By Hannah Dillon

This year and last year, the Minnesota House Education Finance Committee has been working hard to advance education within the budget.

In fact, last year, $485 million was put into education. This year, a non-budget year, an additional $54 million was added. That comes to a total of about $540 million for both years.

Rep. Paul Marquart, DFL-Dilworth, chairman of the Education Finance Committee, said there have been a lot of changes the past few years in education thanks to the money that has been procured.

The biggest change that came about was increasing per pupil funding, Marquart said.

Other changes include fully funding all-day, every-day kindergarten, adding early learning scholarships, increased funding for early childhood family education and school readiness, increased funding for English Language Learners, additional funds for non-Q comp schools for teacher evaluation and development and increased equalization rates.

 

Big increases in per pupil funding

Per pupil funding increases mainly come from the education budget formula. From last year, there was already an $80 per pupil increase for the 2014-15 school year. This year, the Education Finance Committee ended up securing an additional $25 per pupil, Marquart said. This adds up to a $105 increase per pupil.

There is also going to be $130 per pupil given to provide for the all-day, every-day kindergarten. This money is distributed per pupil to make it easier to figure for schools, Marquart said.

With all of these increases, Albert Lea Area Schools will see an increase of $265 per pupil. To put that in perspective, Albert Lea schools had an increase for last school year of $792,000. Before this year, they were going to get an increase of nearly $1.3 million. With this year’s nearly $175,000 additional increase, Albert Lea Area Schools will receive almost $1.5 million.

 

A decade of disinvestments

Even with all of the large investments in education in recent years, it does not make up for a decade of disinvestments, Marquart said. The government lagged behind in funding and now they are trying to catch up.

“At one point, we owed schools over $2.5 billion,” he said. The government tried to solve budget problems by borrowing from schools. Within the last two years, however, all the schools have been completely paid back.

Now, school districts have to put together a strategic plan. Every year the districts have to come back to the plan and look at it and adjust it as necessary. Marquart said this makes school districts accountable with the public — and more importantly, the taxpayers.

 

Setting the bar high

All of these increases and changes have been implemented to close the achievement gap, Marquart said. He said that if the achievement gap could be closed, the economy could improve.

Last year, there was a summit in St. Paul where Ron Grunewald from the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis presented research of studies that talked about this, Marquart said. Grunewald’s research found that if the achievement gap was closed productivity could increase by 1.8 to 2.8 percent.

Marquart said this might not seem like a big increase, but a 1.8 percent increase in productivity translates to a $5 billion increase in economy.

Closing the achievement gap would lead to creating the best trained, best educated workforce, Marquart said. He said schools need to strive for a 100 percent graduation rate and a 100 percent closed achievement gap.

“Granted, it is a very high bar,” Marquart said. “Now every district has to strive for that.”