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The legislature had a relatively short week. Midweek, the House and Senate recessed to recognize the Eid holiday. As a result, the Education finance committees met only once, on Tuesday, and adjourned for the week.

On Tuesday, the Senate Ed Finance committee took up a bill of interest on sudden cardiac death. SF 4293 (Westlin) was developed by the American Heart Association. Well intentioned, but mandate heavy, the bill raised more questions than it answered. The bill requires the establishment of a cardiac emergency response team that must be present at every athletic activity. It would also require AEDs at multiple locations. The bill contains requirements on annual training, drills, standards, policies and more. It was agreed that the bill needs work – and input from affected stakeholders. It’s clear that the proponents have a limited understanding of current actions by schools on topics including first aid, CPR, AEDs, emergency training, coaches’ training and other topics. This will receive more discussion.

When the legislature reconvened on Thursday the full House took up the Education Policy Omnibus Bill. The bill is not particularly controversial, a reflection of the fact that last year’s bill contained a record number of mandates. (For tracking purposes the bill number is SF 3567. The original House File is HF 3782.)

Key provisions include:

School newspaper bill—students have broad rights to publish in a school paper, limits are imposed by advisor and advisor cannot be disciplined “for protecting students’ rights”.

Cell Phone Policies: Best practices must be shared through MASSP and MESPA

Citizenship course requirement (required in 11th or 12th grade) delayed by one year

Delay Department posting of school performance reports- old date was October 1 new date is December 1.

Eliminates limitations of PSEO recruiting and soliciting

Prohibits limitations on PSEO students participation in awards, leadership positions, scholarships, etc. Requires identical grade weighting for PSEO classes if grades are weighted.

Requires Charter Schools to establish qualifications and ongoing education requirements for administrators. Each school establishes its own rules.

Requires schools to provide access to a space where the student is able to use telehealth services—to the extent space is available.

The 5-hour debate lasted into the night as the House took up 20 amendments. The floor debate is the opportunity for the minority to make their case regarding education policy, a preferable alternative to arguing in committee. Some of the amendments are accepted as good ideas and are incorporated into the bill. Several amendments point out problems with the bills. Many amendments are simply designed to make and score political points. These amendments are voted down along party lines.

An amendment on coaching renewals was offered by senior member Dean Urdahl. This amendment was adopted. Coaching non-renewals must be completed within 60 days after the end of the season. This doesn’t apply if the coach engages in misconduct, fails to perform duties, or the district has financial limitations.

An amendment was adopted requiring the Department of Education to develop a model notification to students and parents about the dangers of dissemination of private sexual images.

The cooperative nature of adopting amendments quickly ended with the defeat of a series of Republican amendments. These were all voted down along party lines. Roll call amendments were defeated 62-69 (a few of the 134 members were absent). Amendments on short call substitutes, mandate suspension, discipline, the READ Act, social studies standards, and other topics generated speeches into the night. In the end, no republicans voted for the bill. It passed along party lines, 69-61.

The bill will now go to a conference committee where the differences between the House and Senate bills will be worked out. That should happen in the next two weeks.

Next week the House and Senate Education Finance Committees release their omnibus bills. The bills will basically provide additional funding for the READ Act.

Legislators continue to introduce record numbers of bills. On Thursday the Senate introduced bill number 5,425. The House is trailing the senate—an unusual event—with 5,363 introductions. None of these late introductions will get hearings during the last five weeks of the session. It is frustrating for leadership and staff, but there is no stopping members and bill introductions.

The legislature is slowly moving toward adjournment. The State Constitution requires adjournment by Monday, May 20th. That leaves 6 weeks to complete the remaining business for the biennium. Also, the legislature will recess for two religious observances. Short recesses are scheduled for Eid as well as Passover during the remainder of the session.

