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Sartell eyes school funding
12/3/2008 12:00 AM

Jane Laskey, St. Cloud Times
SARTELL — More than 50 people gathered Tuesday at Pine Meadow Elementary to hear ideas about reforming school funding in Minnesota.

While the Sartell-St. Stephen school district has enough funds, that may not be true in a few years. The district is trying to educate the community about the issues ahead.

Deb Griffiths, director of communications for Schools for Equity in Education, talked about shortcomings in the state system.

SEE represents 60 Minnesota school districts and lobbies for reform of Minnesota’s school funding.

Griffiths, the mother of three and a parent volunteer in Centennial, said she became frustrated by the cycle of school tax referendums in her community and started talking to her legislators.

Her message to the Sartell crowd was that grass-roots lobbying can work.

Current system

Minnesota’s school funding formula is complex. While the basic formula is $5,124 per pupil, one child does not equal one pupil. Each student is weighted differently depending on his or her grade level. There are also a variety of categorical aids that allocate additional funds.

“People get their property tax statements and see their levy amount increase each year with their home value and they wonder what the schools are complaining about,” Griffiths said. “But the levy is based on 1993 property values. So the state is actually paying a smaller amount each year. This is a five-minute conversation to explain: the state is getting a break each year, you’re paying more and the school’s getting the same amount.”

According to Griffiths, that formula has failed to keep up with inflation for the past 17 years. Often, what are heralded as funding increases are actually just “a shell game” with the increase being offset by rollovers and other changes that make the increases meaningless. When real funding increases are tracked, they average only 1.5 percent per year — about half the rate of inflation.

While schools’ funding hasn’t kept pace with inflation, their expenses have. In the past eight years, the costs of books and supplies have risen more than 6 percent. Health care costs for employees have risen 11 percent. Fuel oil costs have risen a whopping 19.8 percent.

“At a minimum, we need the formula allowance to go up with inflation,” Griffiths said.

Finally, schools are facing more and more mandates that their funding must cover.

“As funding lagged, schools are expected to do more and more with the funds they have,” Griffiths said. “So communities turned to referendums.”

Sartell-St. Stephen

In terms of total funding, Sartell-St. Stephen ranked 326th out of 339 Minnesota schools. It has a $301 per-pupil levy in place.

The 10-year levy is in its seventh year.

So far Sartell-St. Stephen has been able to keep pace by rolling the funding increases that come with a growing student population back into the schools. But Superintendent Dale Gasser warns that can’t continue.

“For the last three or four years, we’ve been balancing our budget on the fact that we get 100 new kids each year and we don’t need to buy new teachers, equipment or buildings for those kids yet,” Gasser said. “But that is not sustainable.”

In communities such as Sartell that don’t have large industrial or commercial tax bases, referendums can be burdensome for homeowners.

In a community such as Orono, a $1,476 per-pupil levy would cost the owner of a $100,000 home about $123 per year. In Sartell, that same homeowner would have to cough up $418 to raise the same amount, according to SEE.

A new miracle

Legislators are working on HF4178, known as The New Minnesota Miracle.

The bill has been in the works since 2003 and, according to Griffiths, it would increase, equalize and simplify public school funding.

The proposed legislation would increase the per pupil formula from $5,175 to $7,500 — and each child would count as one pupil. It would fully fund all-day kindergarten programs and increase aid for English language learners. It would also be adjusted automatically for inflation.

Total program costs are estimated at $1.7 billion, which will be phased in gradually over a six-year period.

Should the New Minnesota Miracle gain approval, it would mean $6.35 million more for Sartell-St. Stephen schools.

Given the current economic situation, Gasser thinks it’s unlikely the bill will pass in its entirety.

But he’d be happy to settle for a new formula that balances funding more equitably among districts.

“If we could just get a rational, logical, equitable formula for spending, I’d be happy,” Gasser said.

http://www.sctimes.com/article/20081203/NEWS01/112030025/1009