half and the Governor's budget is extremely ambitious and is much broader in approach than what we have seen for a long time.  What we've seen most over the past decade are "narrow and deep" budgets with concentration focused on major budget components and major upgrades in the form of all-day kindergarten and increased pre-K programs; programs that affect almost all school districts.  The upheaval resulting from COVID-19 has certainly forced everyone from school districts on up to the Governor's Office to think outside the box and many of the programs proposed in the Governor's budget aim to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 on learning, both in terms of student academic achievement and the stress and trauma brought on by distance and hybrid-learning models.

Here is a link to the Committee hearing page for that day.  Several information documents for you to download:  House Education Funding, February 4, 2021 (Scroll Down to 10:30 Meetings)

If the education meetings on Monday are any indication, we are now entering the stage when the direction of each house of the Legislature will begin to become more clear and given we have the only legislature in the country that has split partisan control, we can expect those directions to be somewhat different.

The House took up Representative Jordan's HF 603 and Representative Lee's HF 505, two bills that would provide continuing contract rights to community education teachers.  The changes proposed in these bills have long been sought by community education staff and the changes have been resisted by management.  A series of amendments were offered to the bill by Representative Sondra Erickson trying to curb some of the provisions of the HF 603.  All of them failed and most (I can't say for sure "all") on a party-line vote.  These bills have a long and winding path ahead of them, as they need to go through a number of non-education-related committees before trekking back to its likely landing place in the omnibus E-12 bill (provided the HF 603/HF 505 survive the gauntlet). 

The Senate Education Finance and Policy Committee didn't tackle any legislation today, but did delve into several controversial topics.  The first of these surrounds a book being used by some school districts that deals with a police shooting.  While it is the intention of the book to elicit discussion about race, it is viewed by some to as being too critical of law enforcement and that the discussion emanating from the book may actually be further deteriorating the relationship between the police and communities of color.  The committee then turned to the process by which the new social studies standards are being developed.  There has been a push to include a greater concentration on bringing in multiple ethnic perspectives--usually termed "ethnic studies"--into Minnesota's social studies standards.  This is welcomed by some, but others believe it tosses out much of what has been traditionally been taught without much consideration of merit.  It is difficult to discern what the Legislature might do on this front.  There generally has been reluctance on the part of the Legislature to delve too deeply into the standards-setting process and instead leaving that to the committees and panels that compose the standards.  The last time the Legislature got deeply involved, Minnesota ended up with 126 pages of social studies standards in 2004 and I think everyone wants to avoid that path.  However, if one side of the debate or the other believes that the process has gone too far in one direction (or not far enough), I can see this issue working its way into the debate this session.  Lastly, the Minnesota Department of Education outlined its plans on the process for re-opening schools in the coming months.

Neither Snow, Nor Rain, Nor Sleet, Nor Covid can stop the Southeast Service Cooperative from putting on a dynamite legislative forum.  Last week, a strong showing of legislators met virtually with over seventy school board members and school administrators from Southeastern Minnesota.  Kasson-Mantorville Superintendent Mark Matuska served as Master of Ceremonies and introduced several panels that dealt with the basic formula, the special education cross-subsidy, the English Learner cross-subsidy, and property tax fairness (especially as it relates to debt service).  Great job by all the presenters and special thanks to Southeast Service Cooperative Executive Director Steve Sallee and his remarkable staff.