Dayton should veto GOP measure targeting low-income kids .
The K-12 budget bill that appears headed for Gov. Mark Dayton's desk deserves his expected and swift veto. The multimillion-dollar package reallocates education funding in harmful ways and is loaded with policy adjustments that should be rejected.
In total spending, Dayton and the House/Senate conference committee proposal are not far apart. Over the biennium, both would commit $13.5 billion to $14 billion to educate Minnesota kids -- close to the same amount that the state spends now.
But there are stark differences between how the Republican-dominated Legislature and the DFL governor want to spend those funds. Topping the list of egregious provisions in the House/Senate plan is a redistribution of dollars from the state's largest districts to benefit others across the state.
Eliminating integration aid and reducing compensatory assistance, as the GOP proposes, would have a devastating impact on Minneapolis, St. Paul, Duluth and other larger districts with higher numbers of low-income students.
The proposal would cut funding to the three largest districts by as much as $20 million. Each of them are using those dollars on important strategic plans to improve achievement for some of the state's most challenged studen. This is no time to pull the rug out from under those efforts. In addition, the bill unfairly and disproportionately targets districts that are already facing projected budget shortfalls ranging from $6 million to $20 million. It would affect more than 75,000 mostly lower-income students.
Last week, the mayors and superintendents from the three cities and statewide parent groups gathered at the Capitol to oppose the bill. St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman called the plan a " political vendetta'' that is "wrongheaded and mean-spirited.'' And Craig Roen, president of Parents United said, public education should not be a "zero-sum game that creates winners and losers'' among school districts.
In addition to the allocation problems, the bill piles on unnecessary provisions that don't advance needed education reforms. The measure would wrongly create vouchers for lower-income students to attend private school, bar teachers from striking and eliminate teacher tenure.
Dayton's proposal would add $50 to the per-pupil formula each year of the biennium, similar to the Senate's finance plan. But the governor would wisely continue needed categorical funding and make cuts in the Education Department, charter school lease aid, the QComp teacher compensation program, and testing and special grant aid.
As this editorial board has stated previously, K-12 must be involved in the shared sacrifice needed to intelligently erase the state's $5 billion deficit and balance the budget. To that end, we proposed a modest cut of $350 million for public schools. That's part of what should be a balanced approach to solving the state's budget woes, involving $1.8 billion in total cuts, and tax increases that would raise a similar amount.
Some argue that schools already took too large a hit in the form of a one-time $1.8 billion payment delay that the 2010 Legislature imposed and that the 2011 Legislature will not pay back this year. But education still represents 40 percent of the state's overall budget. If K-12 is spared, every other thing state government does suffers. In trying economic times, shared sacrifice means exactly that -- the pain must be spread.
However, when it comes to how to spend education dollars, Dayton's approach is superior.
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