By Mike Kaszuba
Speaking at the University of Minnesota, Independence Party candidate Tom Horner promised Monday that as governor he would work to prevent further budget cuts to the state university system.
Horner was the last of Minnesota's three major gubernatorial candidates to take part in a Humphrey Institute forum, and spent much of the event outlining his stance on education issues. He voiced his support for charter schools, though he acknowledged they needed more monitoring in light of management abuses, said there was still value in focusing on smaller neighborhood schools and agreed that re-evaluating the teacher tenure system is an issue he would consider.
As he has in the past, Horner also took a swipe at Education Minnesota, the state's large teachers union. "We need Education Minnesota to either join us as partners, or we'll have to work around the barriers the union has established," he said. "There are too many instances of good teachers, and along with them good programs, being lost to outdated seniority rules."
Horner, who after the forum acknowledged that he had never attended public schools, said state officials needed a "cradle to grave" approach to education that included steady funding for the state's universities and colleges and also having public school students reading at grade level by the time they reached the third grade.
