Board hears presentation from organization working to make school funding fair

By John McLoone

The Hastings School Board work session on Wednesday, Aug. 3 was a lesson in school finances.

The board heard a presentation from Schools for Equity in Education on the state of funding schools in Minnesota.

Schools for Equity in Education (SEE) is a consortium of 53 Minnesota School Districts statewide that are united by the fact that they tend to get lower state funding, either because their student population doesn’t make them eligible for some programs or because they “tend to be lowerproperty wealth districts, making it more difficult to access voterapproved referendum revenue to make up for inadequate state funding,” according to the board presentation.

Brad Lundell of SEES told board members that the organization is working “on some things that probably need to happen at the legislative level to make the system more fair.”

He said that Hastings is about average in the state in terms of property wealth.

“But you’re in the metropolitan area and if you drive 30 miles west of here, you’re going to see districts that have much higher property wealth, so their property taxpayers pay far less per dollar than they do here in Hastings,” he said. “The taxfairness issue – that’s kind of the bellwether kind of central issue which differentiates us from other organizations. It’s our primary reason for existence, to look at the property tax system and how that doesn’t jibe fairly or how that creates an unfair property tax education funding system.”

There are several different ways school districts are funded. The main source is general education aid. Each district is paid $6,683 per student statewide. There are then other levels of aid that districts qualify depending on student programs and things like transportation and declining enrollment. Overall, in Hastings, total general education spending per students is $9,975. Of that total, $2,193 is coming from local taxpayers and referendum funding. Statewide, the average per student spending is $9,881, with $1,677 raised locally, $516 less than in the Hastings School District.

Hastings doesn’t qualify for as much of what is termed “categorical aid,” which is because there are less students in the district that qualify for free and reducedprice meals and there isn’t a large number of students who don’t speak English as their primary language.

“Our districts tend to not generate a lot of categorical aid,” said Lundell. “If you look at the bottom line, Hastings sits right about at the state average when you have your referendum dollars in, but when you take the referendum and the local option revenue out, you dropped down to about the 300th spot. You go from like 180 to 300 in terms of money per kid. That’s because the current funding system is forcing you to have to go out and pass levies.”

A big problem is that the state funding mechanism hasn’t kept pace with inflation over the years. Factoring in inflation, the state per student aid is $1,605 less than it should be, which moves the burden to local taxpayers. While that funding lagged, the state has mandated more programs that the districts are required to fund.

In the area of special ed alone, Hastings pays more than $1,200 per student for mandated programming than it receives aid for.

“A lot of people say, ‘Well, provide less services,’ but you can’t. Those services are dictated by the IEP (Individualized Educational Plan), which are dictated by state and federal law, mostly federal law. Those are costs you’re going to incur,” Lundell said.

SEE is continuing to work with legislators to get funding distributed equitably.

“We look forward to working with you. Whatever we can do to help, we’re here. We’re a valueadded organization, and we want to make sure our members are getting value. Use us in the ways that you think that you think we can be helpful to you.”