Wondrous Wednesday.  Wednesday is always the busiest day in the education universe at the State Capitol, with House and Senate K-12 committees all meeting at their appointed times.  The House Education Finance Committee took up two bills that had been passed up to them after gaining approval of the House Education Policy Committee last week.  Representative Cheryl Youakim's HF 378 would provide funding for paid training for paraprofessionals working in Minnesota schools and Representative Fue Lee's HF 786 would fund after-school community academic programs.  The bills were laid over for possible inclusion in the omnibus education funding bill and no funding amounts are contained in the bill at this time.  The bills appear to have fairly strong support in the majority caucus, so it won't be surprising if these proposals have some presence in the House's omnibus bill.  The question will be over how much money may be dedicated to these efforts and we aren't clear on what level of revenue will be available moving forward.  Things will likely be clearer after the February budget forecast is released on Friday.

The House Education Policy tackled the Governor's Policy Bill--HF 950 (Richardson)--and spent the entire committee time discussing the bill.  The bill is approximately 80 pages, which isn't overly large for a policy bill, but it does contain some fairly sweeping recommendations that proponents view as necessary upgrades to Minnesota's education system while others view them as onerous mandates.  The bill features the changes in student suspension policies that have been hotly-debated the last few sessions.  The primary goal of this provision is to combat the disproportional suspension rates for students of color and special education students.  Another section of the bill calls for the implementation of multi-tiered systems of support; a framework that has been picking up steam nationally.  The bill was laid over for possible inclusion in the committee's omnibus recommendations that will be constructed over the next two weeks.  Much of this bill will likely be contained in that later package, but the committee may not accept all of it.

The last committee of the day was the Senate Education Finance and Policy Committee and the committee concentrated on a variety of initiatives related to teachers with most of the concentration on increasing the number of teachers of color in Minnesota.  SF 446 (Abeler) The Increase Teachers of Color Act and SF 526 (Koran) The Black Men Teach Twin Cities Program zero in on the goal of getting more people of color into Minnesota's teaching ranks and keeping them there.  Senator Julia Coleman's SF 781 is not as direct in promoting increasing the number of teachers of color, but it does propose a set of bargaining and hiring changes that may prevent teachers of color from being laid off due to lack of seniority.  This bill eliminates the practice of last-in/first-out, which made it the most controversial bill of the day (if anything in the initial stages of legislative discussion truly be described as controversial).  Senator Roger Chamberlain's SF 784 requires all school districts to establish a teacher mentoring program and use district staff development dollars to implement and maintain it.  The companion to this bill--HF 561 (Urdahl)--has been heard in the House.  SF 819 (Dornink), a bill that would create a pilot program for short-call substitute teachers was also heard.  The Human Resources Director for the Austin School District (Go SEE members!) testified in favor and made a compelling case as to why policy surrounding short-call substitute teachers need to be revised due to the extreme shortage in substitute teachers.