PAYING FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION

Hold on to your pocket calculators folks. The Dispatch is absolutely right about education finance. Its not fair and balanced, it’s lopsided and plays favorites. The questions we should be asking is how did it get to be that way and is House File 4178 dubbed the ‘new Minnesota Miracle’ the right way to fix it. A friend of mine gave me a copy of the 151-page education funding manual recently. Just about every page features yet another way to ‘equalize’ funding from an extra couple of hundred dollars for districts that recently consolidated to extra money because high schools in one district are farther apart than those of another. I’ve heard a number of officials say funding should be so much per pupil, period and the Democrat-controlled state legislature is pretty proud of the $800-Million delivered to public education in 2007. But somehow we’ve gotten to 151-pages of taking money from this pile and adding to the other pile. With the continued tug-o-war between Metro and outstate lawmakers, do we believe simply adding more money to all the categories will be a permanent solution? Governor Ventura was right; there will never be enough money.

The Dispatch editorial is right about its last line too; restructuring should be a top priority for 2009, just like it should have been in 2008. House Education Finance Chair Mindy Greiling told me last November that the reform committee was ready to meet again in January and a solution was very close. She introduced HF 4178 in April. Greiling told me then that the ‘second Minnesota Miracle’ would increase education funding by $1.6-Billion per year plus another $600,000 to replace local property taxes. Greiling said the money would probably come from increasing the state’s sales tax. The House Education Finance Committee held a supposedly official public hearing in Brainerd Monday night, June 16^th. Taxpayers paid for seven legislators, a state government staff member and his 5 assistants to sit and listen to 20 more-money-for-education devotees and me. And the wheels on the bus go ‘round and ‘round.

Public hearings are supposed to be official gatherings of information and encourage citizens to give testimony on both sides of an issue as opposed to rubberstamp bills worked out ahead of time and cast in concrete. I was the only one who spoke against the bill. Everybody else thought the Red Sea had been parted once again.

A Brainerd teacher recently took me to task for ‘inappropriately’ mentioning I was the House District 12A challenger running against the temporary chairman of the committee for that night thereby politicizing the procedings. The 12A incumbent is not a member of that committee so his ‘official’ role in that ‘official’ public hearing was, what? Officially?

First, we need to decide what public education in Minnesota includes. Then we can get a better idea of what it should cost.