The Minnesota Legislature’s education budget bills call for giant increases to general funding formulas, plus dedicated money for college support staff, literacy initiatives, after-school grants and constructing a more diverse teacher workforce.
In budget targets announced last week, top lawmakers said they intend to spend $2.21 billion more on education in the subsequent biennium than in the present one.
“We‘ve had over 20 years of underinvestment in our schools. While we cannot change that overnight, and even in a single biennium, that is an incredible start,” Rep. Cheryl Youakim, DFL-Hopkins, the home education finance chair, said Wednesday.
Differences on spending, policy
While the bulk DFL’s leaders within the House and Senate education committees mostly agree on priorities, their spending bills contain significant differences on spending and policy.
The Senate bill unveiled this week would increase per-student state aid by 4 percent and 5 percent in the subsequent two years, at a price of $913 million. The House bill follows Gov. Tim Walz’s proposal of 4 percent and a pair of percent increases.
Nonetheless, the House bill would tie future formula increases to inflation while the Senate wouldn’t. School district leaders have long sought those built-in increases, saying they’d make it easier to plan.
Along with the formula hikes, each chambers wish to send huge amounts of cash to colleges based on how much they spend on English language learners and special-education students. School leaders say they don’t get enough state and federal revenue for those students, so that they must divert funds intended for everybody else.
The House bill would scale back by half the so-called special-education “cross-subsidy” with $730 million in latest biennial funding. The Senate would spend $653 million on the identical effort, cutting the cross-subsidy by 40 percent, but their bill would keep chipping away on the funding gap with one other $1.08 billion in fiscal years 2026-27.
Each bills would eventually eliminate the English learner cross-subsidy. The House desires to spend $82 million on it this biennium and $272 million the subsequent, while the Senate would spend $143 million and $253 million.
“It is a grand slam,” St. Paul Public Schools lobbyist Jim Grathwol told Senate education finance committee members Wednesday. “These are stunning investments.”
Counselors, teacher diversity
There’s also loads of money for schools to rent – or retain in the event that they’re being paid with expiring federal grants – more counselors, social staff, school psychologists and nurses. The House bill calls for $75 million over the biennium for these support staff and the Senate $49 million, with those amounts doubling in 2026-27 in each cases.
The Home is trying to spend $94 million, and the Senate $52 million, on “Grow Your Own” grants for partnering school districts and teacher-preparation programs to get more people licensed to show. These grants sometimes are geared toward people of color, however the House ($10 million) and Senate ($9 million) bills even have separate line items for teacher-of-color grants.
“We all know that students learn higher once they see themselves within the adults they work with every single day,” Education Commissioner Willie Jett said.
Pre-school, literacy
Without legislative motion, 4,000 state-funded voluntary preschool seats that date to the Mark Dayton administration are set to run out. The House bill would spend $85 million next biennium and $155 million after that to expand this system to 9,200 seats. The Senate bill would spend $40 million just to keep up the 4,000 seats but would also spend $271 million expanding early-learner scholarships for low-income families.
Ericca Maas of Think Small, which advocates for early childhood programming, said that even with those scholarships, only one-third to one-half of the 31,000 low-income children who need quality child care would get it.
Each chambers are intent on ensuring schools are using proven practices, reminiscent of phonics, for teaching kids to read and write. The bills – $73 million within the House and $41 million within the Senate – would spend money on teacher training and curricular materials and require schools to screen for reading problems in kindergarten.
Other grants
Other proposed spending areas include:
• After-school program grants (House $25 million, Senate $40 million);
• Grants for full-service community schools, which make school buildings one-stop shops for a spread of services that support young families (House $27 million, Senate $15 million);
• Grants to revitalize American Indian languages ($15 million each chambers);
• Paid orientation for paraprofessionals (House $16 million, Senate $14 million but doubling the next biennium);
• Stocking schools with menstrual products (about $3.5 million each chambers).
Where they differ
There are some areas where the 2 chambers disagree.
The Senate wants $59 million in dedicated state aid for college libraries for the primary time, while the House has nothing for that. The Senate also wants $20 million for Head Start and $8 million for grants that take aim at achievement gaps.
Meanwhile, the House wants $50 million to purchase time for special-education teachers to finish due-process paperwork, plus one other $10 million in transportation money for sparsely populated districts and $2 million in grants for gender-neutral bathrooms.
Policy changes
Several latest policies were included within the House bill but not the Senate’s version. They include:
• Requiring high schools to supply a course in ethnic studies.
• Prohibiting schools from suspending or expelling students before the fourth grade unless there’s an ongoing safety concern, and stopping schools from punishing students by withholding recess.
• Explicitly making “class sizes, student testing, and student-to-personnel ratios” subject to collective bargaining by teachers unions.
• Banning schools from using American Indian tribes as mascots.
Meanwhile, each chambers wish to let school boards renew existing referenda without going to voters.
Each the House and Senate education finance committees plan to fulfill Thursday morning to contemplate amendments to their bills before legislative leaders from each chambers work toward a compromise.