The K-12 Education Bill totaling $2.2 billion is on its way to Governor Tim Walz after clearing the Minnesota Senate early Wednesday morning.
The bill raises per pupil spending 4% next year, 3% the following year, and then ties that formula to inflation in years going forward. Senator Mary Kunesh (DFL-New Brighton) says it is a good bill.
“It centers the student, it centers the classroom, there are resources in there that are going to make a huge difference for our students, and that's really where our heart of the matter is,” says Kunesh. “It's with our students.”
The bill also includes literacy and curriculum requirements, and provides funding for the opioid treatment Narcan, along with menstrual products to be given free of charge.
“With this proposal, we make historic investments in our schools,” said Representative Cheryl Youakim (DFL-Hopkins). “We’ve had over 20 years of underinvestment in our schools. And while we cannot change that overnight, or even in one biennium, this bill is an awesome start.”
Republicans were sharply critical of many other aspects of the conference committee report, too.
“The bill that you have in front of you has at least 65 mandates that will be put on our schools,” said Representative Patricia Mueller (R-Austin). “This is a transformational bill. The problem is it doesn’t transform the way we need it to be.”
She took issue with the expanded power of the Department of Education over locally elected school boards, which she believes ought to be in the driver’s seat for setting educational standards and making funding decisions instead.
Other members criticized the expansion of unemployment insurance as fiscally irresponsible and the READ Act as insufficient in addressing the state’s intensifying literacy crisis.
Earned paid sick time is also a step closer to reality after both the House and Senate passed a $998 million Labor and Jobs Bill. That bill includes several new employee protection provisions, including workplace safety standards.
Under the plan, sick time would be earned one hour for every 30 worked with a cap at 48 hours a year.
The earned sick time is different from another bill moving through the legislature that would provide for paid family and medical leave.
Republicans have taken strong exception to many provisions found in the conference committee report, arguing they will harm Minnesota’s economic competitiveness for years to come.
Representative Isaac Schultz (R-Elmdale Township) said it is important for the Legislature to “make sure that we are not creating a stranglehold of government that limits investment from private job creators in this state.”
But found throughout the bill is the “heavy-handed burden of government upon job creators, from hospitals to nursing homes, from warehouse distribution centers to food processing and meatpacking facilities.”
The governor says he'll sign both bills.
Related
· $74.4 million for student support personnel aid and workforce development, to attend to students’ mental, behavioral, and physical health needs;
· $45.2 million for school library aid;
· $37 million for Grow Your Own teacher grants, designed to increase the size and diversity of the teaching workforce;
· $30 million to establish a special education teacher pipeline;
· $24.3 million for building safety and cybersecurity grants;
· $15 million for full-service community school grants;
· $9.9 million to cover 35% of the transportation sparsity aid cross-subsidy, up from the current rate of 18.2%; and
· $2 million to kickstart construction of gender-neutral bathrooms.
The bill also calls for a plethora of policy changes, especially in regard to measures long sought by American Indian educational advocates, such as:
Prohibiting schools from using Indian symbols or names as mascots, unless all 11 of the state’s tribal nations sign off on an exemption request; replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day on the school calendar; and adding Indigenous education to the state’s academic standards during the next 10-year review.
Governmental authorities overseeing employer-employee relations would receive the remaining $108.6 million, with much of the funding going to the Department of Labor and Industry to bolster workplace safety and implement major regulatory changes. Allocations in this realm would include:
· $30.9 million for the Workers’ Compensation Fund;
· $7.5 million for the Bureau of Mediation Services;
· $4.3 million for enforcement and worker outreach regarding a statewide mandate of earned sick and safe time benefits;
· $2 million for the ergonomics safety program; and
· $1.02 million for a newly created Nursing Home Workforce Standards Board.
Conferees included the following three policy initiatives but elected to provide no direct appropriations for their would-be enforcement:
Establishment of new worker safety requirements in the warehouse industry; instituting strengthened wage protections for construction workers; and updating the Packinghouse Workers Bill of Rights.
Other notable policy changes found in the bill would affect workplaces in the following ways:
Render nearly all non-compete covenants void and unenforceable; ban restrictive franchise agreements; make substantial modifications to the Public Employment Labor Relations Act, which governs collective bargaining and unionization rights in the public sector; and prohibit employers from compelling employee attendance at meetings that discuss religious matters, political issues, or arguments against unionization.