- The Beatles spark innovative planning
- Counteracting procrastination
- How principals can find out what teachers and students really think
- Incentivizing learning and growth over grades
- Frequent writing, rapid feedback, and student ownership
- Setting the stage for student-led parent conferences
- More recommended poetry and verse novels for children
- A video debunking learning styles
- Guidelines for an inclusive hiring process
- Why college rankings should be taken with a barrel of salt
- Shifting the feedback conversation to results
- Involving all students in middle-school social studies discussions
- A New Jersey high school works on inclusion, community, and trust
- Integrating dance and physics for African-American girls
- Leaders' vulnerability and psychological safety
- Notable children's books for 2021
- Looking ahead - way ahead
- The best 2021 poetry and verse novels
- Western European students' anxieties about the war in Ukraine
- Adam Grant on persuading a stubborn leader
- Have we gone too far with high-tech learning?
- Motivating students with learning disabilities in inclusive classes
- Getting middle-school parents involved in "academic socialization"
- A curriculum unit on social class
- Are keywords the best way to solve math word problems?
- Karin Chenoweth on the secret sauce of gap-closing districts
- David Brooks on friendship - and why it matters more than ever
- Artful self-promotion
- Dealing with math anxiety
- Different approaches to kicking off a curriculum unit
- Homework principles
- Recommended children's books on climate change
- The story behind Chicago schools' improvement from 1987 to 2015
- Dealing successfully with conflict and disagreement in the workplace
- Ideas for managing star employees
- Intervening early to improve students' math self-efficacy
- Integrating science and literacy in Philadelphia kindergartens
- Comparing U.S. and U.K. accountability systems
- Lessons on mobility and social inequality
- A video on probability
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Legislators returned from the 10-day spring break on Tuesday. The House and Senate quickly picked up
where they left off, processing major bills through committees. The K12 bill (HF 4300) was heard in the
Ways and Means Committee on Thursday. During the hearing the Early Childhood bill was folded into
the K12 bill making it even bigger. The bill was passed largely along party lines and sent to the floor.
Ways and Means is a permanent committee of the House with jurisdiction over all funding bills and
education made its required stop at the committee. At 29 members, it is the largest committee in the
Legislature. One of the key functions of the committee is to adopt budget targets, something it did on
Tuesday. The biggest items in the resolution were taxes ($1.654 billion) and education ($1.15 billion).
The overall resolution authorizes total spending of $7.364 billion.
The Senate’s overall budget focus is on Tax reduction. The Senate spends $3.4 billion this budget year
and over $5 billion in the next biennium.
The Senate Education bill, a smaller priority than taxes, was processed through the Finance committee
on Tuesday. The Senate Education bill one priority—a $30 million funding proposal for a program called
Language Essential for Teachers of Reading and Spelling. The Senate File is SF 4113, the companion bill
to HF 3400. SF 4113 was passed and sent to the floor as well.
The House will take up the K12 bill next week, possibly on Wednesday. The Senate will be in no hurry to
pass its bill given the billion-dollar difference between the House and Senate bills.
Four weeks remain in the legislative session. At this time there is no apparent coordination of an end
game among the House, Senate and Governor. That can still happen, but the clock is ticking. In fact,
most of the talk is about fall elections. More veteran legislators have announced retirements, including
Senators Kent Eken and Ann Johnson Stewart. To date, thirty-two legislators have announced
retirements in addition to twenty-one members running for different offices. (A handful of these are
House members running for the Senate, some are members running for governor, and one senator is
running for the House.) While these numbers are large, they are not unprecedented. Redistricting
drives a larger number of retirements together with the natural course of legislative service. In 2012, the
last year of redistricting, 48 members retired. The change in the legislative membership is a strength of
the process. The 2023 legislature will undoubtedly have a new set of voices with fresh ideas.
In the meanwhile, the Governor will deliver the State of the State Address on Sunday night. The
Governor will physically return to the House chamber for the speech after two years of on-line
speeches. The speech is expected to give some clues as to the Governor’s key areas of focus for the last
4 weeks of the session. Last week the Governor criticized both the Democrats and Republicans saying it
was absolutely ridiculous that the unemployment insurance bill hasn’t been passed. It is fair to expect
some “encouragement” by the Governor to get some bills passed in the next four weeks.
by Jeff Zwiers
Click here for summary.
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Today is the Third Committee Deadline. This signals the welcome close of the committee phase of the legislative session. Education committees in the House and Senate completed their work and sent their respective bills on their way. The Senate wrapped up early on Thursday, with Senators heading home for the break. The House, continuing a long tradition of never finishing early, has three committees meeting today, with the Education bill making its required stop in the Tax committee this afternoon. If your bill didn’t pass by today, it is most likely dead. (Of course, it is never over.)
Judiciary and Health are both meeting today in the House. These committees have long agendas for the day, with an agonizing march to the break. In “normal” times these committees are held in windowless meeting rooms packed with lobbyists, staff, members, paper and stale air. The small army of lobbyists are armed with laptops and cell phones all looking for one of the few outlets available to charge devices. (It’s and old building with few outlets.) Spending the day in one of these hearings is always tough sledding.