On Tuesday the Senate took up the Education Policy Bill (SF 3567 Cwodzinski). The bill contains a number of provisions that are of interest:

Government and citizenship course requirement is delayed one year
Renames World’s Best Workforce to “Comprehensive Achievement and Civic Readiness”
Renames “Achievement Gap” to “Opportunity Gap”
Prohibits a school district from disciplining teachers for discussing incidents of violence or dangerous conduct
Rejected an amendment to authorize lawsuits against educators who display “obscene material” to students. (ruled non germane)
Adopted a one-year extension for schools to change American Indian Mascots
Adopted School Newspaper Bill, limiting review of school newspaper content
Adopted provision requiring parental notification and record of students pulled out of class for 10 minutes or more
Adopted provision requiring MSHSL to provide instruction to coaches on eating disorders
Adopted provision requiring schools to provide students with access to mental health services through telehealth

The Senate floor session was not without a few memorable moments. Senator Gruenhagen shared his views on the issue of pornography in schools: “You’re producing addiction to pornography and these young boys will turn into human sexual predators.” He explained how this “sets off a chemical reaction in their brain called dopamine and dopamine produces addiction.”

Senator Farnsworth moved to have math standards determined locally. The intent was to delete Algebra II from the graduation requirements arguing that he had not used algebra any time since his graduation in June of 1966. The chamber had some fun with this.

The House Education Policy Bill (HF 3782 Pryor) will be taken scheduled on the floor Thursday. The bill contains many of the same provisions as the Senate bill. After adoption the House and Senate will meet to confirm the final positions.

In the next two weeks the House and Senate Finance committees will decide how to spend $43 million. It is expected that the bulk of the money will be spent on the READ Act. The authors are planning on directing the monies toward teacher stipends and reimbursements for substitute teachers employed to cover classrooms during teacher training.

The Pension Commission posted the omnibus bill. (The hearing is Monday morning at 8:30 if you are interested.) The bill extends the earnings limitation for individuals who return to work after retirement. The extension goes through fiscal years 2025, 2026 and 2027. Last year the “normal retirement age” was reduced from age 66 to age 65. This provision was effective beginning July 1, 2025. The bill moves this date to July 1, 2024.

The bill also includes a one-year reduction for teacher pension contributions in the coordinated program of .25%. The one-year reduction is followed by a significant increase. This is for the St. Paul Pension plan.

The biggest hurdle for the legislature is to pass a bonding bill. This requires a super majority, so the republicans have to agree with the democrats to pass the bill. At this point agreement is not close.

The end of session always includes two major legislative celebrations. The annual “Ranger Party” hosted by legislators from the iron range is Scheduled for April 19th. The “I-90” party hosted by southern Minnesota legislators is scheduled for May 8th.

This was a busy week at the Capitol. It started with the release of the Governor’s supplemental budget on Monday. The week continued with policy committees struggling to complete their work before the committee deadline of 5:00 PM Friday. Education was done early. The Senate finished Wednesday and the House finished Thursday night. Other committees are pushing forward with full agendas throughout Friday right up to 5:00 PM.

Governor’s Supplemental Budget

The week started out with sobering news. The Governor released his proposed supplemental budget recommendations for the legislative session. Expectations were low, but the numbers still caught people by surprise. The overall proposal is to spend $220 million. This is actually much less than it sounds. The bill had no money for the READ Act and no money for other education initiatives. One peculiar provision is a one-year .25% reduction in employee TRA contributions at a cost of about $15 million. Obviously, we like that, but it is an odd priority in this limited budget.

The state has a current surplus of $3.7 billion. Projections into the next biennium indicate that those monies will be necessary to avoid a budget deficit. These concerns are reflected in the Governor’s proposal. On the other side, the House is up for reelection and individual members are always interested in bringing home new funding and new programs. We expect that some additional funding will be forthcoming from the House and Senate. This will undoubtedly be focused on one time money, as opposed to ongoing funding. The READ Act will continue to be a legislative priority with any new funds.

