Specifics: K12 Education

Make no mistake about it – our K12 education system needs to be reformed on a level that goes way beyond spending.

But most of this state doesn’t know it yet.  K12 education is like social security; criticism has to be very limited if you want to get elected to office.  It’s sad but true.

Here’s Emmer’s proposal on the education budget:

Tom Emmer calls for holding K–12 education funding harmless in the next biennium. Tom Emmer is committed to ensure that this critical spending of the budget is not reduced.

Let’s make sure we remember that Dayton’s budget cranks up the spending – but most of that goes to paying “the shift”.  More on that below.

An Emmer administration will be focused on reprioritizing existing K–12 funding to address critical needs. Changes in priorities can be accomplished without undermining local school districts’. Additionally an Emmer administration will create urban school district empowerment zones and reduce state mandates by allowing school districts to have greater authority to operate their districts and reduce state mandates for all school districts.

The empowerment zone idea is a good one.

Also bear in mind that Emmer, unlike Dayton, is going to leave charter schools alone.  Inner city parents who have fled the district schools will still have a refuge while the state works on re-organizing urban schools.

As far as that shift goes:

An Emmer Administration will begin identifying a repayment schedule in FY2012-13 and plan to begin repaying the shift in FY2014–15. Enacting the Emmer Jobs Agenda and putting Minnesotans back to work, the economy will grow and repayment may be triggered more quickly.

In the meantime, it’s a bill we can pretty justifiably postpone for now.

One thought on “Specifics: K12 Education

  1. I haven’t looked into specifics, but am sure teachers’ pension plans in MN are suffering from unsustainable bloat as elsewhere in the country. Why not talk about repayment of the shift with designation of its exact destination? Otherwise, it will only end up in Union coffers, being used to fund a political campaign to increase taxes, etc.

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