But that is not the case today. The House has not yet resumed in person meetings, so these hearings will be “remote” the current term for “zoom”. All of the lobbyists and a majority of the House members will be participating remotely from home with a handful of members in their offices.
One of the last bills taken up in the House today is Education. The Tax committee has jurisdiction over the levies in the K12 bill but nothing else. It will not review the policy or the appropriation provisions. Few changes occur in the Tax committee, but this is a required stop and the bill will be sent on its way after a modest review.
Today’s schedule oddly reflects the two education bills. The House went “all out” in its $1.1 billion finance and policy initiative and will be working today. The Senate adopted a “thin” bill, ($36 million) finished on Wednesday, closed up shop, and went home yesterday.
The week had its moments. It was time for the political knives to come out as the bills left the Education Finance Committees. Representative Davnie, the committee chair, enjoyed presenting the large supplemental bill. Then the minority got its chance to deliver its message. The lead minority member, Representative Ron Kresha (from Little Falls in his 5th term) began his response with an aggressive rejection of the approach adopted by the Democrats. He described the bill as “a bribe to accept egregious mandates all the way across the board”. Kresha stated: “When you look at this bill there are a mountain of mandates”. He specifically addressed select policy provisions and outlined the difficulty explaining to rural Minnesota the disparity in funding when compared with the metro.
Stinging criticism was soon forgotten. After the party line vote of 10-7, the Committee took time to basically say goodbye to three senior retiring members. The Chair, Jim Davnie (Minneapolis), is retiring after 22 years in the House. Sondra Erickson (Princeton), past Chair of the Policy Committee, is retiring after 24 years. Paul Marquart (Dilworth) is retiring after 22 years as well. Marquart chaired Education Finance in the past and is currently tax chair. The three retirees discussed their past experiences, how much they loved being legislators and thanked a long list of members and staff. (As usual, no one mentioned the lobbyists but we are used to it.)
The Senate had its final hearing on Wednesday night. The Democrats offered a long list of amendments to the “thin” education bill. Senator Chamberlain, the chair, made his position clear—the Senate has a literacy bill and there would be no amendments. (The bill funds the literacy program LETRS, which is basically it). This Senate Committee is relatively small with only 9 members. The four Democrat members, Senators Isaacson, Kunesh, Cwodzinski and Wiger, shared responsibility in offering amendments. These included Amendments on funding the cross subsidy; linking the formula to inflation; the Governor’s entire policy bill; and several others. All were all defeated along party lines 5-4. One amendment did go on, the menstrual products bill was added to the literacy provisions, but that was the only one. (The Democrats looked a bit surprised when that an amendment was accepted.)
The four democrats made an interesting team. Senator Wiger, the senior member of the group, is known for his relentless passion in expressing his point of view. Senator Isaacson has a fast-paced critique that at times gets very aggressive. Senator Kunesh patiently raises her point often with personal anecdotes. Senator Cwodzinski lets loose with his inner social studies teacher and uses a volume that rarely needs a microphone.
Senator Chamberlain’s response was consistent throughout the night. He reiterated that this was a Literacy bill, not a response to all of the education requests for funding. He restated his unflinching opposition to imposing new mandates on schools. He responded to the amendments with noticeable brevity, the word “no” being used repeatedly.
In the end, the bill passed 6-3 with Cwodzinski voting yes. (Typically one minority member votes in favor of the bill in order to get a seat on any future conference committee.)
There were no goodbye speeches at the end of the hearing.
The legislators now go home for 10 days. The claim (maybe myth) is that they talk to their constituents and return with new input and feedback and changed or reinforced minds. In reality, the positions of the House and Senate are reasonably clear and won’t change much at this point. The House put the bulk of its money into education while the Senate used the monies for tax reductions. The House included a long list of policy mandates to schools while the Senate included none. If any deadlocks are broken, that will be done by leadership in the closing moments of the session.
They have 5 weeks of work left when they return. They could work together and distribute some needed funding, leave the policy, and adjourn. They could also continue the deadlock, rolling the dice that they will be in control in 2023 with a large bottom line surplus. We will know the answer to that question in 5 weeks.
This week was a processing week at the capitol. The House Ed Finance committee completed several steps toward putting together the K12 Omnibus bill and released it at 11:00PM Sunday night. All of the policy provisions adopted in the policy committee were added. Friday afternoon the provisions of the early childhood bill will be rolled into the House Education bill. Over the weekend the house lawyers and finance staff will cobble the money and policy into one large bill. Early next week the House will announce one of the largest supplemental bills in history.
This would be typical in a budget year—but highly unusual in the second year of the biennium. It was expected that the House bill would be larger than the budget bill proposed last year and sure enough it is. The supplemental bill proposal is $1.1 billion in new money for the biennium.
Meanwhile, the Senate released a much more limited bill on Friday. The 9-page bill contains $35 million in new money. The expectation was that the bill would be tight, given Chair Chamberlain’s recent public statements that last year’s education bill represented a significant investment and that additional funds were not necessary at this time.