Education Policy

The Education Policy Bills were completed this week. The House bill (HF 3782) is authored by the Policy Chair Lori Pryor. The Senate bill (SF 3567) is authored by Senate Policy Chair Steve Cwodzinski. Both committees passed the bills to the floor for placement on the general register. This will be the last policy bill for Representative Pryor, as she has announced her retirement.

Key Provisions in the Policy Bills

Student Journalism: Both bills contain several changes in school papers. The short summary is that school administrators have little to no control over what the students and the advisor decide when it comes to the school paper. Yearbooks were exempted from the new law.

PSEO: The House bill requires grade weighting for PSEO classes to be “identical” to grade weighting for CIS classes. Also, PSEO students must be eligible for scholarships and be eligible to participate in leadership and national organizations sponsored by the school.

Graduation Requirements: The house bill delays the implementation of the government and citizenship course requirement by one year.

Telehealth: The Senate bill requires schools to provide students with access to private spaces to receive mental health care via telehealth.

Unscheduled Pull Outs: The Senate bill requires teachers to make a record of any unscheduled time a student is pulled out of class for more than 10 minutes. This provision requires that parents be contacted when this occurs.

Cell Phones: The House bill requires MASSP and MESPA to provide schools with best practices for limiting the use of cell phones particularly for middle schools.

READ Act: Multiple changes are made to the READ Act. These will also be contained in another bill, the Education finance proposal. We will review these next week.

Book Banning: The Senate bill prohibits removal or banning of materials based on viewpoint, content, message, idea or opinion. The House bill on book banning is proceeding separately.

PELSB and Licensure Changes: Multiple changes are in both bills. We will review these separately and report back next week.

Sports Betting: On Thursday, the House State and Local Government Committee took up HF 2000 (Stephenson), SF 1949 (Klein) the sports betting bill. The bill provides grants to support youth sports and youth activities funneled through the Amateur Sports Commission and the Minnesota State High School League. The League is following this closely. These bills have a long way to go and may not pass this session.

Pensions

Pension Commission Meeting: On Monday the Pension Commission will have a presentation by the National Association of State Retirement Administrators. (Hopefully, the advertised snow storm doesn’t impact the meeting.) The focus of the presentation is a comparison of Minnesota TRA to teacher pensions in other states. If you are interested in seeing how Minnesota stacks up, the meeting is at 8:30 and is accessible on the legislative websites.

Pension Bill of Interest: The agenda also includes HF 3972 (Wolgamott) & SF 4196 (Gustafson). The bill modifies the early retirement reduction factors. The new proposal covers age 58 through 62 and reduces the early retirement factor to three percent. (Current law provides a much higher reduction factor.) MASSP and MESPA sent letters of support for the bill. The question is the cost to school districts, a fact that will be addressed by TRA staff on Monday. This bill was put together by Education Minnesota—and we appreciate their work on this very much.

Testifying: Interesting to note that the Pension Commission allows three slots for testifiers. The balance of the testimony is either in written form or simply a letter of support. It is a recognition that having 15 testifiers saying the same thing slows down the work of the commission considerably.

Next Week

The Legislature is taking a short spring break next week. Break begins Wednesday night and ends upon their return at noon on Tuesday, April 2nd.

Recognition

Last week two principals were at the capitol and testified on Cell Phones and the BARR program. Both did excellent jobs testifying in the House and Senate Education Committees. Coley McDonough, Principal of the Norse Area Learning Center (North Branch) and Patrick Smith, Principal of Maple Grove Middle School (Osseo) were well received by the committees. We are always fortunate to have quality principals speak at the capitol. Thanks to both for taking the time to come to St. Paul.

This week concluded the hearings on individual bills in the House and Senate Education policy committees. On Monday it is expected both committees will release omnibus bills with a laundry list of policy proposals and rolled into one. These omnibus policy bills will not include any funding for any education programs. Any new funding will be in a separate bill. The first priority for funding will be the READ Act.

