Association of Metropolitan School Districts Update

July 14, 2011

Budget Agreement Reached

Governor Dayton and legislative leadership just held a press conference announcing that they have reached an agreement on a budget framework to end the government shutdown.  The framework is the offer that the Governor proposed this morning.  The framework increases the education aid payment shift to 60/40 and authorizes selling tobacco appropriation bonds to bridge the $1.4 billion gap that existed.  This includes adding $50 per pupil per year to the basic formula to help school districts cover increased borrowing costs.  It is not clear which policy provisions from the education bill are still on the table and what is off the table.  They referred to a list of policy provisions that the GOP leaders had offered on June 29 and indicated that they were off the table.  This would seem to indicate that the vast majority of the education policy provisions are out of the picture.  However, we are getting conflicting reports and the leaders did say that there are still details to be worked out.  Things are going to be moving very fast – the Governor and legislative leaders said that they were going to be working through the weekend and that a special session would be called within a matter of days.

That being said, we think we still have an outside shot at getting some of the mandate relief provisions included in the final bill but we need your phone calls and emails into the governor, commissioner, legislative leaders and your local legislators.  Encourage them to include the following in the final bill:

-         repeal of the 2% staff development set aside requirement

-         repeal of the safe schools maintenance of effort requirement

-         repeal of the January 15^th penalty

-         flexibility with transfers from the operating capital fund

-         include the language allowing limited use of prone restraint in special education

-         include the language changing the required ballot language for renewal of an existing capital projects levy

We will keep you apprised as we gather further information.  Again, things are going to move very quickly so please get your communications in ASAP.