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In a candid exchange with State Representative Alice Seagren before the 2003 legislative session, Parents United for Public Schools organizers discovered the future looked bleak for public school funding from this legislator's perspective. Indeed, the 2003 session didn't provide enough money to keep current programs and services running, putting districts in the position of having to raise operating levy dollars to maintain them, or in some cases eliminate them entirely.

About twenty Public School Parent Community Leaders representing parent groups in many districts including Minneapolis, St Louis Park, South Washington County, Elk River, and Osseo met with House Education Finance Chair Alice Seagren on January 31, 2003 at the State Office Building in St Paul.

Public School Parent Community Leaders are shouldering increasing responsibility for sustaining public school programs and services integral to student success through levy campaign efforts and fees. Many districts agree that without the leadership of the Public School Parent Community Leaders, levies would not win support.

Levy campaigns require massive efforts to educate the community about the importance of funding public school programs and services integral to student achievement and about complex education finance. Campaign efforts involve literature drops, direct mailings, letters to the editor, and community meetings. They involve fundraising to support these communication efforts. Levy campaigns are becoming more time-consuming, expensive, demoralizing and divisive.

While levies are important for local control and for funding programs and services that are nice but not essential, they are becoming increasingly necessary for core programs and services that meet basic parent expectations. Transportation, school media centers, music, athletics, art and after-school academic activities such as debate are examples of programs and services parents must campaign for to win support from voters.

Increasing fees are making participation in healthy school activities cost prohibitive.

These programs and services promote student achievement. Without them, there is concern that achievement will fall in Minnesota.

The outcome of a levy campaign is dependent on several variables. Some school districts have lower property-tax wealth so individual residents end up paying significantly more than residents in districts with higher property-tax wealth to raise the same overall levy dollars.   Progress was made in the 2003 session to help equalize this disparity.

Certain districts have a much lower percentage of residents with children than others. This difference affects community support of a levy through voter approval.

Because the federal government has not funded the promised 40% for federally mandated special education services, schools have to dip into their general education funds to cover the unreimbursed costs and must levy to meet certain other operating costs previously covered through general education revenue.

For some districts a levy campaign is not even an option because they have already reached the capped amount. Asked if the levy cap would be increased, Representative Seagren responded that it would not. 

Public School Parent Community Leaders have stepped up to support programs and services integral for student success in addition to hours volunteering in the schools and are asking, "What's next?  Is the future of education funding (and therefore the opportunities for the children in our public schools) dependent on our campaign efforts on top of all the hours we volunteer in the schools?"

Representative Seagren stated there would most likely be no new dollars for K-12 Education.  And indeed, at the end of the 2003 there weren't any new dollars.

She offered the following education funding solutions to deal with school budget shortfalls now.  She said parents should run levy campaigns to the extent possible, change expectations, be innovative, and think outside the box.  She said parents may have to lower their expectations, citing the cost-saving alternative of offering band and foreign language at the high-school level only instead of in middle-school.  She also talked about classroom restructuring of student groupings and on-line learning as possible areas of cost savings.

Parents discussed whether the state will work toward a clearer definition of core education funding to ensure that the state is providing adequate resources to meet education needs Minnesotan's consider basic. A clearer definition could improve communication between state and local districts and individual parents regarding responsibility for funding for education programs and services.

Representative Seagren indicated that there would be a committee looking into this. Governor Pawlenty did form an Education Finance Reform Task Force in 2003, but the task force has yet to release any conclusions or proposals.

Representative Seagren identified state indicators of student achievement that the legislators follow to determine how well the state is educating the students in public schools. She mentioned the National Assessment for Educational Performance (NAEP), the ACT and SAT tests, and state MCA and Basic Skills tests.

Public school parent concern and involvement is critical to high student achievement in Minnesota. More than 80% of students in Minnesota are in public schools. Without this concern and involvement, the children in public school today will not have the higher education and career/job opportunities that Minnesota has so proudly afforded public school children.