SRO Bill

The key accomplishment of the week (and probably the year) was the passage of the SRO bill. Representative Frasier and Senator Westlin deserve for successfully navigating all of the objections, issues, interest groups, agendas and everything else. The bill had a rocky day on the Senate floor on Tuesday. An amendment was added after hours of debate. The amendment was promptly stripped out of the bill the following morning in a 7-minute conference committee and sent back to the House and Senate floors for passage. It was immediately whisked off to the Governor for signature and is now law.

The bill has several key features. The use of force by school principals and teachers was modified. Reasonable force had been limited to cases involving “imminent bodily harm”. The new law strikes “imminent” making the standard simply the threat of bodily harm. Much discussion took place whether the new statute would allow the use of reasonable force to protect property. The new law does not expressly state that, but lawyers and authors all argued that another statute authorizes the use of reasonable force to protect property.

Key of course is that the law will allow the return of school resource officers to schools. The Peace Officers Standards and Training Board must adopt training courses and create a model policy for SRO’s in consultation with various interest groups. MASSP is one of the groups.

Bills of the Week

The House and Senate both heard the school paper bill. (HF 4083 and SF 3998) These bills basically remove principals from any review of the content of a school paper. We did tell the committee that principals believe students have a higher probability of success with good supervision, positive instruction and boundaries. This was lost in the discussion. We will talk more about strategies for responding to this legislation if it ultimately becomes law.

The House heard the book banning bill (HF 4373). The bill creates a library bill of rights for all libraries. Specifically, a public library “may not ban, remove or otherwise restrict access to a book or other material based on its viewpoint or the message, ideas or opinions it conveys.” The bill includes civil penalties and fines for violation of the provision. The bill was sent to judiciary but will probably end up in the education omnibus policy bill. Similar language in the Governor’s Policy Bill without the fines and penalties.

Only at the Legislature

The legislature continues in its pursuit to manage schools. HF4655 was heard in the agriculture committee on Tuesday. “A school board must prohibit a waterfowl hatching project as part of a lesson or experimental study in a class or program, including community education, cocurricular or extracurricular activity.” This covers “all ducks, geese, and other species of migratory and nonmigratory waterfowl.”

Lucky we’ve got that covered.

Year-Round Legislature

The legislature has the power to put constitutional amendments on the ballot. It’s a unique power given that the Governor has no veto power over proposed constitutional amendments. HF 4598 and SF 4785 propose constitutional amendments on a number of subjects, including one that will catch the eye of voters. The proposed amendment would, in effect, create a year-round legislature. The Constitution currently limits the legislative biennial session to a total of 120 legislative days. (The House or Senate must actually meet to constitute a legislative day. Committee meetings don’t count toward the 120 days.) The Constitution also requires adjournment on the first Monday following the third Saturday in May. (A day of universal celebration and relief by everyone connected to the process.) These requirements would be deleted by the proposed constitutional amendment.

Article IV, Sec. 12. The legislature shall meet at the seat of government in regular session in each biennium at the times prescribed by law.

Striking those 35 words would change the legislature significantly. Of course, the voters will have something to say about a year-round legislature if this makes it onto the ballot this fall.

Upcoming Week

Omnibus Policy Bills – On Monday the House and Senate are releasing omnibus policy bills. This will be a complete list of the bills they want to pass all rolled into one. My plan is to send updates after these bills are released so that you can contact your legislators with your thoughts.

On Monday it is expected that the first glimpse of funding will come from the Governor’s office. It is not secret that little funding is available this year. Hopefully somewhere between $30 million and $100 million will be available for the read act, but no one knows at this point.

The Governor will deliver the State of the State will be March 26th in Owatonna.

In This Issue:

A critique of the "college for all" ethos of one high school
What it takes to implement a successful districtwide reform
Taking inventory of your emotional well-being
Responding to traumatized students with compassion (versus empathy)
Bringing back unstructured play for children
What's different in classrooms where students actually do homework?
The impact of peer consistency on high-school student attendance
Tips on applying for National Board Certification
Books to hook tweens and teens on reading

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