Schools face uphill fight for funding

South-metro school districts want one thing from the Minnesota Legislature this spring, which they probably will not get:

More money.

Administrators, parents, legislators and teachers can cite chapter and verse on the various ways the state's formula for funding schools falls short.

But when the Legislature convened last week, legislators were looking at a budget deficit of $373 million, expected to get even worse.

"I don't expect new funding" for schools, said State Sen. Claire Robling, R-Jordan, who attended a meeting in Burnsville-Eagan-Savage two weeks ago to discuss the session. "I just don't know where it will come from."

During the 2007 session, the Legislature approved a 2 percent funding increase for schools for the 2007-08 school year and a 1 percent increase for the 2008-09 school year. But as more and more districts rely on local taxes for basics, and the economy struggles, districts don't believe that is enough.

According to Rep. Will Morgan, DFL-Burnsville, schools are still feeling the effects of the state not increasing per-pupil funding and capping special education funding in 2003.

Integration funding

Morgan sits on a task force looking at an issue close to home for many south-metro educators: The way integration funding for school districts works, and if it's "actually doing the job," he said.

State law mandates that neighboring school districts with a more than 20 percentage-point difference in populations of students of color -- or a district that has that difference between some of its own schools and the district average -- create plans to alleviate the disparity.

In the south metro area, that law affects the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan school district, which opened three magnet schools this fall with integration money, as well as Burnsville-Eagan-Savage, Lakeville, Shakopee, Jordan and Prior Lake-Savage.

The task force hopes to address concerns raised about integration funding in a 2005 legislative auditor's report, which asserts that the purpose of the $80 million program isn't very clear and that nobody has assessed whether it's working.

Rep. Pat Garofalo, R-Farmington, who represents Lakeville, says the program should be scrapped.

"We should be focusing our education dollars on reading, writing and arithmetic as opposed to racism, recycling and reproduction," he said. "Let's focus on what the kids are learning and not what they look like."

No Child Left Behind

Nancy Allen-Mastro is torn.

The director of curriculum and instruction for the Prior Lake-Savage district really doesn't like the federal No Child Left Behind law. She thinks it will eventually punish every district in the nation, and it's expensive and time consuming to implement.

And if the state opts out of the federal law, as some Republican state senators propose, that federal money would be gone.

"There's a part of me that says, 'They can have the money, I've had it with No Child Left Behind,'" Allen-Mastro said. "Would I be sad if we didn't have to deal with it? Not at all. But I would be very concerned about the small amount of money we do get, and how much it does help."

For the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan district, the state's fourth-largest, that would mean at least $1.9 million out of the budget. District spokesman Tony Taschner said the law has had benefits, including forcing the schools to look at data carefully and identify small groups of students that could be better served.

Allen-Mastro said she would support the state quitting No Child Left Behind, but only if the state paid the difference, which could be as much as $250 million statewide.

"If Minnesota is not willing to do that," she said, "then we have to shut up and deal with it."