The House bill will undoubtedly raise expectations in the education community while the Senate bill will lower them. The House bill is probably the largest supplemental bill in history. Another historical fact—the difference between the two bills is probably the largest in history.
The two sides won’t be talking to each other for a while though. Next week the bills will be worked over in various committees. The House will expect everyone to speak in favor of the spending. Meanwhile there will be the assembling, public display and committee processing as the two bills head to their floors. Committee work will be completed by Friday, the third deadline. Legislators will then go home for their spring break. They will be gone through Monday the 18th of April.
On Thursday night the Student Data Privacy Act was heard in the Senate Civil Law and Data Privacy Committee. (SF 2307 Bingham, HF 431 Feist). This bill has been a major concern of school administrators for some time. Basically the bill would allow parents to opt out of digital curriculum and other digital aspects of school district operations. Despite the pleas of school technology personnel, the authors are intent on passage of the bill. It passed through the Senate Civil Law committee and was sent to education.
Last week there was considerable media coverage of a bill designed to rein in unruly parents. The bill (HF 33, Huot) was initially drafted to make assaulting a sports official a gross misdemeanor. Representative Huot modified the bill to provide for a $1,000 fine per incident in addition to any criminal charges. The bill created quite a media stir initially but whether it has legs to go anywhere is yet to be seen.
The Omnibus Pension bill was put together. (SF 3541/HF4016 DE1). Much to the chagrin of a group of teachers and principals it does not include the Rule of 90. Rule of 90 bills have been introduced in the House and Senate but the current cost estimates are staggering. The pension bill does have several key provisions that continue to promote the stability of the fund. In the omnibus bill TRA Post retirement adjustments will increase from 1.0% to 1.5%. In a prior pension reform, these COLA’s were capped and scheduled to increase at .1% per year so this is a small but significant improvement. The bill also increases school district TRA contributions by .25% in FY23 and .25% in FY24 to a total of 9.25%. Fortunately, the state will cover the cost of these increases.
Changes in the membership of the House and Senate continue to be on the horizon. Redistricting created several endorsement challenges. In addition, some incumbents are being challenged by new potential candidates. Several painful battles have taken place with some well-known members losing their party’s endorsement. (Senator Jason Isaacson, Senator Eric Pratt, and Representative Connie Bernardy for example.) Don’t count these folks out though, they can all run in the August primary.
The House has yet to hold in person meetings, everything has been in zoom. We will see if this changes after the break.
We are all looking forward to the break.
First deadline week is complete. To date House members have introduced 4624 bills while Senators have introduced 4349 bills. Of these, a small group met the first deadline. On the House education policy side many of the bills were combined into a large omnibus bill that was voted out of committee today. Fair to say that the overwhelming majority of introduced bills were officially pronounced dead today.
Of course, some bills can be revived, but that number is quite small as well.
Not all legislative language is harsh. One of my favorites is “companion”. One of the key elements in passing legislation is that the bill is introduced in both the House and Senate. Key to passage is that the bill have a “companion”. (Who doesn’t want to have a companion?) If a bill is passed in the House or Senate, the next question is whether the companion is moving in the other body. Bills that do not have companions moving forward have a limited chance of passage. But if you have a companion and it is moving you are in business.
Today the House Education Policy committee acted on HF 3401(Richardson). This bill is 133 pages of new policies for schools. This isn’t the funding bill, this is pure policy. When introduced, this bill was known as the Governor’s policy bill. The House Committee added a host of other bills to the Governor’s proposals and the result is the “omnibus policy bill”.
This bill covers multiple policy initiatives including discipline, suspension prohibitions, PSEO weighted grades, licensure, mascots, graduation regalia, restrictive procedures, curriculum policies, school board member employment, new bullying policies, and multiple new reports to the Department, just to mention some of the provisions.
The summary alone (HF 3401) is 24 pages long. Here is the link: https://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/comm/docs/lCDOItofYkSBII1Qz3KjFA.pdf
The majority of the provisions here were rejected by the Senate last year and may suffer the same fate again this year.
The House Education Policy Committee has 19 members, 11 Democrats and 8 Republicans. On Friday, the Republicans offered a handful of amendments to the policy bill. All were defeated with 8 republicans voting yes and 11 democrats voting no. One of the amendments proposed the deletion of all the Democrat’s provisions and added 39 pages of new Republican provisions. Again, this was voted down 8 yes and 11 no.
On a vote of 11 yes and 8 no the bill was sent to the Education Finance Committee. There, it will be bundled with several hundred million dollars raising the expectations of school personnel throughout Minnesota. It will travel to other committees (Taxes and Ways and Means) before ending up on the House floor. The amount of the House Democrats funding proposal has yet to be disclosed, but we expect that a significant infusion of money will be proposed by the Democrats. So the next two weeks will be the Democrats time in the sun as they move these proposals forward.
The Senate acted on several bills this week. PSEO students complained that they were the victims of grade inflation because their grades are weighted in some districts. PSEO is a favorite of the House Policy Chair. She has mentioned repeatedly that she took PSEO courses in high school. The Senate Chair likes PSEO as well, so the PSEO provisions is one of the few policy provisions that might survive this year.
59 days to adjournment.
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