With Friday’s above-the-fold headline likely to read “Surprise! Budget surplus” it might be easy to forget Thursday’s more lightly discussed headline - “School districts begged; now they borrow.”
Although 80 percent of school levy requests were approved by Minnesota voters last month in the wake of the massive school funding shift, just two districts in the Twin Cities metro asked for and received new funding. Now, as the Star Tribune reports, more than half of metro school districts are borrowing a total of $382 million to make ends meet.
That serves as a reminder, even in the face of Thursday’s good news, that Minnesota’s structural budgeting is still a mess.
Last week I sat down with a friend who was involved in one of this year’s more successful school levy initiatives - the West St. Paul-Mendota Heights’ District 197. District 197, despite the highest student opt-out rate in the state, managed to win new funding thanks to 62 percent support from voters.
“If we would have only extended the levy there still would have been a $1.5 million shortfall,” my friend told me. “One of the district’s elementary schools was potentially going to be closed which really galvanized voters.”
Of course the potential for cutbacks is not unique to Mendota Heights. A remarkable 57 out of 58 school districts that asked to renew a levy this year saw the request approved by voters. And while District 197 was one of only two successful campaigns for new levy requests in the metro, nearly 60 percent of such requests were also approved statewide.
Veteran pollster of local school campaigns Bill Morris told the Pioneer Press that districts were better able to get their message out with few high profile races on the ballot. “People are willing to raise their taxes,” he told PiPress reporter Megan Boldt. “And they’re blaming the legislature.”
There’s no doubt we live in a new normal when it comes to budgeting. But with funding decisions being pushed down to the local level with budget gimmickry obfuscating our long-term challenges, the question is how many districts will get left behind if we don't reform and innovate now.
I was fortunate to attend public school in one of the state’s best school districts. I left Minnesota to attend a great college and now am back home taking advantage of a public graduate school education at the University of Minnesota. I’m one of the lucky ones. The idea of rejecting such a critical levy in my home district is almost unheard of.
But that’s not the case in North Branch, Rocori, and elsewhere. Those who voted for an unsuccessful levy in New Ulm this year cited short-term thinking and an aging population as reasons for the defeat. Whatever the true reasons, increasingly the opportunities we afford our youngest students are subject to the political savvy of individuals like my friend who helped push the West St. Paul-Mendota district to combine its renewal and increase requests into one ballot question in order to force voters to make a tough decision.
Many districts understandably did not want to take that risk, or in some cases asked citizens one question too many -- seeing them all go down in defeat due likely to voter confusion.
The result we’ve been left with is at best a maintenance of the status quo and a never-ending political battle over “How much?”
How much did the legislature truly authorize for local schools?
How much of that is actually being deferred with no plans for repayment?
How much should schools borrow to make up the gap?
How much should they ask of citizens in order to ensure they can maintain the status quo?
During the fall our headlines were largely devoted to GOP legislators and local school officials debating these questions - 'how much?'Rarely was another question posed - 'what for?' What are the outcomes we expect to see as a state? If we come together to focus on that then perhaps we can best determine how to get there. Certainly it will take structural reforms, not only in the way we fund our schools, but in the ways they operate.
Voters sent their public officials a message this November. Now those voters will be looking for them to respond in kind.
Matt Lewis is the communications director of the Independence Party and a graduate student at the University of Minnesota.
